CFI Check-Ride Secret: Why Buying Lesson Plans Can Cost You

All right, welcome back to 30 days of whatever that is. The hell we're doing. 30 days of videos on things we've seen on checkrides in the last 30 months since we started doing our final approach courses. First in just the R44, now in the R22 as well. And by the way, this is October 2025. We got some time. You want to get a checkride done, get on the schedule or call us up, text 574-767-1797 and we can finish you. We can get you done. You don't need to keep sitting at the flight school waiting to get on the schedule. We can get you in. So I'm talking about CFI lesson plans. This is a great question and it comes up a lot. I'm going to show you what I did and I'm not telling you you have to do what I did, but I'm going to show you what I did first and I'm going to show you or talk about a couple things we've seen in the CFI Trek rides so far this year that were kind of an issue. Nothing big but could, could hold you up. So what I simply did for my lesson plans, it's in my original notebook. I talk about all the time. You can see, it's the big thick spiral bound notebook. This has all my notes for commercial or for my private pilot, my commercial pilot instrument rating. And then I put all my CFI stuff in here, including my lesson plan. So they are in a notebook I wrote kind of small and everything's concise. I made my own lesson plans. And what kind of things did I put my lesson plans? I'm going to tell you lesson plan. I'm just going to give you a good majority of it. Auto rotation, maximum performance, takeoff, steep approach, confined areas, high recon, pinnacle and ridgeline operations, airspace A, B, C, D, E, special use airspace, anti torque system failures, LTE stuck pedal, military training routes, and it goes on and on. So anything that I could think of that I thought was common in training, the typical everyday stuff, I mean you don't have to have hundreds of lesson plans, but you got to have the basics. And I made them myself and put them in here so that they're in my own words. And I even went as far as, you know, as I'm learning to teach, becoming a CFI, you know, like flying an approach, intercept a 10 degree angle, begin by lowering collective, then F, cyclic right pedal, trim springs with point of touchdown. I wrote out maneuvers exactly how I wanted in my mind. I wanted to teach them. And I also wrote out things, how I wanted to say it, like, what's the verbiage that I want to use? And what's interesting when I look back at it now, what I'm saying in the aircraft today is pretty darn close to what I wrote in this notebook over 25 years ago. Again, I went through and just, you know, I could keep. I could keep going, but it's. It's all the stuff you can think of, the aerodynamic stuff, retreating blade stall, selling the power vortex, ring state, low G, you know, mass bumping, all of the aerodynamic stuff to symmetry of lift, the different types of rotor systems, lower rotor, low RPM rotor stall, and the list goes on. So anything that I thought was relevant, things that I was going to teach would be in here. And then also, we're going to talk about FY's tomorrow, and we can give you a little tip on that. Those are in here as well. So that's how I did it. Okay? I made my own. And that's typically what people do. We had a gentleman the last year who actually, super Hogs fan, and has a book probably twice as thick as this. This thing is a freaking monster. And it's all from Hogg's content that he went through, and he made notes and information from all of his ratings. He did private commercial, CFI instrument, all used in hogs. And he has this big, huge binder. And I've sat and looked through that thing. It's phenomenal. Why? For his checkride, he purchased a book about this side, this size, and it said CFI lesson plans on it. And it was something that he purchased all in one, came in the mail. He opened up the box and here it is, ready to go. I'll take the blame. I should have caught the day of the checkride. That's what he had out on the table. He didn't have this big, massive book he had with all the good stuff in it that he'd taken on his own. And after the fact, he did pass the. He. He passed the cfi and he did a good job. But then I got bounced by the examiner after the fact. I think when he came for the next check, right, he goes, hey, that last applicant, he had lesson plans that were purchased, the whole book purchased as is. And I'm like, yeah, he did. And he goes. He kind of gave me that look like we've always encouraged applicants to build their own. And I go, I go, I know that. All right? I know that. And I go. And he has this incredible book of what I would call plenty of what's lesson plans in there along with everything else. I go, he has this phenomenal book that he didn't even bring out. And so I kind of got, you know, spanked a little by a little bit by the examiner because he didn't know about this wonderful book that this guy had built. And all the time he spent studying that alone, that thing alone was just, it's so impressive. So purchasing lesson plans. Not going to say you can't do it, but I'm giving you a first hand example of how an examiner went. Well, your applicant had just some lesson plans that he just bought. Examiner wasn't too happy about it, didn't stop the checkride. But you know, the whole part of making the lesson plans is that, you know, we're learning through repetition. We're learning through writing things down and putting things in our own words. And I think it's a heck of a lot easier to teach if at least the majority of the normal things that we're going to teach, all the aerodynamics, all the maneuvers, these types of things, you kind of want to lay it out in your own words the way that you want to teach it and just think it's a much more effective way to prepare for your CFI is to make your own lesson plans or at least try to make the majority of them. And I get it, it's time consuming, I get it. But I can tell you the people that have come here in the last 30 months, the CFIs that really, really excelled, they made their own lesson plans and they spent the time to build a nice set. Again, you're going to learn the information better, it's going to flow better when you go to teach it. My recommendation is to make your own. Don't just purchase someone else's. Not going to say you can't. But do you want to be mediocre? Do you want to be the best you can be? I think making your own lesson plans is the best we had another CFI was CFI add on. And he had, he's like, has four instructor ratings and he was going to do the helicopter add on. And he did and he got through it and he did, he did a good job and he passed. But when I said he needed lesson plans, he kind of went, he wanted to argue a little bit. He's like, well, what do I need lesson plans for? I'm like to see if I check right. He said, well, I know, but I'm an add on. I got four ratings already. Four instructor ratings. I go, I know. However, I know you're an instructor and I get that and I appreciate your years of experience, but you still need at least, at least lesson plans for helicopter specific stuff. And he told me he didn't remember ever doing lesson plans. And I don't know how that story really plays out. But since I've been doing this and the CFIs that I've prepared, the examiners that I've used, they all expect lesson plans. So if you're going for your cfi, that's my recommendation on that. Do us a favor, subscribe to the channel, click the bell so you'll be notified of our next video. Leave us a comment below if you've got some comment about lesson plans or anything else that we could do in the next two weeks as we finish up this series of videos. And we'll see you tomorrow in the next video. Peace out.

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