Episode 375: Are You Prepared for the Examiner?

And I'm just hitting record because I got a tip for CFI applicants. You're going for your cfi. What we always tell people, always, always, always is you want to make a good presentation for the examiner. Becoming an instructor and taking the check ride. For cfi, it's about being a teacher and it's about your presentations. So we always tell people, look, you, the worst thing you can do is sit across the table from a person who's administering a test to you and then just give them a verbal presentation and sit there and look at them. And people will try to get away with that, right? Like, that's not impressive to the examiner. It's not impressive to anyone. As a cfi, you've got all kinds of tools. Your helicopter flying handbook, your FAR aim we now have. Everybody has electronic devices. You have an iPad, you got videos you can share. And when you're presenting, it's about the presentation and making a presentation interesting, something easy to follow. Typical mistake with new instructors is they make their lessons that they're going to teach way too complicated. Now, there might be some examiners out there that, that appreciate that, but our examiner, our main examiner we use has been doing it for over 35 years. And when he gets the, the day going and gets the check ride going, he'll tell them, he'll say something along the lines of, look, you're teaching me today as I'm a new student. I'm new to helicopters, maybe I got 10 hours or something, but been flying a little bit and I've been introduced to some of the books and things, but I don't know a lot yet. So you can keep the lesson that you're going to teach the examiner very simple. And again, I'm just saying what I've seen over the years, like that's typical, is a someone will create a lesson plan that's like an hour long, right? Like, and it's like so super detailed and goes into a whole bunch of topics. Most generally, you don't have to do that, whatever you've been assigned that you're going to teach. Luckily, our examiner usually gives us a couple of them ahead of time, you know, like three or four days in advance. He'll say, hey, have your applicant teach me, you know, give me a lesson, have a lesson plan ready to teach on LTE and low rpm, you know, he'll pick a couple topics and he'll also usually say, I'll probably pick one off the cuff that day. So you have the time to prepare or at least in Some cases, some examiners may make you do it the day of, but you want to be as visual as possible, whether you're using your arms. You don't have to use electronic devices. You could use your arms. You can pick up the helicopter. We always have a helicopter sitting here, and I'm always waiting for the applicant to pick it up. When they're teaching me something like they're practicing, and I'll be sitting here going, come on, pick up the helicopter. Pick up the helicopter. Right. They're explaining something to me, and I'm thinking, if you'd pick that helicopter up right now and just show me. Show me the nose going up. Show me the abnormal vibration. Show me that leaning to the retreating side. Right? So it's about being super, super visible. Visible, not the word I was looking for. Animated. Right. And example would be make a super legible. Super legible presentation. In this case, we like using whiteboards or whatever you want to call it. What do you call that, Lindsay? It's a damn tablet. Yeah, sure, whatever. Right. I like these. And we have an app getting ready to go. And I'm not picking on him. He's going to go, you picking on me in the video? No, he's. He has a big, long lesson plan ready on SFAR 73. And it's long and good and detailed. And I didn't think about tell her after left because he gave me a good presentation. But then I was. I was sitting here looking at it, and I'm like, I can't read it. And the person that you're teaching is going to want to follow along with whatever it is you're talking about. So we decided that we were going to. Lindsay was going to rewrite this for him because she is good at with her handwriting and she likes using different colors. And so I said, all right, let's go ahead and rewrite it for him. And if he doesn't want to have to use it, if he doesn't want to have to use it, if he doesn't want to use it, he doesn't have to. But sitting here, I knew I couldn't read it. And I thought, well, it's great that the applicant has it there so that he has it for his own memory as he's teaching and going through the topics. But it's nice as you, the viewer, the person receiving the training, if you're talking to me and you're giving me something, I should be able to read what it is that you're talking about. In this case, it just Wasn't big enough. So we like putting on good presentations here at hogs. We spent a lot of time to make these checkrides go the first time around. We spent a lot of time cleaning everything up, getting everything out on the table, making sure all your books are covered. And like today, before this applicant left, what's the last thing I did? I grabbed his ACS that he probably should have took back home with him for the weekend. But we went through this today and we went through the most important page. And I've been harping on this for years and I'm going to harp on it again. When I first started as a cfi, I asked the examiner that we're still using today, hey, I'm a brand new cfi. What's a, what's some good tip you can give me for being a new cfi? And he goes, ever heard the pts? Which of course now this is the acs, but same difference. He's like, make sure you use the pts, your students use the pts. And go to that page in the pts. It's called Practical test checklist. This says applicant. I think it used to say, you know, checkride with examiner or whatever, but right there's the list of every single thing you need the day of the test. Okay, that's it. And that's it. Like, that's all he told me. He had no other, he had no other advice for me as a brand new cfi. Then you use the pts, go through it, go through it with your students, make sure they have a copy and use that thing throughout the training. And so that's another thing that I've just seen over the years over and over and over and over is you got to beat people to try to get them to use the PTS or the acs. Again, it's now the acs, but sorry for us old school guys. Look, it's going to take a little while to stop saying pts. And by the way, we've been doing plenty of check rights to the acs, so don't freak out over the acs. We actually like it. It's more descriptive. Check rights haven't changed that much. A few little things have changed here and there, but I had some of the other days like, hey, I don't know, I'm all freaked out over the acs and I'm like, don't freak out. It's, it's not worth freaking out. Our examiner even said when we first started using it this year, the check rides are basically still pretty much the same thing. Yeah, there's a few changes and there's a, you know, some things that might be a little bit different. But all in all, check rights haven't changed that much. So I know I went in a whole bunch of different directions there, but that's essence of these CFIs. So if you're going for a CFI, understand it's about being a teacher and spend the time to make your presentations as good as possible. And I don't care. We've done some presentations here where we had. The applicant wanted to use a PowerPoint. I said, great, let's put it up on the hog's wall over here. Why not? Hell, we got four screens over there. So, you know, use a PowerPoint, use a video, use your FAR aim, use your helicopter flying handbook, show them a diagram on an iPad, use. I don't know why I can't think of the name of what the hell the what is. I want to see. It's a poster board. Poster board. It's a flip chart. Flip chart. There you go. Use a flip chart. I like the flip chart because we use the damn thing all the time, right? We're like, we're brainstorming ideas. Flip chart. We're got a student here and you want to draw the symmetry of lift real quick. We use the flip chart. But I don't care what you use as long as you're being animated. Try to make the presentation as interesting as possible. Ground is boring, we know that in general, but you can at least spend the time on your presentation. Try to make it, try to make it as good as possible. And hey, meet us in Vegas. If you're still hanging around this video by now, you might care. November 11, 2024. This aircraft's leaving soon to go down to Vegas. We're going to be flight training in Vegas. So yes, I'm going to be doing facs in Vegas. Taz will have the helicopter there when I'm not there. And he is willing to do general training. And we're going to, we're offering some packages for like a half day with Taz, full day with Taz, where you want to just go spend the entire day and learn from 2018 Flight Instructor of the year, Dan Taz Chrisman. So you can reach out to Heather at 574-767-1797 if you want to book some time to fly with Taz in Las Vegas and the Hogs R44 this winter. Or you can also text Heather Lindsay came up with us today. Hogs Vegas text Hogs Vegas to Heather. She'll know you want some details on meeting us 574-767-1797. And she'll reach out to you about meeting us down there. We're going to give away a bunch of books. It's going to sign them and play with the R44. And I would imagine that evening we'll probably go out on the town. You know, it's Las Vegas. Like, you know, gotta go out and do something. All right. Peace out. Top 10, top 10 below top hogs top 10 will be a free PDF of that book if you want to get it now for free. All right. Peace out. For real. Reals. For real.

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