Episode 448: Why So Many CFIs Are Struggling with the FOI (And How to Fix It)

Video number three of three in a row. This is the third one on a knowledge area. And these are things that were taken from the last 30 checkrides we've done over the last 30 months. Yes, I love the number three. I learned from a very young age the power of the number three comes up in training all the time. So this one is for CFI applicants, and this is about learning the fois, and should be a fairly short video. Here's what I need to tell you. I know from 25 years of doing CFI checkrides with applicants, and I know from our examiner for many years would always harp on the fois. And then for a little while, we got away from Robinson. We were using the instrument. We used a little different examiner for a little bit, and then we got back into Robinson. I went back to using the same examiner I'd used for many, many, many years, and we were happy to start using him again. And the first time I did a CFI checkride with him, we hadn't done a little while. But this is recent, right? This is since we got the R44. And when I called him up to schedule the first CFI applicant, he said to me, I know how you are, and I know you pride yourself on presenting applicants that are going to do really, really well. He goes, I know that about you, but let me tell you about something that I'm observing. And he said, we're continually having people show up for a CFI checkride and they're not doing very well on the fois. People are not putting enough emphasis on the study time for the fois. They're struggling in the checkrides, barely making it through, and sometimes they're failing because of the fois. So he said, I know you know this, but I'm just telling you. And I'm like, okay, I get it. I understand. And I think the first three or four of them, you know, when I'd call him up, I would get that same speech, right? Like, hey, I know you know what you're doing. I know you, you know, da, da, da, make sure they know the fois. And this is coming from the FAA as well. He said, this is a. This is a common problem around the country of people not being prepared on the fois. And here's the tough part of it. I know it sucks, right? It's a lot to study. It's a lot of repetition. But I remember when I did mine, the guys that we did it with, we went to an accelerated course, and they said, here, here's, what you got to do. You got to suck it up. Okay? That's all you can do. We're going to teach each. We were like a seven day accelerated course or eight day or whatever. It was a week or just over a week. And they go every day you're going to be here in the classroom practicing teaching because there was two of us that were doing this together. And they said at night you're going back to your hotel, the two of you, and you're going to study and you're going to study and you're going to study and we're going to do, we're going to repeat that every day. Every day, all day, EPO wise, over and over and over and over. So whether you use HOGS training or you're using some type of other prep ware, you're using the aviation instructors handbook or you're listening to some audio pad podcast, I don't care, honestly, what you use. Use any good reference that's, you know, FAA approved, that's going to have the current information about FOIs. The point is you got to suck it up and do it and you just got to go over it. And yesterday I sent out my notebook with lesson plans. I had a thick book where we went to do our cfi. We had a book that looked like this. It was just FOI stuff. I studied like crazy out of that. And then I also took information from that and I wrote it in here in my notebook. You know, I have the levels of learning, principles, formation, habits, laws of learning, how people learn, four levels of learning, principles and learning a skill, and on and on and on. So not only am I studying this in a book, I'm writing it out because again, we learn through repetition. So I want to impress upon you, I don't care what you use, but if you want to get through the CFI checkride the first time around. And we know the CFI checkride is tough. And I remember these guys telling us this is probably one of the hardest things you're ever going to do in your life is this CFI checkride. And ours were with. Both of us were with Tim Tucker. And this was 25 years ago. And they made that very clear. This is going to be tough. And our orals were eight hours the first day, eight hours. And. But we did it together. Tim would have both of us in the same room and he'd alternate questions. And then we finished the oral the next day before we went out to fly. So it was really, really hard. And he told us he said, you guys are from out of town, you're from Chicago. I'll never probably see you guys again. I'm going to be hard on you today. And he was and it was very difficult. And our examiner is very fair but he's also very thorough. And if you don't get through the fois, you're not going to move on through the rest of the checkride. So I think I beat that pretty good. EPO wise. You just have to suck it up, use the resources and go through it if you don't want to. Or if you want to try to get through the CFI check right on the first time. And again we know everybody wants to get through on the first time, right. Like it's an amazing amount of preparations you have to do for any rating. You know, private is hard when it's new to you. Commercials I think a little bit easier maybe because you commercial is kind of a glorified private instrument. Rating gets tough. That's a whole new area. And then CFI is about teaching. So you have to know this stuff well enough to teach it in a truck ride or right. So just think about that for a moment about the high level of knowledge expected from a certified flight instructor. So take your time. ACS uses all the tools that you need and really, really, really learn those fois. I think the next few videos we're going to move over and take out. The R44 just came back from a hundred hour inspection. Fresh paint on the tips of the rotor blades or the leading edge of the rotor blades and we're kind of anxious to get it out and fly it. So we're going to come up with some more of topics of things we've seen in the last 30 checkrides because again a lot of the things we see are common with people that come here from around the country. It's not usually just isolated. It's like a portion of these people are doing this or not doing that. So we're going to point out some more of those things in the helicopter for the next few videos. So subscribe the channel, click the bell like leave us a comment below on any of these topics we're talking about. We'll see you next video. Peace out.

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