CFI-A Lesson 2

Early this week, I finished up the missing details of Lesson 1. Today, I started Lesson 2. According to the syllabus, I was supposed to present a pre-flight briefing covering the four fundamentals of flight - straight & level, turns, climbs, and descents. After that, I was supposed to teach the four fundamentals in the airplane, while also covering everything else involved in a typical training flight - weather, airport information, take-off and landing distance, pre-flight inspection, engine start, ATC communications, taxi, run-up, take-off, etc.

When I first started, my nerves kicked in and I was mess. I could barely think or speak. My instructor interrupted and told me to relax. I took a few deep breaths and started again. As expected, the pre-flight briefing blew past the 30 minute time alotted and stretched to about an hour. I was not surprised at all. I went into it with eight pages of notes! I completely ignored six of the pages, and still ran 30 minutes over the limit. The four fundamentals are, well, fundamental maneuvers. The instructor must impress upon the student just how important they are and that they be performed correctly from the very beginning of training. I focused on covering everything the student would see, hear, and feel, in addition to how to correctly perform the maneuvers.

After I completed my brief, my instructor critiqued my performance. He was pleased, then went on for another half hour about things I should consider adding to my brief. I informed him that I had all of that in my notes and he said, "I didn't say it would be easy". My take away from this is that the pre-flight briefs are just that - brief. As an instructor, you must know what information to present during the pre-flight brief and what to cover in the airplane. It's just not practical, timewise, to cover an entire topic completely and thoroughly.

Normally, we would have gone flying next, but time was short and I hadn't completed my Piper Warrior Cadet pre-flight test (hadn't been given the test ahead of time). So we called it a day and will complete the flight portion of Lesson 1 next time.