Complex endorsement: what is so special about flaps?

"Robert M. Gary" wrote in news:da3b9741-1ac7-4b99-9a1e-
:

On Feb 24, 6:21*pm, Bertie the Bunyip wrote:

No, definitely in the early to mid seventies. They may have been
modified and tweaked in the nineties, but they were definitely around in
the seventies. I had to sign quite a few guys off in the Stearman for
horsepower only, for instance. There was a major rejigging of the regs
around 73 or so. Before that, for instance, if you had a flight
instructor raing you could teach in anything you had a rating for.

My wife's grandfather held a commercial ticket with a flight
instructor rating. He still shows up on registry.faa.gov but it says
something like "Instructor rating not valid after 197x". I assume that
is when they introduced the instructor certificate. However, it makes
sense to say if you are rated to fly a ME plane and you have some the
ability to teach then why do you need a different checkride for the
MEI.

I'd say there was a string of mishaps that guided them in that direction,
as always.
The guys who had been instructing were exempt from having to take
checkrides, I believe, but they would have to renew from that date forward.
IOW if they had been doing ME instruction they automaticaly got a CFI ME
and if they had so many instrument instructing hours they got a II, but i
was amongst the first in the new system so it was all of only academic
interest to me.

Bertie