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#1
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Where are the CFIG's?
The advertisement for CFIG's recently posted, and the discussion it
spawned, made me realize something. I have yet to see a soaring club that had enough CFIG's. I'm sure they're out there, but I bet they're not the norm. Some have waiting lists to join if you lack a glider rating. Some have given up on doing instruction at all. And some limp along, depending on the good will of the few CFIG's they have to work often, pitch in, and get the job done. Students get to fly once a week if they're lucky. Most clubs know they need more instructors. Some give instructors special perks - reduced or eliminated club dues and/or initiation fees, scheduling priority, maybe even free flight time. A few even actively advertise. Most of the focus is on attracting those who are already CFIG's. In my opinion, that's wrongheaded. Sure, it gets quick results - but it doesn't fix the fundamental problem. You need to plan for the long haul and grow your own instructors. It starts with retention. When I speak of retention, I don't mean someone who pays his club dues, comes out to do club duty, and flies ten hours (or less) a year. I mean someone who is actively soaring, developing skill and experience. Those things are necessary for becoming an instructor. The FAA claims that you can instruct in gliders with 25 total hours and 100 flights as PIC but we all know better. If there isn't a large base of experienced active pilots, then there isn't a pool from which to draw CFIG's. It's really that simple. How many experienced active soaring pilots do you know who got that way flying circles around the home field? Right, none. Unless you want to make glider ownership a prerequisite for becoming an instructor you need to make XC in club ships not just theoretically possible, but common and convenient. Anyway, who wants a CFIG with no XC experience? The next step is instructor development. This is going to sound like sacrilege to some, but the club needs to encourage pilots to let passengers fly - to the extent that the pilot is capable. That happens two ways. First, remove the roadblocks. Don't restrict pilots from flying from the back seat - encourage it. I used to belong to a club that required private pilots to have a special checkout for flying from the back seat - in every make and model, and it had to be renewed every year. It's probably too much to expect a club to trust the pilot's judgment in deciding whether he needs instruction in flying from the back or not (though of course that's the right way) but certainly one back seat checkout is sufficient. If you must have recurrent requirements for flying from the back seat, at least make them ones that don't inconvenience the pilot. For example, requiring the BFR to be flown from the back seat if the pilot wishes to retain back seat flying privileges adds no cost or inconvenience. Remember, neither the FAA nor the insurance company cares which seat the pilot flies from. Second, allow the pilots to work up to instructing. Some will never be comfortable with letting a passenger fly, and that's fine. They're not going to be instructors. But don't allow those people to project their discomfort onto others. This is one of those areas where individual temperament and aptitude counts for far more than total time, and really is not a good place for rulemaking. Some will start by allowing the passenger to fly at altitude immediately after passing the checkride, while others take longer. With time, they'll have him flying on tow. Maybe landing. Eventually even taking off. That necessarily means that sometimes an ugly looking landing will be made, and sometimes the glider will be way out of position on tow. There's a fine line to walk here. Make sure the pilot understands that he can hand off the controls but not the responsibility, but also make sure he understands that when a passenger is flying, he's only responsible for keeping things safe, not necessarily pretty. When you see a private pilot who is routinely out of position on tow, making landings that look like last minute saves, and otherwise flying sloppy, of course this is cause for concern. It's important to understand that if the passenger is the one doing the flying, it's NOT cause for concern. The pilot is exploring the limits of the envelope, figuring out how far he can let the passenger go. Far better he do it now, while he's paying for his own flight and thus feels no pressure to let the passenger fly. When you see someone who clearly enjoys letting passengers fly, keep an eye on him. He's someone who will probably enjoy instructing. As soon as his skills are up to it, you want to encourage him to work on his ratings. A logical first step is the AGI certificate. It costs about $200 to get one (2 computer tests at $80 each, and 2 test prep books at $20 each) and half of that counts towards the CFIG. If you expect that he will be a CFI-G within two years (no reason he shouldn't be) then encourage him to take the CFI-G written at the same time. Same test prep book covers both. An AGI can take a lot of the workload off the CFIG's. He can do the required 1 hour portion of the BFR. He can teach ground school and sign them off for the written, and he can work with them on the areas where they were found deficient and give that signoff as well. He can give the endorsement that covers the assembly and disassembly of a glider. And it gives him a taste of what it's like to teach in a more formal setting, and may encourage him to continue. It may also convince him he doesn't want to do this - and that's good too. You don't want someone teaching who doesn't really want to be teaching. The next necessary step is the commercial. There's really not a lot of difference between the private and commercial checkrides. If he's comfortable letting a passenger fly on tow, he will breeze through it - assuming he can get the necessary instruction. Make sure he gets it. Make sure he understands that it's OK to schedule a 2-seater and an instructor for this, and that his need for instruction is no less important than the need of the presolo student. Some DE's require that the commercial be flown from the back seat. After all, it's hard to give someone a good ride if he has to be folded into the back of the glider. Few DE's will insist on the front seat. Therefore, have him do the commercial from the back seat. If he's letting people fly from the front seat it should be no hardship, and it will make the CFIG ride a cakewalk. Be proactive. It's not out of line to have a club officer (who needs to be a CFIG) responsible for instructor development. It's not unreasonable to ask him who he has in the pipeline. CFIG's are not immortal. Some die, some get too old to fly, and some leave the club. There always need to be new ones coming up. Finally, make sure your potential CFIG understands that the weight of the world does not immediately descend upon his shoulders the day he gets his ticket. The big strength of the club instruction model is this - the new CFIG doesn't have to go it alone. Make sure he understands that there are more senior instructors available to him - to discuss difficulties, to fly with his students, and most importantly to calibrate his judgment. And make sure it's all true. That means making sure that you have a chief instructor who is a mentor to the junior instructors, not someone who spends his time making rules, playing favorites, or being inaccessible. Chief instructor is a leadership position. He need not be the best pilot around, or even the best instructor. Of course he must be experienced and competent, or he won't have the respect of the junior instructors, but he must, above all, be a people person. He must be plesant to work for, but able to accomplish the mission of the organization - training the new crop of pilots and instructors. Remember, this isn't a military organization - if he can't get buy-in from the junior instructors and has to give orders on a regular basis, he is by definition incompetent for the job. Find someone else. The great thing is, you only need one. There's not really a lot a club can do to make instructing attractive. Getting the ratings takes time, money and effort. There's no money in it (any financial incentives a club can come up with will be trivial), no career advancement, it's hard work, and there's both physical risk and legal liability. Those of us who do it always have and always will do it for very intangible reasons - to share the joy of flight with another, and to give something back to the sport that gave so much to us. But there sure is a lot a club can do to make it unattractive, and convince the potential CFIG not to bother with getting his rating - or maybe to get the rating and leave the club to instruct elsewhere. Don't do those things. Don't have the club instructors working more hours/days than the other members who tow, cut grass, stage gliders, or perform other duties. Here's a person who spent his own time and money to help the club - extra work is no way to repay him. More to the point, it's a massive disincentive to potential instructors. The chief instructor must of necessity have some power over the junior instructors, but don't allow that power to be arbitrary or absolute, and be careful who you allow to be chief instructor. I can't say this enough times - you need someone who is respected, diplomatic, and pleasant to work for. It only takes one major blunder by the chief instructor, even with cause, and most of the people who were considering getting their CFIG will put it on hold. Anyone here want to take an unpaid job working for an asshole? I know of one incident where a chief instructor publicly fired a junior CFIG; it was YEARS before anyone in that club got a CFIG rating. In general - you can't do much to ignite a pilot's enthusiasm for becoming an instructor, but you can do a whole lot to kill it. Don't. When you fail to do the above - when you make rules left and right, when you allow an asshole who happens to be a PSM (Powerful Senior Member) to be chief instructor, when you make no effort do develop XC in club ships and no effort to develop instructors, then you never have enough. And then you resort to expedients. The obvious one is to wait for CFIG's to join the club. This isn't much of a plan. On average, you lose more to age, illness, and moves than you gain from moves. If there is more than one operation in the area, you might try to get more than your share by advertising and offering financial incentives - no club dues, free flight time, maybe some pittance paid for instruction. This is not the winning strategy you might think. Most glider instructors are not in a financial situation where such incentives make any real difference. Plan B is to hope high hours power pilots (especially power CFI's) join the club and get their CFIG's. This is also not the winning strategy you might think. Who wants to be taught by someone who has been flying gliders for 3 months? Sure, it's possible - a current and proficient power CFI can join a club, solo in half a dozen flights, get his private at 6 hours, and at exactly 15 hours in gliders can become a CFI-G. What's more, he is probably safe. He can teach aircraft handling - takeoff, tow, maneuvers, and landing. But he can't teach soaring. For a proficient and reasonably experienced fixed wing pilot, getting a CFIG is laughably easy even if he only holds a private ticket in airplanes. I took my initial commercial and CFI in a glider, and the total instruction and practice time including both checkrides came out to significantly less than 10 hours. The writtens and checkrides were a cakewalk. And I can quite comfortably teach gliding. I even trained a CFIG candidate once. But you don't want me teaching XC. I've never even flown my gold distance. Having a few instructors like that is not a big deal - XC experience in excess of the silver distance (some would claim any XC experience) is not particularly relevant to presolo training. In the short run, it reduces instructor workload and/or makes instruction more available, thus making recruitment of new members easier. But if such instructors become the majority, a certain attitude begins to permeate the flight training. Soaring opportunities are ignored in training unless they are spectacular (and maybe even then) and the soaring characteristics of the trainers are ignored as well. Maybe it gets the students to solo (and maybe even the private certificate) faster, and safety is not compromised, but they don't learn the skills necessary to stay up in anything less than ideal conditions, and thus lack the skills necessary to advance to XC. They fly circles around the home field for a while and get bored. Some quit, others fly a few hours a year and never progress. This is poor retention, and it means there's no possibility of having a pool of experienced active pilots from which instructors can be drawn. And the vicious circle begins anew. Michael |
#2
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Michael, that's about the best post on recruiting instructors and
instructing I have ever read. BRAVO! Get it published somewhere. Bill Daniels |
#3
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Meanwhille, support your local Commercial Operator. Most have full-time
every-day CFI-Gs and are looking for more training activity in the current economy. |
#4
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#5
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Too much liability for too low a pay. You can get sued years down the road
if somebody with thousands of hours of glider time kills himself and the survivors decide to sue. "Michael" wrote in message om... The advertisement for CFIG's recently posted, and the discussion it spawned, made me realize something. I have yet to see a soaring club that had enough CFIG's. I'm sure they're out there, but I bet they're not the norm. Some have waiting lists to join if you lack a glider rating. Some have given up on doing instruction at all. And some limp along, depending on the good will of the few CFIG's they have to work often, pitch in, and get the job done. Students get to fly once a week if they're lucky. Most clubs know they need more instructors. Some give instructors special perks - reduced or eliminated club dues and/or initiation fees, scheduling priority, maybe even free flight time. A few even actively advertise. Most of the focus is on attracting those who are already CFIG's. In my opinion, that's wrongheaded. Sure, it gets quick results - but it doesn't fix the fundamental problem. You need to plan for the long haul and grow your own instructors. It starts with retention. When I speak of retention, I don't mean someone who pays his club dues, comes out to do club duty, and flies ten hours (or less) a year. I mean someone who is actively soaring, developing skill and experience. Those things are necessary for becoming an instructor. The FAA claims that you can instruct in gliders with 25 total hours and 100 flights as PIC but we all know better. If there isn't a large base of experienced active pilots, then there isn't a pool from which to draw CFIG's. It's really that simple. How many experienced active soaring pilots do you know who got that way flying circles around the home field? Right, none. Unless you want to make glider ownership a prerequisite for becoming an instructor you need to make XC in club ships not just theoretically possible, but common and convenient. Anyway, who wants a CFIG with no XC experience? The next step is instructor development. This is going to sound like sacrilege to some, but the club needs to encourage pilots to let passengers fly - to the extent that the pilot is capable. That happens two ways. First, remove the roadblocks. Don't restrict pilots from flying from the back seat - encourage it. I used to belong to a club that required private pilots to have a special checkout for flying from the back seat - in every make and model, and it had to be renewed every year. It's probably too much to expect a club to trust the pilot's judgment in deciding whether he needs instruction in flying from the back or not (though of course that's the right way) but certainly one back seat checkout is sufficient. If you must have recurrent requirements for flying from the back seat, at least make them ones that don't inconvenience the pilot. For example, requiring the BFR to be flown from the back seat if the pilot wishes to retain back seat flying privileges adds no cost or inconvenience. Remember, neither the FAA nor the insurance company cares which seat the pilot flies from. Second, allow the pilots to work up to instructing. Some will never be comfortable with letting a passenger fly, and that's fine. They're not going to be instructors. But don't allow those people to project their discomfort onto others. This is one of those areas where individual temperament and aptitude counts for far more than total time, and really is not a good place for rulemaking. Some will start by allowing the passenger to fly at altitude immediately after passing the checkride, while others take longer. With time, they'll have him flying on tow. Maybe landing. Eventually even taking off. That necessarily means that sometimes an ugly looking landing will be made, and sometimes the glider will be way out of position on tow. There's a fine line to walk here. Make sure the pilot understands that he can hand off the controls but not the responsibility, but also make sure he understands that when a passenger is flying, he's only responsible for keeping things safe, not necessarily pretty. When you see a private pilot who is routinely out of position on tow, making landings that look like last minute saves, and otherwise flying sloppy, of course this is cause for concern. It's important to understand that if the passenger is the one doing the flying, it's NOT cause for concern. The pilot is exploring the limits of the envelope, figuring out how far he can let the passenger go. Far better he do it now, while he's paying for his own flight and thus feels no pressure to let the passenger fly. When you see someone who clearly enjoys letting passengers fly, keep an eye on him. He's someone who will probably enjoy instructing. As soon as his skills are up to it, you want to encourage him to work on his ratings. A logical first step is the AGI certificate. It costs about $200 to get one (2 computer tests at $80 each, and 2 test prep books at $20 each) and half of that counts towards the CFIG. If you expect that he will be a CFI-G within two years (no reason he shouldn't be) then encourage him to take the CFI-G written at the same time. Same test prep book covers both. An AGI can take a lot of the workload off the CFIG's. He can do the required 1 hour portion of the BFR. He can teach ground school and sign them off for the written, and he can work with them on the areas where they were found deficient and give that signoff as well. He can give the endorsement that covers the assembly and disassembly of a glider. And it gives him a taste of what it's like to teach in a more formal setting, and may encourage him to continue. It may also convince him he doesn't want to do this - and that's good too. You don't want someone teaching who doesn't really want to be teaching. The next necessary step is the commercial. There's really not a lot of difference between the private and commercial checkrides. If he's comfortable letting a passenger fly on tow, he will breeze through it - assuming he can get the necessary instruction. Make sure he gets it. Make sure he understands that it's OK to schedule a 2-seater and an instructor for this, and that his need for instruction is no less important than the need of the presolo student. Some DE's require that the commercial be flown from the back seat. After all, it's hard to give someone a good ride if he has to be folded into the back of the glider. Few DE's will insist on the front seat. Therefore, have him do the commercial from the back seat. If he's letting people fly from the front seat it should be no hardship, and it will make the CFIG ride a cakewalk. Be proactive. It's not out of line to have a club officer (who needs to be a CFIG) responsible for instructor development. It's not unreasonable to ask him who he has in the pipeline. CFIG's are not immortal. Some die, some get too old to fly, and some leave the club. There always need to be new ones coming up. Finally, make sure your potential CFIG understands that the weight of the world does not immediately descend upon his shoulders the day he gets his ticket. The big strength of the club instruction model is this - the new CFIG doesn't have to go it alone. Make sure he understands that there are more senior instructors available to him - to discuss difficulties, to fly with his students, and most importantly to calibrate his judgment. And make sure it's all true. That means making sure that you have a chief instructor who is a mentor to the junior instructors, not someone who spends his time making rules, playing favorites, or being inaccessible. Chief instructor is a leadership position. He need not be the best pilot around, or even the best instructor. Of course he must be experienced and competent, or he won't have the respect of the junior instructors, but he must, above all, be a people person. He must be plesant to work for, but able to accomplish the mission of the organization - training the new crop of pilots and instructors. Remember, this isn't a military organization - if he can't get buy-in from the junior instructors and has to give orders on a regular basis, he is by definition incompetent for the job. Find someone else. The great thing is, you only need one. There's not really a lot a club can do to make instructing attractive. Getting the ratings takes time, money and effort. There's no money in it (any financial incentives a club can come up with will be trivial), no career advancement, it's hard work, and there's both physical risk and legal liability. Those of us who do it always have and always will do it for very intangible reasons - to share the joy of flight with another, and to give something back to the sport that gave so much to us. But there sure is a lot a club can do to make it unattractive, and convince the potential CFIG not to bother with getting his rating - or maybe to get the rating and leave the club to instruct elsewhere. Don't do those things. Don't have the club instructors working more hours/days than the other members who tow, cut grass, stage gliders, or perform other duties. Here's a person who spent his own time and money to help the club - extra work is no way to repay him. More to the point, it's a massive disincentive to potential instructors. The chief instructor must of necessity have some power over the junior instructors, but don't allow that power to be arbitrary or absolute, and be careful who you allow to be chief instructor. I can't say this enough times - you need someone who is respected, diplomatic, and pleasant to work for. It only takes one major blunder by the chief instructor, even with cause, and most of the people who were considering getting their CFIG will put it on hold. Anyone here want to take an unpaid job working for an asshole? I know of one incident where a chief instructor publicly fired a junior CFIG; it was YEARS before anyone in that club got a CFIG rating. In general - you can't do much to ignite a pilot's enthusiasm for becoming an instructor, but you can do a whole lot to kill it. Don't. When you fail to do the above - when you make rules left and right, when you allow an asshole who happens to be a PSM (Powerful Senior Member) to be chief instructor, when you make no effort do develop XC in club ships and no effort to develop instructors, then you never have enough. And then you resort to expedients. The obvious one is to wait for CFIG's to join the club. This isn't much of a plan. On average, you lose more to age, illness, and moves than you gain from moves. If there is more than one operation in the area, you might try to get more than your share by advertising and offering financial incentives - no club dues, free flight time, maybe some pittance paid for instruction. This is not the winning strategy you might think. Most glider instructors are not in a financial situation where such incentives make any real difference. Plan B is to hope high hours power pilots (especially power CFI's) join the club and get their CFIG's. This is also not the winning strategy you might think. Who wants to be taught by someone who has been flying gliders for 3 months? Sure, it's possible - a current and proficient power CFI can join a club, solo in half a dozen flights, get his private at 6 hours, and at exactly 15 hours in gliders can become a CFI-G. What's more, he is probably safe. He can teach aircraft handling - takeoff, tow, maneuvers, and landing. But he can't teach soaring. For a proficient and reasonably experienced fixed wing pilot, getting a CFIG is laughably easy even if he only holds a private ticket in airplanes. I took my initial commercial and CFI in a glider, and the total instruction and practice time including both checkrides came out to significantly less than 10 hours. The writtens and checkrides were a cakewalk. And I can quite comfortably teach gliding. I even trained a CFIG candidate once. But you don't want me teaching XC. I've never even flown my gold distance. Having a few instructors like that is not a big deal - XC experience in excess of the silver distance (some would claim any XC experience) is not particularly relevant to presolo training. In the short run, it reduces instructor workload and/or makes instruction more available, thus making recruitment of new members easier. But if such instructors become the majority, a certain attitude begins to permeate the flight training. Soaring opportunities are ignored in training unless they are spectacular (and maybe even then) and the soaring characteristics of the trainers are ignored as well. Maybe it gets the students to solo (and maybe even the private certificate) faster, and safety is not compromised, but they don't learn the skills necessary to stay up in anything less than ideal conditions, and thus lack the skills necessary to advance to XC. They fly circles around the home field for a while and get bored. Some quit, others fly a few hours a year and never progress. This is poor retention, and it means there's no possibility of having a pool of experienced active pilots from which instructors can be drawn. And the vicious circle begins anew. Michael |
#6
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The FAA cares. Please look at FAR 61.3(d).
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#7
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He should join the club and learn how to
fly from someone that knows how to teach flying and has the proper ratings. Sean Tucker and Wayne Handley might disagree. Neither have "the proper ratings." The insurance companies and the FAA cares not even a whit. Some people can teach. Some cannot. Some can fly safely. Some cannot. A piece of paper changes this little. The astonishing variance in standards enforced by different paid CFIs and DPEs will make this true for the forseeable future. PIC is PIC. Nowhere in the FAR's (by the way, that IS what it says on the front and side of the ASA version) or even in the CFR's ;P is there any restriction on letting passengers touch controls, or speaking to them. There is, however, significant verbiage on what is required for a rating (including training from an FAA papered instructor). Schmucky Hotshot (we won't use his real name since he's my brother with 50 hours telling his pregnant wife on her first flight to try a crosswind landing by herself "just like I showed you" will let Darwin scare him. Delta captain with an ATP multi (Dan knows who he is) but with no instructor ratings will probably avoid Darwin completely. Somewhere in between, common sense and prudence of the PIC will provide safety and maybe even pique the young, energetic mind of a wanna be pilot... As a wizened old (aerobatic) pilot once told me, after watching a pilot push an aircraft into a hangar door (and ensuing discussion about "training" and "written procedures") "my God, do you people need a manual for EVERYTHING? How about some Goddamned common sense!" |
#8
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The FAA cares. Please look at FAR 61.3(d).
Now THAT is an excellent reply. Hope I didn't get Sean and Wayne in trouble ;( |
#9
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"Shoulbe" wrote in message ... The FAA cares. Please look at FAR 61.3(d). Perhaps a DPE like Judy would care to comment, but after reading the above FAR carefully, I don't think it prohibits a rated pilot (non CFI-G) from allowing a non-pilot passenger to manipulate the controls - even to the point of allowing the passenger to land the glider - as long as the rated pilot understands that he alone is the PIC. What it DOES prohibit is an non-instructor from making logbook endorsements or otherwise preparing a student for solo or cross country. Beyond the FAR's is the question of whether this sort of thing is a good idea. As a CFI-G, I often object to non-CFI-G's attempting to impress highly suggestible students with their knowledge which places me in an awkward position if I have to correct an erroneous statement. The better idea is, if you want to instruct, get the rating first, THEN learn to fly with a student at the controls - under the supervision of a senior instructor. When I was handed my first instructor certificate, 30+ years ago, the FAA man spoke one of the great truths of aviation. "Now", he said, "you are really going to learn what flying is all about - from your students." Wow, was he right. Bill Daniels |
#10
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One of my favorite things to do with my commercial students is
to get them to get their ground instructor AGI and IGI at the same time as the commercial. It's some money for all those tests, but it certainly puts them in a great position, and makes the CFI less daunting later. Plus, a really great CFI and AGI team can probably service more students if they cooperate well... If you have good teachers in your club, but they're not sure about the risks of CFI stuff, or the checkride is too much, maybe get them in as an AGI. I noticed a Seattle glider club that pays for the CFI up to $500 for the promise of work later. Perhaps they'd also front $120 for the two tests for the AGI instead (for less eager instructor wannabes)? |
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SoCal CFIGs needed. | Mike Havener | Soaring | 9 | September 29th 03 05:49 PM |