CFI Bootcamp is Going to New Jersey to Train CFIs and CFIIs in June!

Beginning in June, CFI Bootcamp will teach a CFI and CFII class for Mercer County Community College students at Infinity Aviation Group in Trenton, NJ. In addition to the classes, the students will fly with CFI Bootcamps flight instructors and complete CFI and CFII flight training.  This accelerated program will create the CFIs the college needs to keep its large volume of students going.

Mike will be teaching both the Initial CFI and CFII classes.  Jonathan will be flying with most of the students, and Vincent, a new addition to the crew, will do three days and any cleanup work after the departure date.  Vincent lives in Brooklyn, so he can get over to Trenton easier and faster than we can.

We’re excited about the opportunity to provide a great experience and thorough training for the students. It will be a long day, from 7 am to 6:30 pm every day. Class starts in the morning, and flights start at 12:30 pm. Whew, we will be tired after both the CFI and CFII training.

If you are in the area and want to come by to say hello, email me at mike@cfibootcamp.com.

Teaching risk management - Using ForeFlight profile view

If you have a ForeFlight subscription at the Pro or higher level, you have something that makes teaching risk management a lot more interesting, visual, and compelling.  It can also be done more quickly.  What is the feature?  It’s the Profile View feature in the FPL flight planning part ForeFlight.  Tap on Maps at the bottom of ForeFlight on iPad.  Next, tap on the area with the instructions to put in a flight plan here.  Add your waypoints, airports, and so on. Now for the good stuff.  Make sure you have an altitude selected, and you have an airplane profile.  A button labeled PROFILE is on the bottom right of the FPL window.  Click that, and now you can see a cross-section of your flight, complete with airspace and terrain.  On the bottom left of the profile view, you have layers that you can switch on and off.  If you have the Pro subscription, you won’t have all the features, but you’ll still have airspace.  If you have the performance plus subscription, you also have Icing, Turbulence, and Clouds.  These will appear on the profile view at the altitudes pulled from the weather reports and forecasts.   Wow.  This makes briefing a flight and hazardous weather a lot more interactive.  You can also Zoom the profile view to see more data.  If you press and hold your finger on the profile view and move left or right, additional data about the waypoints and your position on the main map will also be shown.

Another great feature of the performance plus subscription is the 3D view.  You can choose any airport or waypoint and tap 3D view.  You’ll see what the airport or waypoint terrain, runway layout, and more look like from 360 degrees around it.

When we teach risk management at CFI Bootcamp, we use Hazard Advisor (located in the Maps view, then in the layers button, you’ll find Hazard Advisor).  This turns the map yellow if your route is within 1000 feet of terrain and red if within 100 feet.  You can also set the corridor width.

Of all the features our classes like the most, it's the ability to fly the flight plan in 3D view.  To do this, ensure you have a fight plan in the Maps view by pressing the FPL button and setting one up.  After that, press the icon that is a round circle that looks like the earth.  After that, you can select 1X to 20X speed in various increments.  ForeFlight will fly the route with an outside chase plane view that, by the way, you can change.  It’s so good to see the entire route and teach route selection and what that looks like.

If you don’t have the Performance Plus subscription, I’d recommend getting it.  By the way, if you join SAFE or NAFI, you get ⅓ off your subscription.

CFI Bootcamp removes using the E6B from its training curricula  - and why you should too.

Mike has been on a mission to call the E6B what it is. Obsolete. What continues to be a right of passage in aviation robs instructors and students of the real-world training of using electronic navigation tools. It teaches a tired, boring, and unnecessary tool that all other technical schools threw out years ago. The slide rule is gone from required equipment in all colleges, as should the E6B. The time needed to learn and become proficient using this device could be poured into learning ForeFlight and the SOPs necessary to ensure everything will work correctly. Insisting on using this antique simply robs if of those hours more wisely spent on how we fly now.

One of the big arguments from those insisting on teaching the E6B is that the students would not understand navigation and would be left with just following the pink line or, worse yet, unable to navigate at all if their iPad failed.

So, to ensure people know the principles of navigation and how to implement various forms of navigation, CFI Bootcamp redesigned the cross-country flight planning part of their CFI 7-day class. The new material includes a complete course in the principles of navigation using the triangle of velocities as the conceptual component. This teaches the effect of wind on the desired course and shows the relationships between course, wind, and ground speed. It also shows wind drift and the wind correction angle. So, the student understands at a very good level all the elements of getting an airplane to fly a desired course with or without wind. In addition, the course goes over map projections, great circle vs. rhumb lines, variation, deviation, and more.

CFI Bootcamps mantra throughout the CFI 7-day class is “Teach to the problem and not the tools.”  The goal is to navigate. The tools will become apparent as the student attempts to solve the problem.

We found that the time was coming quickly when DPEs and the instructors that insisted on using the E6B were not the majority anymore, so we pulled the plug on teaching using the E6B.  It now gives us time to show the students how to use the iPad and backup systems properly and to teach a higher level of risk management using ForeFlight’s many tools.

Click to Learn More.

This month's PRO TIPS

1. As an instructor, you must recognize when your student is task saturated.  Although this is mentioned in the Aviation Instructor’s Handbook, it isn’t clear how to do this.  When task saturated, the student is predominantly in the Psychomotor, doing, domain of learning and doesn’t have the attention to listen to your instructions.  It can also be that the student is in the affective domain of learning if they are overly anxious or fearful of the maneuver they are doing.  If you detect task saturation in either of those two learning domains, you need to say, “I have control.” Then, after the student is no longer performing the maneuver, explain what they need to do or put them at ease.

2. It’s easy for the airplane to creep forward when doing a run-up or in the run-up area at night.  This is usually because the pilot uses the checklist as a “Do List” rather than a checklist.  Don’t read an item on the checklist, then do it, do the next item, and so on.  You can have your head down in the checklist for an extended period, and the airplane can creep forward.  Also, you’ll lose situational awareness of what is happening around you. Instead, use a mnemonic or flow and do everything first using that. Then, use the checklist to verify that you did everything.

3. When using an EFB, don’t rely on the iPads internal battery. Instead, get a battery pack that can exceed your flight hours for that day. Relying on the internal battery or an external power outlet in the airplane might leave you with a dead battery on the iPad.  Also, fly with your phone that has the EFB installed and up to date. Finally, never fly with a single EFB device.