80% of CFI Training Completed

My CFI training is coming together and am getting closer to setting a date for the check ride. There are a few new things still to cover and some refinement required for some of the manuevers, but completion is on the horizon. Chandelles and lazy eights are taking a little longer to master than I'd like but they'll eventually be standards.

This week consisted of two training flights and a ground brief. New for these flights was learning to demonstrate accelerated maneuver stalls, secondary stalls, trim tab stalls, and crossed-control stalls. Getting exeperience in these types of stalls exposes the CFI to more forms of inadvertant flight situations that a student can put you in. The interesting thing is that when demonstrating these stalls (or any stall) is that you can put yourself and the airplane in an inadvertant situation. This was just the case when I did my first trim tab stall, and as the airplane approached the stall, there was a little bit of yaw present and with a high pitch attitude, the airplane flipped over and entered the first stage of a spin.

I found myself pointing straight down and starting to rotate. It was interesting how my previous training helped me instinctively recognize the spin and recover (though a little shocked). So the take away is to make sure that you stall gracefully when demonstrating stalls.

For the ground brief this week, we went over log book endorsements and started looking at airworthiness requirements.