My Experience with the Cali-boys
At last, I am almost a flight instructor. It took me way more studying, time, knowledge and focus then I could have imagined in the beginning. Don’t underestimate the amount of work, studying, motivation and discipline you have to have to get this done. To make the transition from learning to the actual checkride smoother my school got in touch with California’s very own CFI Bootcamp. It’s 7 days of lectures followed by 7 days of flying to get you ready for one of the hardest checkrides in aviation. This is my experience with their program.
“Can you believe they came all the way from California?” one of my classmates said before we entered the class at 10AM. I actually didn’t even know that, I was very much occupied with what happened the day before I started this class, read all about that here. But, California, that’s quite far! I wonder how the flying is over there, I would love to fly around there too. When we were all settled in the classroom Mike, who gives the lectures, took us through what we can expect for the coming days. It’s quite a lot so I was happy that I studied up with one of my friends the weeks before and knocked out my writtens too. If you want to go through their training smoothly you must study up with their 40-hour online ground course, or by yourself. And that you have your writtens out of the way, too. Then you can put all your focus on the task at hand; getting ready for your CFI checkride.
“You can clearly see that Mike has a lot of experience with teaching and explaining things”.
The 7 day lectures were organized properly and in a logical flow. It was quite clear what was expected of me and what the goal was. However, sitting in class for 7 days straight is exhausting! But I learned a lot. These lectures were not only very informative and I felt like I understood something new everyday, they were fun too. You can clearly see that Mike has a lot of experience with teaching and explaining things, which makes him a very effective and efficient teacher. Just the way I like to learn and apply things too. Read more about effectiveness and efficiency, which is really important to me, here.
A very tired version of myself with Doug & Arnold after I finished the bootcamp
Besides the fact that I was learning I never laughed so much during my flight training. Mike is very funny and doesn’t hesitate to tell a story where everybody in class cracks up. Me and my classmates still talk about some of his stories. However, when there is work to be done it’s all serious business in class. Which is great too.
When we got to the flying portion of the program, Mike’s two colleagues; Doug & Arnold, took over the reigns. And boy, these guys can fly. Not only did I learn a lot during the flying portion I felt like I became a better, more confident pilot, too. The difference between training with these guys and some other program is that training CFI’s is their thing, it’s their job, it’s what they do for a living. Which makes them very knowledgeable, efficient instructors. Through our school they also arranged an extra plane for us to use, just for the CFI Bootcamp students. This way we flew a lot of hours. The training is very structured, compact and clear. The transition from left seat to right seat went quite smooth for me, I expected it to be more difficult. I actually feel like I can fly better from the right seat then from the left seat now.
All in all I wholeheartedly recommend doing your CFI training with these guys. They know what they’re doing, and how to get you to your goal. Of course they’re not going to pull you through the training. You’ll have to do the work and be prepared. However, the road that they laid out is easy to follow. I feel like they gave me a great foundation for my CFI checkride, it’s all on me now but i’m confident going into this thing in the coming weeks.
Thanks Mike, Doug, Arnold & Skeeter!
GRQ
