The CFII

So it took me way too long to obtain the CFII. I should have scheduled it for the weekend following my CFI, but I wasn't confident enough and then life got in the way. After a housing disaster that ended up in me gutting our home and my very pregnant wife at the time living in a hotel for three months followed by the birth of our twins and subsequent loss of my son. I had little time for obtaining my double I.

I have a group of friends that are all engineers and are interested in flying. So to prepare my self for the CFII exam and educate my friends we started an informal discussion series where each week I would spend around one hour to present a topic related to instrument flying followed by a one to two hour discussion. This was a huge boon to me and a buddy who is preparing to start working towards his instrument rating. For those out there who say "Wait a minute you can't teach that stuff your not Instrument Instructor rated!" I say that I was presenting facts not opinions and we discussed them as academics. I wasn't exercising the privileges of the CFII. This experience was invaluable to studying as my friends would often ask intelligent questions that I was unable to answer immediately and needed to research.

All that to say I passed my CFII exam this week.

My examiner did teach me something I did not know about procedure turns. In a "normal" approach such as the VOR-A at K62 (http://airnav.com/airport/K62) if and only if the approach depiction shows a procedure turn barb, any course reversal is allowable on the protected side of the approach, so one could use a teardrop, hold-in-lieu-of, standard procedure turn, or do figure eights. All are legal as long as the pilot stays on the protected side of the approach and within the the approach limits ( i.e. altitudes, and distances). If the approach depicts a specific procedure turn then that exact type must be used.