A Question for Catherine

[FlightAttendant]

Hey Catherine,

I was just wondering how long the program has taken you so far and how much longer you think it will be before you're instructing? (not including the time it took you to finish up your private there - at least I think it was you that had to finish their private first). You have said that you don't have much spare time because you are trying to complete the program as soon as possible; how much time each week would you say you spend studying and flying? Basically I'm wondering how fast the professional program can realistically be done.

Thanks!

[meyers9163]

Catherine where are you currently with your training? I have not really looked lately at the Ariben aviator thread but very curious since there was never a response to this one....

[Catherine]

Hmmm...I thought I had responded to this one...sorry to everyone who was looking for an answer, I had about a month while I was finishing instrument and starting timebuilding where I just zoned out and I thought I replied to this one!

I have currently finished with my commercial ratings and lack just the three instructor ratings to finish, however I'm having to wait on some paperwork with the FAA Aeromedical office to go back to flying, then I don't think it should be too long after that, maybe a month to finish?

As for time studying and flying, at that time during instrument probably an average of about 1.7 hours of flying a day for one flight and then I spent probably 2 hours or more flying approaches and practicing instrument maneuvers in Flight Sim (that helped a lot for me, doing full approaches, etc. especially since I have all the cool CH Products stuff and two monitors) and then probably 2 hours or so a day average of studying/reading, plus ground school when we were having that which lasted a few weeks of time during instrument and that was like 3 hours a day or something. I also tried to do several practice tests each day on exams4pilots.org while I was doing other things. I also had some ground with Chris around that and we would go through charts and he would ask me questions, etc. to help me prepare for the oral part of the checkride. Those days would easily add up to about 12+ hours a day on flying and studying and being at the airport preparing and debriefing from each flight.

Your schedule will change some depending on the rating you're working on, how fast you're getting done, and how fast you're absorbing the material you're studying as well. Some things you have to read ten times to get and some things you glance at and you already know it. I think the PPL and the Instrument are probably the two hardest in terms of the amount of new material introduced, however the MEI has probably the largest amount of information you should remember and having some new material and presenting it as a teacher rather than from rote memory makes it a big challenge as well.

Had I not been gone for 5 weeks and waiting for Aeromedical to get this updated information from my doctors, I'd have finished the program already. I think 7-9 months is a good and realistic timeframe to look at with it, excluding the PPL, more toward the 9 as you deal with weather and stupid things like my getting about 100 noseeum bites in 10 minutes one night and not being able to even sleep for two weeks, let alone fly!

[meyers9163]

Looks good Catherine! Keep up the work and best of luck with the Instructor Tickets.......