Scudrunners

Folks, I'm toying with the idea of instructing as a second career on a part-time basis. We've lost a few Class Fours at our local FTU given the Great Canadian Pilot Shortage of 2017. At 57 (assuming no issues with Class 1 medicals) I'm thinking it might be a fun thing to do but I wanted to get some viewpoints from the grizzled vets on here. I'm not especially interested in IFR instruction (since I have less than zero real-life experience in it) but there must be other specialties that are in demand. I'm not sure how useful to an FTU you're going to be doing it on a part-time basis but I thought I'd put it out there for comment anyway.

Do it.

It will be an incredible amount of work for you,
but it is possible if you work hard enough at it.

I taught a unicorn a while back.  Retired from AC,
had a Bonanza that he flies all over North America
solo in cloud with no autopilot.  Fucking awesome.
The old breed.

Unicorn wants an instructor rating.  He's 70.  He
works very hard.  After a while, he tells me he
used to have a class 2, expired 1972.  Holy shit,
here I thought we were doing a class 4.

See, instructor ratings never totally go away.
The CARs require a written test and a flight test
after a couple years, but that's all.  We are
renewing a [b]43-year expired[/b] class 2.

Now, his instructor rating is gone from his ATPL.
I had to repeatedly threaten TC with going to
the Minister, but they dug out some paper
from a dusty old warehouse and put a class 2
instructor rating, expired 1972, on his ATPL.

TC fucking hates me because I did stuff like
that - made them comply with the CARs,
which is what they like doing to pilots.  Sauce
for the goose is [b]NOT [/b]sauce for the gander.

Anyways.  Written test, flight test and he's
a CFI.  Students at his school are so fucking
lucky.  Unicorn.  Spent a lifetime in the air,
and is passing it on.

Go for it, I think there will be a shortage in that world to. Why instruct when Jazz will take you with 250 hours..... just saying

[quote]Go for it, I think there will be a shortage in that world to. Why instruct when Jazz will take you with 250 hours..... just saying[/quote]

thanks for the encouragement. But I think you missed the 57 years old part concerning Jazz ;-)

That's what I'm doing and am still getting a kick out of doing so, seven years after stopping flying The Line.

Go for it.
If you want to spend a few months in Ottawa I know a guy who recently renewed his class one and would be more than happy to do your rating ( because they took away my King Air and gave me a cubicle)

[quote]That's what I'm doing and am still getting a kick out of doing so, seven years after stopping flying The Line.[/quote]

[quote]Go for it.
If you want to spend a few months in Ottawa I know a guy who recently renewed his class one and would be more than happy to do your rating ( because they took away my King Air and gave me a cubicle)[/quote]

[quote]
Do it. It will be an incredible amount of work for you,
but it is possible if you work hard enough at it.[/quote]

Good to know that experienced folks are deciding to instruct. I'm working on the CPL now and as the Colonel noted, it's a lot of work if you have a day job. (although it's the 80 plus hour ground school that's a lot to get through not the flight training ;-)

[quote]80 plus hour ground school (for CPL)[/quote]

Note that for the purposes of the ground school hours,
time spent studying the material on your own at home
counts.  I always told my students to log it.

At least it did when I was signing off the PTR's and
licences.

At the risk of the real world intruding on the educational
institution, your mastery of the material is more
important than the details of the process used to
absorb it.