CFI Notebook
CFI Notebook
The Certified Flight Instructor (CFI) Notebook provides "Higher" education, bridging the gap between flight training and the airplane, enhancing your aeronautical experience with articles, multimedia, lessons, and references.
Get into it by reading our notebook articles or following along with our lesson plans.
Review the CFI Notebook
The CFI Notebook is an instructor's guide to navigating the sea of resources to provide helpful guidance for their students and themselves. Our notebook aims to enhance pilots' aeronautical knowledge by explaining various topics and referencing their sources to enable further learning.
Instructors recall this knowledge when building lesson plans. More important than knowledge is connecting the topics so that the student can appreciate the "why" behind the facts.
CFI Lesson Plans
Trivia of the Day
Trivia rolls over daily at midnight, Mountain Standard Time.
Private Pilot Question of the Day
How should a pilot use current NOTAMs to identify taxi-route and surface limitations?
Review current NOTAMs for closures, construction, lighting outages, and other airport-surface limitations, and reconcile them with the current airport diagram and Chart Supplement before taxi.
Commercial Pilot Question of the Day
What should a pilot consider when selecting a VFR route rather than simply choosing the shortest distance?
Compare weather, terrain and obstructions, airspace requirements, navigation options, aircraft performance, fuel and endurance, and diversion or emergency landing options with pilot capability and personal minimums.
Instrument Rating Question of the Day
What information does a heading indicator display?
A heading indicator displays the aircraft's heading on a compass card. A conventional unslaved heading indicator must be periodically realigned with the magnetic compass because gyroscopic precession causes it to drift.
Sport Pilot Question of the Day
How are the primary flight controls actuated in a mechanically controlled conventional training airplane?
Movement of the yoke or control stick and rudder pedals is transmitted to the control surfaces through the installed cables, pulleys, pushrods, bellcranks, or related mechanical linkages.
Flight Instructor Question of the Day
In a mechanically controlled airplane, what transmits the pilot's control inputs to the primary flight-control surfaces?
The installed mechanical linkage, which may include cables, pulleys, pushrods, bellcranks, or related components.
Flight Instructor Instrument Question of the Day
Question unavailable.
Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Question of the Day
Regarding prohibited airspace, does “TO” an altitude mean “to and including” or “to and not including”?
“TO” an altitude means to and including.
Advice of the Day
Maintain a consistent flight training schedule. Long breaks in any kind of training, but especially aviation, will cause a dramatic loss of progress.
System of the Day
Cabin Heating and Cooling Systems: Cabin Heating and cooling systems provide conditioned air for comfortable operations during various weather conditions
Maneuver of the Day
Approach And Landing: Approach and landing procedures enable an aircraft's transition from the en route to the terminal phase of flight.
Emergency of the Day
Engine Failure: The total loss of power requires immediate actions which depend upon speed (life) and altitude (life insurance)
Mishap of the Day
ERA14LA450: The NTSB determines the probable cause(s) of this accident to be: The pilot's inadequate preflight planning, which resulted in a takeoff with the airplane's center of gravity aft of its limit and led the airplane to exceed its critical angle of attack and experience an aerodynamic stall during the initial climb.
