Darren Smith, Flight Instructor, CFI Homepage


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Welcome to the largest freely available Flight Instructor website devoted to all levels of pilot certification. If you're a beginner, learning to fly is one of the most challenging but rewarding experiences you can ever have. Less than 1% of the US population has ever earned a private certificate. The list of active pilots (current medical) brings that to less than a tenth of one percent of the US population. Even fewer are helicopter pilots. Your choice puts you in the most exclusive club in the world. Want a career? Read why It's a good time to become a pilot.

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Flight training is a very intense and personal experience. With good instruction, you can easily achieve your dream. Your flight training begins with a Certificated Flight Instructor (CFI). This person is vital resource to you as you achieve your goal. Start your information search in the Articles section and Private Pilot and Learn to Fly resource page.

The goal of this web site is three-fold: 1) to help people get information about becoming pilots, 2) help current pilots get information on additional certificates and ratings, and 3) provide helpful aviation links and resources (reading library). Over the next year, you'll see a variety of new exciting changes... I'm looking for another million hits!

Thank you for visiting my website. It literally costs thousands of dollars a year to keep this free resource online. I fund the website from donations, the stuff I sell in the pilot store (take a look) and the advertising links to the right. How you can support this website. My site receives an enormous amount of traffic, and I'm handling about 160 requests for information weekly (all as a public service). I constantly add content depending on requests & questions I receive, search terms used to find this website, and student experiences. Content is updated & added weekly, so check this website often. I'd love to hear your thoughts to make it better.

Geocities
On October 26, 2009, Geocities shut down all services and transferred paying websites like mine to Yahoo webhosting. I received a great many emails about whether my website was a goner. Yahoo continued all paying websites while the transfers were taking place. So as you can see, we're alive and well at cfidarren.com instead of geocities.com/cfidarren
For more information, read Casualties of Geocities

Poll:	What's the most common thing you've heard from a CFI? (Come on, I need more space to write than this!)

Training Services

I work exclusively with aircraft owners for training:

1. Airplane:

Accelerated 7- and 10-day Instrument Rating Training
IFR Adventure Instrument Rating Finish Up Training

    2. Helicopter: Private - Commercial - Accelerated Instrument
    3. Insurance Checkouts: (see Bio for aircraft quals)
    4. Recurrent Training: ...more info
    5. Ground Schools: ...more info

Need advanced flight instruction? Email me! I am available on
an extremely limited schedule due to professional flying responsibilities.

Request for Comments
I am looking for your thoughts and ideas on these articles. Please take time to read and post a comment: The Instructor Knows All | Professionalism | Losing the Edge | Barriers to Pilot Monitoring | Becoming a Captain | What are you doing over there?

Best Bets - Most Popular

Instrument Pilots:
    Are you really ready for the checkride?
    Are you really ready for an IFR Rating?
    Visi-Hold - Know Instantly - IFR holding
Helicopter Pilots:
Fatal Helicopter Accidents Factors
    Precautionary Landing
Safety Articles:
    Personal Minimums Checklist (download)
    Flying Discipline
    Making Safe Choices
    Intro to Flight Profiles | Profiles Improve Safety
New Website Features
    Guestbook | Online Store
    FAA Publications - Download Area
Decoder
    Braking Action | Weather Contractions
    Abbreviations list | NOTAMs Contractions

See the reading library for more ideas.

What's New...

11/15/2009 Professionalism - more than commentary on recent events
11/01/2009 Casualties of Geocities
10/15/2009 Bad Habits
10/01/2009 Braking Action
08/31/2009 Proposed FAR Changes - No More Complex?
08/01/2009 Fundamentals of a Safe Approach
07/01/2009 How to Use a VFR Plotter
06/14/2009 Drug Test False Positives
06/07/2009 Trouble Medications
06/01/2009 Pilot's Drug Test
05/19/2009 Sterile Cockpit
05/10/2009 Flight Operations Threat Analysis (FOTA)
05/01/2009 Weather Radar: Clear Mode vs Precipitation Mode
04/15/2009 Flight Computers on the Checkride
04/01/2009 GPS on the Checkride
03/18/2009 Runway Incursions Solutions
03/01/2009 Updated: What You Need to Know About Night
02/09/2009 Criticism of Memory Item Checklists
01/31/2009 Human Factors Inhibiting Learning
01/21/2009 Memory (Recall) Item Checklists
01/10/2009 Teaching Adults
01/01/2009 In St Louis, Interested in Helicopters?


What's New... 2008 12/15/2008 Runway Incursions Tipsheet - revised 11/30/2008 Barriers to Pilot Monitoring 11/15/2008 TEM Countermeasures 11/01/2008 Introduction to Threat & Error Management 10/15/2008 Owner Aircraft - funny stories about working with owners 10/01/2008 The Fifth Element 09/16/2008 Updated: NOTAM Contractions 09/01/2008 The Instructor Knows All - or does he? 08/15/2008 Guest Column: The Human Factor	08/01/2008 Guest Column: Stalls, Spins, Upset Recovery 07/24/2008 FAA Medical Duration Rules Change 07/01/2008 Mysteries of the METAR 06/11/2008 How to Perform a Non Precision Approach (CANPA) 05/27/2008 Non-Precision CFIT (CANPA) 05/04/2008 Red Rules 04/11/2008 Learning Modality - how do you learn? 03/15/2008 Buying an Airplane? 02/22/2008 Losing the Edge 02/04/2008 More Proof Its a Small World 01/21/2008 Money Management for First Officers

See Website History for older updates going back to 2003

"Courage is the price that life extracts for granting peace. The soul that knows it not knows no release from little things ~ Knows not the livid loneliness of fear, or mountain heights, Where bitter joy can hear the sound of wings."

- Amelia Earhart (1897-1937)

All content is Copyright 2002-2010 by Darren Smith. All rights reserved. Subject to change without notice. This website is not a substitute for competent flight instruction. There are no representations or warranties of any kind made pertaining to this service/information and any warranty, express or implied, is excluded and disclaimed including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose. Under no circumstances or theories of liability, including without limitation the negligence of any party, contract, warranty or strict liability in tort, shall the website creator/author or any of its affiliated or related organizations be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages as a result of the use of, or the inability to use, any information provided through this service even if advised of the possibility of such damages. For more information about this website, including the privacy policy, see about this website.

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