Ground portion of BFR finished

Every 24 months pilots have to take a BFR: Biennial Flight Review.

This can be substituted for with a variety of other check-ups (such as passing an FAA practical test or participating in the Wings program) but for many of us general aviation pilots the BFR comes every other year.

During the BFR an instructor gives you (at least) one hour of ground instruction and (at least) one hour of flight instruction. Used to be that there was no set time minimum for the test. That opened up the market for mail-in BFRs, where you never even had to see the instructor - just send him your logbook and a check and get your logbook returned with the BFR signed off. I think all that was before I was born though - certainly before I got my private ticket.

The point of a BFR is not to test you, but to give you, the pilot who may have not flown with an instructor at all for the last 2 years, a chance to learn any new regulations and ask questions about the stuff you're rusty on. The flight time is to make sure you're not dangerous in the air - I'd imagine that as long as you don't scare the instructor during the flight you'd do just fine.

My hope today was to work with K's instructor, Chuck, to get my BFR finished. The plan for the flight was to let me fly from the right seat and learn some new commercial maneuvers such as Lazy-8's and Chandelles. I want to fly from the right for two reasons - the first is that I want to allow K or others to sit in the left seat when we take trips yet retain the ability to actually land the airplane if I needed to, the second is to get a taste of what a flight instructor sees. I may get my CFI rating in the future so this will be a tiny view into that.

However, we had low clouds today (600 feet AGL) so Chuck and I only ended up finishing the ground part. We went over runway incursions, reading the sectional, IFR currency issues, and a few other items.

So I'm half done, with the fun part still ahead (maybe Friday)! And K might even ride along in the back seat for the flight portion.

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