The update long waited for...

Dear blog-followers, I kept many of you waiting again for too long. However, I have quite some news to tell you and after all that's just the rewarding part for your patience I guess! It all started back in February when I applied for a vacancy as a Candidate Flight Instructor for CAE Oxford Academy... and got hired! Since I graduated from a FTO with comparable but still different SOP's, I was trained according their standard operating practices. Just as like a drivers instructor, a flight instructor - and certainly one in the first flight familiarization programme - is used to getting people next to him with very little flight experience.
During training I discovered that - just as it happens to be when driving a car - one gets easily used to the "art" of flying: an engine power setting is no longer nervously looked after but just heard (and finetuned), it doesn't almost require any effort to trim for straight and level and just sit back and relax, ATC is like your second mother tongue, etc. However, a good flight instructor should be aware of the mistakes made in the earliest stages of a professional pilot's career. And that's what I was trained for during the 160+ hours of both practical & theoretical training I received from pro's. If I tell you "30hrs of VFR-training" and combine that statement with "Belgian meteo"... you will immediately make the link to "far more than average time required to finish such training". Flight cancellations and marginal weather than smooth weather & good outside references for like 60% of the year? Affirm thát! Although, that's what I have had for the last 8 months. However, it has been worth the patience. Only a few weeks after obtaining my EASA Flight Instructor Licence, I found myself aboard a triple-7 inbound Phoenix, AZ. It might not be my final destination but for at least the next 2 years, I am looking forward to train young and motivated guys and girls towards high level & quality standards they will need in their future careers as airline pilots. I still remember myself, staring at the wall maps & floor globe during geography classes... dreaming about how it would be to fly over vast & remote areas, how I admired those captains out there that started their career teaching pilots in the USA... and look where that all ends up for me so many years later. But before I forget: first things first. I am currently in my small office somewhere in what used to be the Arizona Desert about 100 years ago, studying hard to obtain all FAA ratings needed to be able to instruct over American territory. Next step will be obtaining my CPL & IR ratings, both preceded by a few theoretical tests as well as some local & crosscountry dual & solo flying.
Sure there will be some stuff ahead to share with you guys on this blog! And it won't take that long no more... so keep an eye on it! ;-)