I too paid for american flyers over a decade ago and I use it when I have to renew when I am at staff and not currently flying (no current check ride). But my question is since I am a current IP, can I renew now at the 1 year point so that I can push the 6 hours of CBT 2 years out versus doing it a year from now. I am not in my 3 month renew window until next spring.

Regarding pulling up FAA regs and using them to guide an FAA examiners decisions--this never worked very well in my few cases. Some just seem to interpret things differently and/or are ex military or know the military system and are able to make it work.

For my case above, one examiner expected me to buy civilian time in a learjet (thousands of dollars) and do a civilian ATP checkride, another wanted me to just get V1 cuts done in a civilian sim (500 dollars), another said it couldn't be done, and I finally flew 800 miles to a FSDO that gave me the checkride himself and military comped me for everything based on air force sims/checkrides and FAA testing. I used the same reg references for all four of these and couldn't get another to see it the way another saw it.