Hi Smithgd, I am friendly (most of the time) and just had a look at my licence. It says CRI ME and it is separate from the FI.
FI's can train people towards a license, while CRI's train people who already have a license towards an endorsement on their license. Thus, there is no such thing as an ME FI (I'm nitpicking a little bit, I know
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I know of several people who are not FI's but CRI ME (or IRI), so it is two different things really. Of course, the most normal thing is to progress from being an FI to IRI to CRI ME and so forth..
As for those valuable 30 hrs of MEP, it can be a struggle. I did quite a few years of single engine instructing before doing some aerial work in a twin for a summer and ended up with about 100 h MEP PIC.
Blue skies!