- Learning to Fly
- Starting Your Lessons
- Ground School
- Getting to Solo
- After Your Solo
- Knowledge Test
- Cross-Country Flying
- Night Flying
- Preparing for the Checkride
- Now You’re a Private Pilot
Learning To Fly
Starting Your Lessons
- Buying your own Headset
- Flying Your Kitchen Table - cockpit procedure trainers for the rest of us.
- Radio Communications Scripts and Reference Material
- Obtaining a Weather Briefing - an FAA Safety Briefing – also an interactive version.
- Internet Weather Briefing Sites
- Taxi Diagram for RDU - from AOPA
- Ten Things Your Flight Instructor Wishes You Knew.
Sign up for a free 6 month subscription and free trial AOPA training membership at AOPA Flight Training Magazine. If your instructor is an AOPA member, get them to sign you up at the Instructor’s AOPA Flight Training Magazine. You’ll get the same benefits, plus your instructor will get something out of it as well (and perhaps they’ll share).
Student pilots who have a mentor are far more likely to finish their training (so the statistics say). Use the AOPA Project Pilot page to search for a mentor in your area. Mentors can be either local or they can be remote via e-mail.
Ground School
Your flight instructor is going to be focused on teaching you how to fly. They’ll certainly cover ground school topics, but only in enough detail to get you through the next lesson, and even then most flight instructors will have expected you to have read some information about the topic before your flight lesson. There are really 3 alternatives for Ground School.
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A formal class. Local community colleges often offer Private Pilot classes and the Wings of Carolina Flying Club also offers a classroom based Ground School.
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Self study – get the books, teach yourself and ask your flight instructor specific questions.
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Schedule Ground School sessions with your flight instructor. You’ll need to schedule these sessions, your flight instructor will probably assume you’re either taking a formal class or doing self-study.
Getting to Solo
- Medical examiners - getting your Medical and Student Pilot certificate
- Operations at Tower Controlled Airports - from AOPA
- Operations a Non-Towered Airports - from AOPA
- Using Air Traffic Control Services - reading references
- Emergency Procedures - the ABCDE approach.
- Aircraft Lights and How to Use Them
- Radio Management
- Stable Approaches
- Standard Callouts
- Logging your flight and training time
- Takeoff and Landing (WORD) – notes from a seminar
- Cross-wind calculator - a handy graphic.
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Medical examiners - check the FAA’s listings.
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VFR Quiz - test your knowledge
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Student pilot landing errors - from AVWeb – always, always, fly the plane even when the wheels are on the ground!
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Transitioning to the Pattern - from AVWeb
After Your Solo
- Non-owned aircraft insurance - or “renters insurance”, know what coverage you need.
- Guidance for the Post-solo Student
- Private Pilot Practical Test Standards Reference Material
- Personal Minimums
- Judgement
Knowledge Test
Practicing for the Knowledge Test? Here are some sites that can help you practice:
- Webexams.com
- Test Prep
- All the questions - straight from the FAA
Thanks to Robert Gregory flying at Southern Jet for this additional list of sites:
- Kip’s Written Test Prep http://www.exams4pilots.org
- MyWrittenExam.com http://www.mywrittenexam.com/mwe/
- Sporty’s FAA Test http://www.sportys.com/faatest/
- WebExams.com http://www.webexams.com/
- More Practice Test Links here: http://www.ilsapproach.com/practicetests.shtml
Not free, but several titles from GLEIM are available for the Palm device. Make those meetings more productive!
Cross-Country Flying
Night Flying
To Be Provided
Preparing for the Checkride
- Preparing for the Private Pilot Checkride
- FAA’s 8710 form - check the document Preparing for the Check Ride for tips on how to use this PDF document.
- AOPA’s Online 8710 - use this if you’re a member of AOPA.
- The Aeronautical Experience Checklist for Private Pilot
Now You’re a Private Pilot
To Be Provided.