Congratulations to my student Chan, who last week passed his PPL flight test. The examiner told me afterwards it was one of the best test scores he’s ever seen, which is quite a complement to Chan’s flying. Chan needs a little more instrument flight experience and to pass his PPAER written exam – then I… Read more »
Today was a happy day for my student Matt who successfully completed his first solo flight today. The weather has been quite poor for the last while, and we hadn’t flown for three weeks – which can be quite a long break for some students. But Matt quickly blew off the dust from the standard… Read more »
In this post I want to talk about the aircraft electrical system, and some basic knowledge that a pilot should have about it. A student pilot entrusted with responsibility for a single engine piston-powered training aircraft such as the Grob should know it has two sources of electrical power: the alternator, which is driven by… Read more »
Airplane pilots might not think to look towards rotary wing training documents (goodness knows there’s enough reading material about airplanes to last a lifetime) but recently I have been perusing Transport Canada’s Helicopter Flight Training Manual, TP 9982E. Some of the content fits into the interesting general knowledge about aviation category, but some is very… Read more »
Commonly in flying a small plane (and in training to do so) it’s helpful to be able to to make approximate calculations of various factors in flight. These usually crop up during navigation exercises, particularly the ad-hoc diversion exercise which has to be planned and executed fairly rapidly from the pilot seat while handling the… Read more »
Last Saturday afternoon was one of the first really great weather days of the year and I was out (on the ground) near Uxbridge. Late afternoon saw the moon in the sky and a Cessna or two practicing low flying exercises nearby. I thought, wouldn’t it be great to get a photograph of that airplane… Read more »
Big congrats to my student Aykhan who did his first solo yesterday. We flew a handful of dual circuits first, and a simulated forced approach – then I got out and he took FLYO around the circuit once. Watching from the ground it all looked great. Aykhan mentioned to me that he noticed the airspeed… Read more »
We’ve had a lot of windy days this last week at CYTZ. A big low pressure system (one of the last of the winter, I hope) to the north east has been pushing strong northerly winds over Toronto, and when the wind comes over the downtown core it creates a lot of turbulence and gusts around the east-west runway at the Island.
Why does primary flight training sometimes take longer than it should? In this post I identify three traps that students fall into, each one of which sucks time and energy out of the training process, making progress take longer and cost more than it should. And these are three things under the control of you, the student, so the good news is they are all in your hands to avoid, or fix.
HAPPY NEW YEAR everybody. As we get back to flying this week (slowly, due to winter weather, as you might expect) I’m introducing some new ideas into my flight training. Specifically, I’m offering three new training guarantees for all my students this year.