_My last flight was last Friday, but I never wrote anything about it. So here it is

 The flight picked up where I left my training the lesson before. I started the flight talking off with a simulated short field. This means that I lined up on the runway centerline with as much runway left as possible. With 25 degrees of flaps set, I applied full power while pressing the brakes at the same time. Before I let the brakes go, I made sure the instruments were in the green. One I released the foot brakes, the plane shot forward and accelerated to rotation speed in seconds. Since the field was “short,” rotation speed was 5 knots slower than normal. At 55 knots, I pitched the p[lane up and climbed away from the field. Unfortunately, I forgot that on a short field takeoff, you need to climb out at 55 knots instead of the normal 63. This allows the plane to clear any obstacle if there is one. Once my instructor told me to correct for the 55 knot climb out, I would have been already cleared of the obstacle.

I did a downwind departure and headed for the practice ground. Friday was the first time I practiced unusual attitude recovery. I liked it a lot because while you’re looking down, the instructor takes the plane and flies it in unusual movements. The first few turns and pitches I was able to keep track of in my head. But then one big negative G turn and my brain was thrown off.  When he told me to recover, I looked up and was completely surprised by how the plane was oriented. There are two different types of recoveries; one for a pitch up attitude and one for a pitch down. The first one was a pitch down. So I cut power to idle, neutralized the ailerons and brought the nose back up. This ensures that we don’t speed up as we descend, and by neutralizing the ailerons before pitching the nose up, the plane won’t go into a spiral. The second time he had me recover, the plane was pitched up. So I increased the throttle to full power and pitched the airplane down. The second the nose was lowered, I neutralized the ailerons. This recovery ensures that the plane doesn’t stall and that the nose of the plane pitches to normal quickly.

For the remainder of the flight, I practiced ground reference maneuvers. At first, my circles around a point were horrible. My instructor told me I was fixating on the point too much. This meant that I was neglecting the instruments and was looking outside too much. After he demonstrated a maneuver for me, I was able to do the point turns much better. It was a lot easier when I kept glancing inside the plane to see what my altitude and airspeed was.

After getting the ATIS and contacting tower for touch and goes, I made my way back to the airport. Last time I did touch and goes, they weren’t very good. I couldn’t get the hang of the power setting for the type of landing I was trying to do. Unfortunately, last Friday, the winds were coming 60 degrees off the runway centerline and it was challenging again. Because I practiced so many short field landings last time, I did a few soft field landings this time. They went a little better than the last attempts but still need much improvement.

What I learned today:

No matter what you think a plane is doing (attitude the plane’s in) you need to trust the instruments. If you use only your nervous system to determine what attitude the plane is in, you’ll be wrong almost every time. I found this out while practicing unusual attitude recoveries. Right before I recovered, and was still looking down, I thought I knew what I should be looking at when I picked my head up; either the ground, or the sky. But each time I was wrong.

_ Today was a ground day. The next major part of my flight training is cross country trips. However, in order to do this, I need to learn a lot of things I haven’t yet learned. I can’t just hop in a plane and go to some airport 100 miles (Nautical) away. Something I don’t know yet is how to open and close a flight plan. In fact, I didn’t even know how to fill out a flight plan, or what it looked like before today. Basically, a flight plan is opened when a pilot starts a leg of a trip. The length of the trip is irrelevant. I can open a flight plan for a trip off only 20 miles if I wanted to. In order to make sure pilots are where they’re supposed to be at the correct time, or close to it, flight plans are submitted to an FSS (flight service station). These let the FSS know where, when, what plane, cargo, and any other important things about the flight they would need to know. Upon reaching the destination, the pilot closes the flight plan to affirm his arrival at the destined airport. If a flight plan is not closed within a certain amount of time of the expected arrival, a search and rescue operation is dispatched.

Another thing I learned today, which I only had limited knowledge of prior to today’s lesson, was VOR navigation. VOR stands for VHF (very high frequency) Omni-directional Radial. A VOR is a station on the ground which emits signals in all directions (360. However, it’s more like infinite directions, since there can be decimals of degrees of a circle. ) and a plane flying in the air can tune in to the signal. Based on the time it takes the signal to get to the plane and back, the VOR and plane know where it is in relation to the station. VORs help pilots travel from one VOR to the next, in order to get to a destination without getting lost.

VORs are complicated (or at least too complicated for a blog post) and need practice using. I haven’t ever used the VOR in the plane while in flight, so I need to get practice first. This is why my next “flight” will be in the simulator we have at the flight center.

Something I’m still concerned, or uncertain about, is what happens when I get to the airport I’m traveling to? How am I going to know where to get fuel, or where I’m allowed to park my plane? I’m excited to get started on my cross countries. My instructor describes it as real flying. No one gets on airplanes to fly around for a little and land at the same airport. They want to go places. Cross country flying will get me ready for the rest of my career.

_ No solo today, but definitely a learning experience. After a morning full of rain and humidity, the skies opened up around 11 am, just in time for my 12:15 flight. Today’s goals were to perfect short/soft field take offs; as well as short/soft field landings. I had practiced all four of them once last semester with my last instructor, but forgot most of what you need to know in order to do the maneuver properly. Before the flight, I read up on the standard operating procedures, SOP’s, and got familiar with them

Obviously, first Drew had me practice short field takeoffs. You can’t practice landings without taking off, so I decided to do the short field first. From what I had remembered from last semester, and read in the SOP’s, they’re fun. The point of practicing a short field takeoff is because not every airport is going to have nice long, wide runways like Republic Airport has. The best way to get the most out of the plane on a short field is to line up all the way at the end of the runway.

The first step is to put flaps to 25 degrees during the pre-takeoff run-up. This allows the plane to generate lift at a slower speed. I got as close as I could to the runway threshold and lined up with the centerline. In order to get the most speed in the quickest time, you need to open the throttle while holding the brake pedals. I then fully opened the throttle so that the engine reached its’ red line rpm’s, 2700. The point of this is so that once I let go the brakes, the plane is accelerating at a greater rate than from a slow roll. As I let go the brakes, the plane jolted forward and I was at 45 knots within half a second. I checked to make sure all instruments were in the green and released the brake pedals. I called out as the airspeed came alive and waited for rotation speed. Because the runway was “short” rotation speed was 5 knots slower than normal. So once the plane reached 50 knots, not 55, I pulled back on the controls. Once wheels off ground, I lowered the nose so that the airspeed increased to 60 knots. This would have insured that I cleared any obstacle at the end of the runway, had there been one. Once over the “obstacle,” 150 AGL, I lower the nose to accelerate to 63 knots, which is Vx (Vx is the speed at which the plane will climb for the shortest horizontal distance). Upon reaching 63 knots, one notch of flaps came out and I accelerated to 79 knots, Vy (Vy is the best speed to climb so that the climb is shortest it can be in duration). Once at 79 knots, I took out the last notch of flaps and flew a normal traffic pattern.

The first landing, my instructor had me practice a normal crosswind landing (the winds were 25013G21. So they were coming out of 70degrees of runway center line at 13 knots. They were also gusting at times to 21 knots). I landed with the upwind wheel touching down first and revved up the rpm’s to start the takeoff roll again. The second landing Drew wanted me to do a short field landing. Before I start saying how they went, I’ll admit that 4 out of the 5 were real bad. I smashed the wheels down on a few of them and couldn’t hit the center line for my life. Having said that, the first one wasn’t so bad. In order to approach a short field, with an obstacle at the beginning end of the runway, you need to come in slow, 60 knots. A normal final approach speed is 65 knots. In order to come in so slow, all flaps need to be in and the nose needs to be slightly pitched up. The power is then adjusted to control the speed. The main problem I had was that the wind was knocking me around a lot. There were some attempts where I was lined up on center line, but then got blown off downwind. On another one, I had to go-around because the approach and lineup was so bad. Towards the end of the lesson, I got the hang of it. But still not to the standards that an FAA examiner would test me on.

Today, we were supposed to do four maneuvers, short field takeoffs and landings, as well as soft field takeoffs and landings. Unfortunately, because of the wind and my inexperience, we only had time for the short field maneuvers

What I Learned Today:
Landings are all about power control. Whether you’re practicing a normal approach and landing, crosswind landing, short or soft field landing, good power control is what makes the landings successful. Today, I didn’t have as good power control as I had last semester. It takes time to judge whether more or less power is needed during an approach. On some of my landing attempts, I could tell I needed more power because it looked like the ground was coming up to meet me. With more practice, I’ll get better at the landings. I think it was partially because I hadn’t gone out and done only touch and goes since last October and also partly because of the wind. I know that I have good power control; I just need to find it again.

_

Still waiting to do my last solo. What stinks is that I can’t go onto the next lesson until I fly my third and final solo. The course is designed so that stage 1 is soloing, stage 2 is cross country and stage 3 is passing the private pilot solo flight. So because I can’t do the last solo, I can’t move on to the next stage. The only reason I didn’t do it today was because the weather didn’t allow it. The skies were clear up to FL180, but the winds were strong, and gusty. There was even a low level wind shear advisory for the airport. So instead of my solo, I practiced stage 1 maneuvers with my instructors. Last time up, which was the first time in over 6 weeks, I was a bit rusty. Today, however, went much better. Also last time, I didn’t show my new instructor any ground reference maneuvers. Because he’s a new instructor for me, he needs to see where I’m at in my ability to fly an airplane. Which means that I need to show him everything I know how to do. So today I did both turns around a point, and S turns.

 

The flight started out good. I did a right downwind departure so I could go south, out over the ocean. Since the runway we were using today, runway 32, faces north, northwest, a downwind departure means I stay in the pattern until I’m in a downwind for the runway but continue to climb up to whatever I want. So after doing the departure, Drew gave me his foggles so I could practice instrument flight. Private pilots need a minimum of 3 hours instrument time before they can pass the FAA test to get their license. I climbed, and headed out to the Atlantic Ocean while “under the hood” (the term for wearing the foggles.) After we got to the practice grounds, about 10 minutes after takeoff, Drew had me do slow flight, which went better than last time, a power off stall and a power on stall. Since we were at 3000 feet for these maneuvers, he cut the engine so I could practice an in flight engine failure landing. When I got to 1000 feet, I leveled off so that I could do the ground reference maneuvers.

I did the circle around a point first. I picked the Jones Beach water tower and set the plane up for 90 knots, and 1000 feet. I got the weather reports so I could enter the maneuver in the downwind. After preparing the plane, I headed towards the water tower to start the maneuver. Once I was abeam the point, I banked into a steep turn because I was going with the wind. (While in the downwind, the speed is greatest. So in order to not get blown too far downwind, a steep bank allows the circle to be turned tight). I got 90 degrees through the turn and took some bank out (while in the upwind, speed is reduced due to a headwind. This means that in order to not make the turn too tight, and spiral into the reference point, bank must come out).

It was when I was about halfway around the first turn when something happened. As I was looking at the tower to keep myself equidistance throughout the turn, I heard “O Shit” from my instructor. He said it loud and firm, so I snapped my head forward to be looking directly at a Cessna 172, within 100 feet of my Piper Warrior III. As my head was turning to look forward, Drew had taken the controls from me and banked the opposite direction of the turn I had been doing. He opened the throttle full and quickly sped us away from the area. It took us another 20 seconds to make visual contact with the Cessna again. He was flying low over the inner shore line. We were over the outer shoreline at this point; meaning we were almost 2 miles safely away from him.

What happened was that while I was doing my turn, the Cessna dropped right in front of us. It’s weird that it happened because the Cessna has high wings. This means they have good visuals below the aircraft, which we were. I had done my clearing turns to make sure no other planes were in the area. Later in my flight while I was on an 8 mile final, we saw the same Cessna again flying across out flight path, just below our attitude. We couldn’t ID the plane, but it wasn’t company traffic (company traffic simply means it was from the same company as me. Our company is Farmingdale Aerospace flight school. Often, when telling pilots who to follow in the traffic pattern, the tower controller will tell us to “follow company traffic 2 miles ahead.” That means that we’re following another Farmingdale airplane who is 2 miles ahead of me.)

The close call was the closest I’ve been to another airplane while flying since I began my flying career five months ago.

What I Learned Today:
Make sure to do clearing turns before every maneuver. Even though I did both of mine, the other pilot seems to not have done his clearing turns; or he /she might have lost their bearings. Either way, it’s imperative to know where you are at all times, and who or what is around you. This is called situational awareness.

It’s been 1 month, 2 weeks and 3 days since my last flight; it felt like 3 when I got up there today. Today was the first day that I got to fly for the new spring semester. This means a few things. One thing is that I was in the plane, for the first time, without Chris, my former instructor. My new instructor Drew is just as cool as Chris was. Drew graduated from Embry Riddle Aeronautical College, Daytona Beach FL, and moved back up here once he graduated to work his hours up. I personally like that because most of the instructors at Farmingdale are alumni of the program. The experience and advice I get from Drew is a little different, allowing me to see how flying is done from school to school. All flight schools in the United States teach the same exact materials, but each school goes about teaching with their own style.

A small example of this was when descending to go back to the airport. I got to the checkpoint, a beach just south of the airspace, and radioed the tower: “Republic Tower, Farmingdale State 22 at Captree with information Juliet.” This is how I was accustomed to radioing the tower that I was ready to land last semester. However drew told me that he personally states his altitude. This way if other planes are near Captree and want to go back to Republic, then the tower knows which one I am, the one at the reported altitude.

Today’s lesson was primarily to get the rust off. I ended last semester by doing two of my three solos. It was a good spot to end because once a student pilot solos, he or she is able to continue to the next stage of the private pilot course. However, I still have the third solo to do before I can start learning new things. The third solo is the most fun (from what I hear from friends who’ve already done it). Unlike the first two, the third solo flight is unsupervised. This means that my instructor won’t be listening to my calls on a radio back in the briefing room. I’m all on my own, and I get to leave the airspace and fly out over the ocean! In order for Drew to let me solo he needs to see my fly. Chris was satisfied how I flew for him, but because Drew is a new instructor he must sign off for me to solo. Besides getting the rust off, I showed drew my level of skill. During our post flight brief, Drew said that he was confident I’ll only need one more flight before I can do the last solo.

My flight block is at 1515 zulu, or 12:30pm. I was anxious all morning, just waiting to get in the plane. I wasn’t nervous, but I was just hoping that I hadn’t forgotten too much of flying. The moment I started the engine, it felt like I flew yesterday. Everything started to come back to me; and I was even doing things without thinking of them. The muscle memory I gained from flying last semester had stayed with me all winter break long. A good example of this was when I did a power off stall. This is where I induce a stall while approaching the runway for a landing (of course, we practice the stall and recovery at altitude so if we mess up, we don’t crash.) On the climb out of the airport, and airspace, Drew told me what he wanted me to do stalls and slow flight. I realized that I haven’t a single stall, nor read up on one, in 6 weeks. We got to the practice ground and I got the plane configured for practicing maneuvers. As I slowed down the plane and threw the flaps in to practice the approach to a landing, I realized that I was doing things, and manipulating the controls, without really thinking of what I was doing. I just did it. It surprised me how much came back the moment I needed to do something.

No touch and goes today, or new maneuvers, but a good first lesson for the semester. I’m excited about having a new instructor (a different mind to teach me), dong the last solo, and getting ready for cross country flight.

What I Learned Today:
Today, even though it was a refresher lesson, I learned more than I thought I was going to. Something my last instructor never told me, which Drew must have said half a dozen times was “fly the airplane, don’t let the airplane fly you.” What this means is that students don’t need to be so subtle with the controls. The plane won’t fall apart if I’m firm with control inputs. If the planes doing something I don’t want it to do, I’ll make it stop. If I want the plane to descend, climb, or hold altitude, I’ll make it happen. It’s important to know this because if you let the plane “fly” itself it’ll fall right out of the sky.

This video was posted only a few weeks ago. It has some great, nail biting, crosswind landings and takeoffs. The airport is Dusseldorf Airport, located in Germany.

Finally! Today was the first day of classes for the spring semester. Along with classes which meet on the campus, I’ll be flying on Mondays, Wednesday, and Fridays at 12:15 pm to 2:30 pm (1215 to 1530 or 1715 to 1930 zulu time). Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to fly today. The weather was below the VFR minimums for student pilots (3 SM visibility and 1000 feet ceiling) so I had the chance to brush up on flying. I haven’t flown in about 5 weeks and some of the information has slipped my mind. I ended the last semester by doing two solo flights and leaving it at that since my flight debit account ran out of money.

This semester, I have a new flight instructor, whom I met with today, and went over key aeronautical points. Because he is a new instructor, he cannot just let me go out on a solos. He has to endorse me that I’m ready to solo because, previously, my old instructor endorsed me. Since the new guy hasn’t seen me fly yet he’ll have to make sure, himself, that I’m ready to go. To do this, we went over the written test I took for the Stage I check ride. I had gotten a 95% on the test, but we still went over each answer to make sure I knew what was on it. I did well, only needing help on one or two questions, and my new instructor, Drew, said that all we need to do now is fly so I can show him my skill level. I want to fly twice before soloing again, but if all goes well without first flight, I’ll solo after that.

After we went over the test, and reviewed a few more things, I had to update the documents which expired while I wasn’t flying. One of the things I needed was the new FAR-AIM (federal Aviation Regulations – Aeronautical Information Manual). This book comes out every year on New Year ’s Day and is updated with changes from the past year’s edition. Generally, only a few changes are made, and the ‘meat’ of the information contained in the book stays the same. More information HERE about the FAR-AIM. Another thing I had to get was the new aeronautical charts. These come out every few months for the same reason as a new FAR-AIM. Changes are made to the charts from the old ones. Changes could include the demolition of a building, or a new building, changes to airspace, or airport information. It’s illegal to fly with outdated charts so getting the newest ones is something all pilots must be on top of. Another document which I could have gotten was the Airport/ Facility Directory, or the A/FD. This book contains information about all the airports in the specific region. For me, it would be the northeast region of the United States; with a total of 8 regions. I decided not to get this yet since I won’t be needed it until later in the semester.

Hopefully Wednesday will come with better weather and I’ll be set to take to the skies once again. 

One of the first things which made me feel “cool” to be flying airplanes was using the phonetic alphabet. In aviation, the phonetic alphabet is the method used in order to speak different letters without causing confusion. For example, when saying the letter ‘D’ out loud, it can be misunderstood as ‘B.’ To cancel out the confusion, pilots, controllers, and people within the aviation industry use whole words for each letter of the alphabet. So to make sure ‘D’ and ‘B’ don’t get confused, we say Delta and Bravo. All 26 letters each have their own word, which doesn’t take a long time to memorize. Even when giving the tower or ground control an entire flight plan, each letter of each word must be said with its’ corresponding phonetic word. This causes a flight plan to take some time to open, but also makes it safer in that no confusion will occur.

The first time I experienced using the phonetic alphabet was on the very first lesson of flight training. I didn’t get to fly that day, but I was shown how to fill out departure paperwork. The first thing to write down on the paperwork is the tail number of the plane. At Farmingdale Aerospace, the Piper Warriors are numbered from 148 through 159 and have LH at the end. Each airplane registered in the United States always starts with an N. So when I use N153LH, I have to contact ground and tell them that “153 Lima Hotel” is ready to taxi. Because we’re operating in the United States, with a US registered airplane, the N, or November, isn’t necessary to say.

The phonetic alphabet is as follows:

A-   Alpha

B-   Bravo
C-   Charlie
D-   Delta
E-   Echo
F-    Foxtrot
G-   Golf
H-   Hotel
I-     India
J-    Juliet
K-   Kilo
L-    Lima
M-  Mike
N-   November
O-   Oscar
P-   Papa
Q-   Quebec
R-   Romeo
S-   Sierra
T-    Tango
U-   Uniform
V-   Vector
W-  Whisky
X-   X-ray
Y-   Yankee
Z-    Zulu

Anything from airplane tail numbers, airport identifiers (Republic is KFRG or Kilo Foxtrot Romeo Golf), taxiways, and ramp locations are designated with a letter of the alphabet. The name however, of any of these things is named after the appropriate phonetic alphabet letter. So when I leave the ramp which Farmingdale keeps its planes, I usually say something like “Farmingdale state 153 Lima Hotel is at Echo (we’re located on ramp E) with information Charlie (the name of the hourly weather report) ready to taxi to Golf (the closest taxiway to the Echo ramp).” At that point the ground control tells me what to do and where to go.

Learning the phonetic alphabet is just one of the small, but largely important, aspects of learning how the aviation industry works.

Ground school teaches student pilots everything they need to know about flying an airplane, regulations, and safety of flight. However, until the student actually experiences the lessons taught in ground school, they cannot relate to the material. For example, we learned in class about light gun signals. The light gun signals are different colored lights which the tower flashes towards an airplane, with an inoperative radio, to communicate. The signals instruct the pilot if it’s safe to land, to continue circling, or other instructions the pilots must be ready for. However, until a pilot actually has a broken radio, and needs to communicate by light gun signals, it can be hard for him or her to imagine what that experience would be like.

Something which I recently experienced firsthand, which is taught over and over again in the classroom, is wake turbulence. While an airplane is generating lift, it generates wake turbulence. This turbulence is invisible, but can damage an airplane greatly. The turbulence rotates from the bottom of each wingtip, to the outside of the wingtip, then back over the wing. While looking at an airplane from the rear, the right wingtip creates a counterclockwise vortex, while the left wingtip generates a clockwise vortex. These vortices trail the plane and sink below the aircraft’s flight path. Planes from as large at the space shuttle, to training airplanes like the Piper I use, all generate wake turbulence, however it is the size of the plane which dictates the strength of the turbulence. As you may have guessed, the larger and heavier the plane, the greater the wake turbulence. Planes which are heavy, clean (meaning no landing gear or flaps extended) and slow, produce the greatest wake turbulence.

The day I got firsthand experience of wake turbulence was on a nice clear day, when I was practicing touch and goes. My instructor and I decided to fly over to MacArthur Airport (check out the airports I’ve flown to, to see what MacArthur looks like) to practice landings so I can get use to flying to different paces. There are 4 runways there, but only one of the runways can facilitate the takeoffs, and landings of the heavy Boeing 737’s, which are operated by Southwest Airlines. (It is common to see 737’s flying in and out of MacArthur, while training there.) After I had done 5 or 6 touch and goes, the tower instructed me to change the runway which I would be using. I radioed back my change of course for the new runway. The reason for this (which I was about to find out) was because a Southwest jet needed to use the longer runway, which I had been using, for a takeoff. It was a little tricky getting into the downwind for the new runway assignment because the two runways, the first runway I used and the new one, are perpendicular of one another. This caused my downwind leg to be almost 2 miles wide. My instructor told me that the wide downwind leg wasn’t a concern so I continued. I entered base at the proper spot, and then eventually turned to final. The turn to final ended up being about 4 miles out, so I had a clear view of the whole airport, and all its’ runway surfaces. The runway I was using was parallel with another runway, which was also in use, and I could see the first runway I had been using now had a large orange and blue 737 sitting at the one end. Because the final was so long, I had expected the 737 to takeoff before I was close to my runway’s threshold. However, at the mile and a quarter mark, the tower radioed to me to caution for wake turbulence from the departing 737, and at that moment, the 737 started rolling down the runway. (The threshold of the runway I was using is located about 4/5ths, down the runway of the perpendicular runway, which the 737 was using. The two runways don’t intersect; however, the far edge of the 737’s runway is where my runway started.) I acknowledged the wake turbulence warning and watched the 737 pick up speed. The jet rotated almost directly in front of me, while I was about a mile away from my runway. This may sound like a close call, but when on final, the airspeed is slow enough that this distance is sufficient for both airplanes to continue flying normally. Because the rotation of the 737 occurred in front of me, my instructor told me not to worry about the wake turbulence of the heavy jet. We expected that because the wake sinks below the airplane, we would miss it. We were wrong. While at an altitude of about 80 feet, and a speed of 70 knots, we hit the wake turbulence. My little piper warrior shuttered and dropped 50 feet in less than a second. The force caused my instructor to instinctually grab the control. I was less than 10 seconds away from wheels on the runway when we hit the 737’s wake. Because my Warrior dropped dramatically from the wake, my head hit the roof of the cockpit and my headset flew off. After only a second or two, I knew what had happened. My instructor knew it sooner than me and was already realigning our plane with the runway. He knew that the encounter with the wake threw me off. However, I was still able to land the plane myself for another touch and go.

What both my instructor and I didn’t take into account was the wind. Planes generally take off into the wind in order to produce lift more easily that with a tailwind. However, since the 737 was taking off into a crosswind, (I was doing touch and goes into a head wind) the wind blew its’ wake into my flight path. I would say it was the first major “non-planned” lesson of my flying career, and one that I’ll never forget! 

Just took my first FAA test. It was the ground tests for the private pilot license. In order to get the private pilot license, you must first take the FAA ground test. If passed, the student pilot then takes the oral test with an FAA examiner. He or she will ask you questions about flying and you answer them. However, you can’t use notes, books, or any other medium as an aid to the orally given questions. It has to be knowledge that you’ve learned while studying. Lastly, the student pilot will take the practical, or the flying test, with either the same, or a different examiner. If the examiner deems the student pilot safe and confident, he or she will give you the license.

The first test, or the written test, is what I just took. Overall, it wasn’t that hard. However, being in a part 141 flight school, the ground school has given me tests where the questions are the exact same FAA questions that are on the written test. So I had an idea of what the questions looked like, and how the FAA phrased things before I even saw the first question. The FAA uses the same questions over and over again. I believe there are around 1,000 questions (While going for different licenses, there are different sets of questions) for the private pilot course. What was weird, to me at least, is that the test was administered on a computer. I met with the FAA examiner, we went into a classroom with computers, and he brought the test up on one of the screens for me. The tests consisted of 62 multiple choice questions. 60 of them were graded, while 2 of them didn’t count. I didn’t know which ones didn’t count, nor do I have a good idea why the FAA decided to put two void questions on the exam. The test took me about 55 minutes, but I had an hour and a half to complete it.

The questions which took the longest were the weight and balance, performance, and navigation questions. I had to do either math, use the tiny print on charts, or use the wiz-wheel, respectively, to find the answers. Other than that, questions included all areas of aviation. Luckily, there were only 2 or 3 questions on the test about regulations. I always have had a hard time with regulation questions, because they don’t have much to do with flying. Regulations are more or less the rules pilots must follow. And example is, “when should a battery on an ELT (Emergency Locator Transmitter) be replaced.” The answer is either after one half the battery life has been used, or after one cumulative hour of use. It’s easy to see that this question has nothing to do with actually flying an airplane.

I waited the 15 minutes while the test was graded, and then submitted to the FAA. In order to pass, students must get a minimum of 75%. Fortunately, I was nowhere close to that. I got a 96% and was congratulated by the examiner. Next up is the oral test, but that’s taken when I’m ready to do the practical and finally get my first, or many, pilot wings.