Student Pilots

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Medical

There are three different classes of medicals that you can get.

First class

Is for ATP's
Good for 12 calender months under 40 years of age
Good for 6 calender months over 40 years of age

Second class

Commercial pilot
Good for 12 calender months

Third class

Private pilot
Good for 60 calender months if under 40 years of age
Good for 24 calender months if over 40 years of age

If you are a student pilot wanting to become a airline pilot or something that requires a first class medical, you should go ahead and get a first class before you even start your training. The last thing you want to have happen is you spend hundreds of thousands for your licenses, just to find out that you cannot get a first class, because you have something wrong. Your first class will turn into a second class after 6 months, then will turn into a third class 6 months later.

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Instrument Study Guide

Three fundamental skills of Instrument flying

Instrument scan
Interpretation of instruments
Aircraft control

Instrument scan techniques

Rectangular
Selective radial (hub and spoke)
inverted V

Three common error

Fixation
Omission
Emphasis

Common rules of thumb for aircraft control

Lead level of by 10% of VSI
100 RPM = 5 KTS (for a 172)
100 RPM = 100 Feet Per Min. ( for 172)
Lead roll out 1/2 of bank ahead

Two types of flight instruments

Pitot-static

Airspeed
Altimeter
VSI

Gyroscopic

Directional gyro (D.G.
Artificial horizon
Turn coordinator (D.C. electric)

Distance Measuring Equipment (DME)

Uses slant-range to find distance

Automatic Direction Finder (ADF)

In the aircraft

Non-Directional Beacon (NDB)

On the ground

Instrument Landing System (ILS)

Four parts

Localizer
Glide slope
Marker beacons
Approach lighting system

Marker beacon substitution

Outer marker

Cross radial
DME
GPS
Compass locator

Middle marker

Compass locator
Precision radar

No service volumes
Direct navigation
Modes

En route

Greater than 30 nm. 5nm = full scale

Terminal

Within 30 nm. 1nm. = full scale

Approach

2 nm. prior to final approach fix 0.3 nm = full scale

Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS)

Increases accuracy and reliability of GPS
Approach with Vertical Guidance (APV)
En route

Greater than 30 nm. 2 nm. = full scale

Terminal

Within 30 nm. 1 nm. = full scale

Approach

2 nm. prior to final approach fix 0.1 nm. = full scale

VOR (service volumes)

Terminal

1,000 - 12,000 feet = 25 nm.

1,000 - 18,000 feet = 40 nm.

High

1,000 - 14,500 feet = 40 nm.
14,501 - 18,000 feet = 100 nm.
18,001 - 45,000 feet = 130 nm.
45,001 - 60,000 feet = 100 nm.

NDB (service volumes)

Compass locator

15 nm.

Medium homing

25 nm.

Homing

50 nm.

High homing

75 nm.

Air speeds

I - Indicated (what is shown on your instrument)
C - Calibrated (corrected for positional error of pitot tube)
E - Equivalent (corrected for compressibility)
T - True (corrected for temperature and pressure)
G - Ground (speed across the ground)

Altitudes

Indicated (what is shown on your instrument)
Pressure (29.92)
Density (corrected for temperature)
Absolute (height above ground (AGL))
True (actual height above sea level (MSL))

Holding procedures

Types of hold entry

Parallel
Tear-drop
Direct

Hold briefing

Fuel status
Name of fix
Direction of hold
Altitude
Inbound course
Type of entry
Initial outbound heading
Wind correction

Wind correction

2 seconds for every knot of headwind (for a 172 at 100 kts)

Holding speeds

Below 6,000 feet

200 knots

6,001 - 14,000 feet

230 knots

Above 14,000 feet

265 knots

Low En route Chart

Minimum En route Altitude (MEA)

provides navaid reception and obstacle clearance

Minimum Obstruction Clearance Altitude (MOCA)

Obstruction clearance able to descend within 22 nm. of navaid

Off Route Obstruction Clearance Altitude (OROCA)

Obstruction clearance off airways

Minimum Crossing Altitude (MCA)

Guarantees obstacle clearance and navaid reception

Minimum Reception Altitude (MRA)

Guarantees reception

Minimum Sector Altitude (MSA)

Guarantees 1000 foot of terrain clearance in non-mountainous 2000 foot in mountainous

Minimum Vectoring Altitude (MVA)

Radar vectors for ATC 500 foot above

National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)

Accident

Substantial aircraft damage, fatal, or serious injury

Substantial

affect flight characteristics

Serious injury

Hospital within 48 hours, broken bones, organ damage, 2nd or 3rd degree burns on 5% of body, and tendon or ligament damage

Fatal

Die within 30 days

Incident

anything other that an accident

Immediate notification of ATC

flight control malfunction
fire
inability of crew member to carry out duties
50% of glass panel out

Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT)
Transponder codes

7500

Hijacking

7600

Communication failure

7700

General emergency

Weather (hold on this is a long section)

122.2

briefing

outlook
standard
abbreviated
in flight

Notam

Taxi way and navaid outages

Satellite outages

Flight data center regulatory (TFR)

Terminal Aerodrome Forcast (TAF)

5 nm. 4-6 hours

Metar

come out hourly

routine aviation weather report

Airmets

Moderate
valid for up to 6 hours

Tango

Moderate turbulence

Sierra

Moderate mountain or IFR weather

Zulu

Moderate icing

Sigmets

Severe weather not associated with thunderstorms

Turbulence, icing, volcanic ash, dust storms limiting vis. below 3 miles

Valid for up to 4 hours

Convective Sigmets

Severe weather associated with thunderstorms

Tornadoes, surface winds greater than 50 knots, hail greater than 3/4 inch diameter

Valid for 2 hours

Thunderstorms

Stages

Cumulus, mature, dissipating

Stable

Rime icing, steady precipitation

Unstable

Clear icing, good vis., showery precipitation

Measure temperature lapse rate to determine stability

Pressure

1 inch per 1000 feet

En route Flight Advisory Service (EFAS)

122.0 above 5,000 feet AGL

Hazardous In flight Weather Advisory Service (HIWAS)

On VOR's
Airmets, Sigmets, Convective sigmets, Urgent pireps, or center weather advisory

Structural Icing

Rime

Milky white
Stratus clouds

Clear

Clear and smooth
Most dangerous
Cumulus clouds

Mixed

Combination of both

Frost

Thickness of sandpaper

30% less lift
40% more drag

Low pressure

Inward
Counter clockwise
Upward

High pressure

Outward
Clockwise
Downward

Fonts

Cold
Warm
Stationary
Occluded

IFR Acronyms

IFR required equipment

G - Generator/ alternator
R - Rate of turn
A - Attitude
B - Ball
C - Clock (with second hand)
A - Altimeter (pressure sensitive)
R - Radios & avionics for flight
D - DME above 24,000 feet
D - Directional gyro

VFR required equipment

C - Compass
A - Airspeed indicator
A - Altimeter
A - Anit-colision lights
F - Fuel quantity
F - Floatation device
O - Oil temp.
O - Oil preasure
T - Tach
M - Manifold pressure
E - ELT
G - Gear position lights
S - Seat belts

Night VFR

F - Fuses
L - Landing lights
A - Ani-colision lights
P - Position lights
S - Source of power

Reporting points (radar enviroment)

C - Compulsury reporting pionts
A - ATC directed
U - Unforcasted weather
S - Saftey
E - Equipment malfunction
L - Leaving any assigned altitude or fix
E - ETA change of more than 3 min.
F- Final approach fix inbound
T - True airspeed change more than 10 knots
U - Unable to climb or decend 500 feet per min.

Reporting points (non-radar enviroment)

C - Compulsury reporting points
O - Outer marker
F - Final approach fix inbound
F - Fixes off airway
E - ETA change more that 3 min.

Radio communication falure

A - Assigned
V - Vectored
E - Expected
F - Filed
M - Minimum
E - Expected
A - Assigned

Preflight

W - Weather
A - Known ATC delays
R - Runway lengths
F - Fuel
A - Alternates
T - Takeoff and landing data

Required maintenance

A - Altimeter/ Pitot system (24 calender months)
V - VOR (30 days)
I - 100 hour
G - GPS (56 days)
A - Annual
T - Transponder (24 calender months)
E - ELT (12 calender months)

Gyros

Tumble

Heading more than 55 degrees of pitch and bank
Attitude more than 50 - 60 degrees of pitch and 100 - 110 degrees of bank

You need a VOR to enter class B airspace
Approach plates

Star

fly by

Star with circle

Fly over

No procedure turn when

Vectored
No procedure turn sector (NoPt)
Holding in lue of
Timed approach
Cleared straight in

Terminal Arrival Area

Visual Decent Point

FAA report

Within 48 hours

IFR currency

6 insturment approaches
Intercepting and tracking navaids

Cloud clearances

You should know this from your VFR training

Instrument section of FAR section of FAR/AIM

ILS Approaches

Instrument Landing System (ILS) is a precision approach nav. aid which provides accurate course, glide slope, and distance guidance to a given runway. An ILS is like using a VOR for navigation, only it has vertical guidance. You must either have a HSI or a VOR indicator to be able to us an ILS. There are four parts to an ILS, they are the localizer, glide slope, marker beacons, and the approach lighting system. The localizer aligns you with the centerline of the runway. The width of the localizer varies between 3 and 6 degrees, and the service volume of a localizer is10 nautical miles within 35 degrees, and 18 nautical miles within 10 degrees of course heading. The glide slope is a transmitter offset from the runway centerline. This provides vertical guidance to the runway. Full-scale deviation is 0.7 degrees above or below the center of the glide slope. The marker beacons provide range information. There are usually two marker beacons for an ILS they are the outer marker, and the middle marker. The outer marker can be anywhere between 4 and 7 miles from the runway, and the middle marker is usually located 3,500 feet from the threshold. (where you land) Some airports which have a category II and III ILS have an inner marker, and that indicates the decision height (DA) which is where you must go around if you do not see the runway environment. There is much more to know before trying an ILS I would never be able to cover everything in this blog, I just explained what it was and the different components of an ILS. If you would like more information on this topic look in chapter 8 page 21 (8-21) of the Jeppesen Guided flight discovery instrument commercial book.

Saturday, March 19, 2011

ATC

To many student pilots the thought of talking to ATC scares them. They are very intimidating to beginner pilots, because they have the power to pull your ticket if you make a mistake. You must remember that they are not there to get you into trouble they are there to help you out and give you assistance. Most of them are vary caring people, and if you have a question do not be afraid to help you out. They would much rather help you out than have to fill out an NTSB (crash) report trust me. It helped me out a lot when I took an ATC course at school and had a controller at Toledo Express (KTOL) teach it. It helped me realize that they are very helpful and they do know there stuff, because we all know as pilots we think that we are the best and we can do everything ourselves, but we can't. If you are not getting the radios as fast as you thought don't worry, because you will in instrument trust me, that is all you are doing is talking to ATC. If you make a mistake don't worry most of the time ATC is very good about it, they come over the radios and give you a stern talking to and tell you that you need to think more. They know that you are a student and you are still learning. If ATC tells you to do something that you don't know how to do just be honest. There was a kid that ATC told them to come in a non-standard way and he ended up stalling to close to the ground and dieing. They are not going to get mad at you for not knowing how to do something if you are a student. Now if you are a commercial student and you don't know how to do an ILS approach they may have a pproblem with that.

Private Pilot Checkride

Once you have built enough hours and understand everything that you need to know you may go on your check-ride. This makes many pilots very nervous to think about. An examiner going flying and asking you questions. There are some important things to remember before and while you are flying. First DO YOUR RESEARCH. You need to make sure that you have a fair examiner, most of them that I have run into are very nice and act like normal people. In fact on my private check ride I forgot that I was even with an examiner. Second, you can either do your flight or questions first. I would recommend doing your questions first, because it allows you to sit down with him or her and just have a conversation. It allows them to understand you and you to understand them. Be the end of the oral you can start to tell what they think is important. Third, do good on your written and it will be easier for you. Many people say that if you get a high score one your written your oral will be easier, and I agree with them, because I got a 94% on my written and my oral was a piece of cake. Plus it gets you even more ready for the oral. Four, STUDY, STUDY, STUDY I highly recommend the ASA test prep on the top left of the article it is the best $10 you could ever spend. Five take a deep breath and relax. If the examiner is asking you question, which they will to see how you can multitask, just have a conversation with them, but that being said, if you are starting to get overwhelmed just tell them to shut up. You should probably tell yours a little nicer, but our examiner for the school is real cool and you can just talk to him like you are talking with one of your friends. I would suggest being very polite, if they do not tell you otherwise, but ours tells us not to do that he wants to just hang out and fly, which makes it much easier on the pilot. The biggest piece of advice to remember is that for your private pilots licence the examiner is not looking for perfection, and wont really care if you make a mistake, as long as you can correct it and show them that you are a COMPETENT pilot. All the examiner is looking for is that you can take off, fly, and land without killing yourself, nothing more. To bad this wasn't true for all of them.

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Aviation Technology

One of the biggest new technologies for GA is the new G1000. This thing is by far the coolest glass cockpit system available in GA. There are many new things that this system can do that other systems before could only dream of. First off you can have either a two or a three display system, with your choice of either 10 or 12 inch displays. If you want an even bigger display you can choose the giant 15 inch display which are are interchangeable, so between you primary flight displays (PDF) and you multi-function display (MFD). The G1000 replaces traditional gyroscope instrument with it's new GRS77 Attitude and Heading Reference System (AHRS) This system also has the new GFC700 autopilot, which can control airspeed as well. The multiple displays are a life saver, especially at busy airports, because you can have your Jeppesen charts, and airport diagrams on your other displays. If you thought all of that was cool then you will be blown away by Gamin's new Synthetic Vision Technology (SVT). This is really cool, because it shows you a 3-D model of the ground and even tells you if you will hit something if you stay on your current path. You can literally fly down a valley in complete fog and know exactly how far you are away from the mountains (although I would not recommend it). Lastly you can even have XM satellite weather on your G1000 that will show you where the storms are within minuets. There are also many other features to see the G1000 for yourself go to https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=6420&ra=true .

Ways to practice

You can of coarse go grab a plane at your school, but unless you have deep pockets you will not be able to do this for long, because it gets very expensive. Your flight school will probably have some flight simulators that you can hop in and practice for free. The only problem with them is that most of them you need at least two people to run, because there needs to be a person setting things up and failing things while you fly. If you use the simulator at the flight school you will be able to use that time as simulated time. The best thing that I have found was FSX. I think that this program is great for student pilots, and even pilots in general. Like AOPA says a good pilot is always learning. You can use this program and get a feel for the cockpit of the plane that you fly and if it is not on there you can go to many sites online and get yours. If you are a private pilot you can practice steep turns and stalls, but the best practice for instrument pilots. You can follow VOR's and NDB's, and also shoot ILS's and GPS approaches. You can put the deck at mins and pop out right at the ground. This is very good practice and gets you used to the feeling of not being able to see anything. It is also a great way to get you used to radio calls. Saitek makes great flight controls which helps even more. I use these all the time and it helps greatly. I also use a joystick with the rudder pedals a lot for a more realistic feeling on the extra and edge.