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.

Which school to go to

Of coarse there is Embry Riddle, which is known throughout the Aviation community as one of the best, but it is very expensive. There is also University of North Dakota, which has some great programs, and is a little bit less expensive. I like the small class room feel, which is why I did not pick these, but that is just me. There are some benefits and drawbacks between small and large schools. Embry Riddle and UND are both very nice schools, great instructors, and are known everywhere, but these schools are very expensive, and many times you do not even fly the first semester or even year. The small schools you know everyone, cheaper, and many times you start flying right off the bat, but you have to make sure that the school has good instructors, and that there is a airfield somewhere close to the campus. I am around the Ohio-Michigan area so I know that the nice schools around here are Western Michigan University, and Bowling Green State University. I recommend that you just go to the school and look around the airport and just hang out there, you will be able to find out a lot by just talking to the pilots there. Amazon.com has some great products for pilots you can go down to the bottom of the page and I have a link that you can search aviation and there will be things you need. Search Amazon.com for flight bag