Training

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When we reviewed Comm1s radio communication training program in the March 2000 issue, we had a beef: It included only a few full-route clearance scenarios, in addition to the occasional amended clearance. Now we know why.

Far from being an oversight, the folks at Multimedia Software withheld significant clearance practice from their IFR communications training CD (which lists for $120) because they were planning to market a follow-on product called Clearances on Request.

Like the earlier product, this is a computer-based training aid of the sort thats becoming standard in the flight and even airline training realm. It has up to 10 hours of training on nothing but AT…

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Anyone affluent enough to own an airplane didnt get that way by wasting time, thus the FAAs written licensing exams are supremely galling. Populated by too many dreary, pointless questions that have little connection to real-world flying, the writtens are potholes on the road to actually learning to fly.

The GA training industry has risen to the challenge, producing self-help courses on video, computer and audio tape media sharply focused on little but a passing grade. The latest-and the most impressive-are interactive computer offerings for the instrument rating by Jeppesen and King Schools. The latter has also released a new CD-ROM-based IFR flight training system in pa…

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To hear the old heads tell it, back in the mid-1970s training boom, you could hardly find a spot in the airport parking lot, it was so jammed with students cars. (They didnt drive BMWs back then.)

Could happen again, we suppose. Student pilot starts are on the rise, sharpening the perennial dilemma that FBOs and flightschools face: Whats the best primary trainer?

Twenty years ago, it was either the Warrior or the Cessna 152 and although thats still true in the 90s, those airframes are tired. There are no new 152s and a new Warrior is too pricey to be an FBO trainer. New 172s are being bought by flight academies but havent found a wide market among Mom and Pop FBOs…

In her article on The Great GA Sell Job in your November issue, Joan Perkins did a great job. Her report brings to mind our own experience with Sunrise Aviation in Tucson, Arizona more than 10 years ago, which underscores her experience exactly.

Sunrise Aviation was started by Two wonderful and talented flight instructors who were long on training skills but short on business experience. My wife, Jacqui and I became acquainted with them over the leaseback of our first airplane.

The first time the instructors approached us about investing in the flight school, we declined. The business got worse and the lease was in renegotiation when they approached us the second time. We a…

Its a given that a large deficiency in GA training is the lack of nuts-and-bolts mechanical information. Weve all seen pilots-student and otherwise-pre-flighting, checklist in hand, without a clue of what to look for.

Owners in particular have an incentive to fill in these chuck holes on the road of knowledge, especially after the first couple of annual invoices, which appear to be executed in Sanskrit, except for all the zeros.

We recently attended one of the Cessna Pilots Associations two-day seminars and found it to be a useful, cost-effective method for an owner/pilot to address this knowledge gap. CPA was founded in 1984 by John Frank, former director of the American Bonan…

A fighter jock can be forgiven for sniffing at the shallow inadequacies of general aviation pilot training: It takes but 60 to 80 hours to graduate from witless passenger to certified aviator, the briefest flash of time that necessarily ignores much of what a pilot should-or would like-to know.

One aspect of training that gets short shrift-okay, no shrift-is crash survival, specifically ditching. Military aviators endure a grueling, soggy dose of this training, both in dunker tanks and occasionally in live water exercises. GA pilots, on the other hand, are referred to section 6 of the Aeronautical Information Manual and told to have a nice day.

Recognizing this, several companies o…

Although the recent demise of IFT-Pro might suggest otherwise, the market for computer-based IFR training and practice software is alive and well. Hardly a week goes by without a reader phoning or e-mailing for recommendations.

And have you looked at the prices of these things lately? Capabilities that used to cost several hundred dollars are now available for around a C-note.

Last time we looked at these programs, our focus was on the sort of instrument practice programs the average pilot would find useful and affordable, which eliminated all of the bona fide PCATDs. Well do the same this time. Obviously, weve kicked out a slew of self-proclaimed flight simulators which are b…

Last month, we reviewed the three big name IFR flight sims,Aviation Teachwares ELITE, ASAs On Top and Jeppesens FlitePro. Among these, no hands down winner emerged, at least for buyers shopping for a sim program for IFR brush up.

Each had distinct advantages and disadvantages, depending on your budget, training preferences and hardware. Hearing some favorable comments about some impressive game programs-thats right, games-we decided to take a look.

Despite being spring loaded to the dismissive position because ofthe toy connection, we came away convinced that, for some buyers, these are a solid, cost effective choice. Youll need a heavy duty machine, however, including a…

As with most things in life, the paper part of aviation training can be at best tedious and at worst onerous and just plain wrong. In a perfect world, all ground school instruction would be cheap, conducted by enthusiastic and qualified teachers at times and locations which don’t interfere with frenetic schedules and Santa Claus would be real.

In your dreams. Realizing this, scads of vendors have developed PC-based instructional software intended to provide a reasonable simulacrum of aviation nirvana. We don’t pretend we looked at all of them but what follows is tour-the-horizon view of some major players.

Simple Test Prep
At their most basic, this variety of ground…

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Remember that pilot personality self-survey, with the half dozen psycho babble attitudes guaranteed to make a smoking hole? There was resigned, anti-authority, impulsive, macho and invulnerable.

We think a more accurate way to assess whether a pilot falls into one of these groups is to connect him to an EEG and see which button lights up following the words, Caution wake turbulence, departing 757.

Would your button be Resigned? Impulsive? Invulnerable? If you don’t spend your spare time tearing up gyros for fun, the prospect of an uncommanded flight upset might make your blood run cold.

A better-than-average grasp of airmanship may cause you to understand that t…

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The concept of learning to fly instruments is more appealing than the reality. Earning an IFR rating is hard work and, ultimately, tedious.

But forget concepts. Lets talk money.

Everyone knows that having an instrument rating lowers your insurance premium. Well put some numbers on that in a moment but consider something else.

If you want to buy kinds of high-performance airplanes or high limits on something more modest, its getting to the point where some insurance companies wont even look at you unless your certificate is stamped: Instrument Airplane. So whats it cost to earn an instrument rating these days? It varies according to how much experience youve go…

Even if youre not one of those dotcom zillionaires, if you own a moderately expensive airplane, youve probably accumulated a nice tidy cache of wealth youd like to retain for your retirement years.

Owning an airplane, however, puts that wealth at risk. One of the biggest problems to face aircraft owners in recent years is the lack of higher limits of liability coverage beyond the run-of-the-mill million bucks, a sum thats chump change by modern insurance standards.

This is an expensive problem for pilots transitioning into bigger airplanes, but it plagues everyone who needs significant limits of liability, including people who have owned the same airplane for years.

Why It H…