Ground school

Ground school classes started the first week of Sept., they were held two nights per week and were about 2 hours in length, sometimes a little longer. There was seven to ten students most nights, so it's was fairly good size group, not too big and not too small.

I found the classes well laid out and organized, our instructor had a good teaching style and alot of patience, as went go over each new section of our book she'd emphasize the things that we'll have questions on for our exam.

As I write this blog entry, ground school is wrapping up and we only have a couple of weeks left, all of which is review. I felt that it went pretty well and I did manage to learned alot of new stuff, and I do mean alot, everything from how an aircraft flies, weather, air regulations to cross country navigation.

During class we wrote the radio exam, went through the PSTAR and wrote the test. We did a tower tour and spoke with one of the FSS, who's also a pilot. We went out to the hanger and throughly went over one of the schools Cessna 172s, and looked at some other neat aircraft as well.

I would not say that ground school is difficult, but you do need to set aside enough time to read each section before class. There is an awful alot of material to learn and remember for the exam.

The only part that I, and nearly everyone else, didn't get right off the bat was intercepting specific VOR radials. I'm a very visual person so once I visualized what was going on (draw it on a piece of paper) I'm was able to answer the various bearing questions. Some advice on this topic, read the questions twice, the keywords "to" and "from" make a huge difference! It also doesn't help that some of the incorrect answers assume that you've made stupid mistakes like this, and give you "seemingly" the correct answer.

As I have to drive to another province to write the Transport Canada private pilot exam, I figure that I'll give myself some time to study and get some of the required flying done before I write it. I figure that early January looks like a good date to write.