Tutorial 1

While there are many publications relevant for the student pilot, including all the ones mentioned, the main textbook for the fall semester of the class is the PHAK. Please study it very thoroughly at home.

While some studies have shown that students retain more information from printed materials, in class we recommended to use digital copies, because of the large number and size of publications, which would lead to a rather heavy book bag that is – in the opinion of the speaker – difficult to carry around all the time. Most relevant publications (including all those by the FAA) are available online for free, and the money is better saved and put towards the purchase of a tablet, which can be also used to contain your electronic flight bag.

The recommended weekly study time is 10-15 hours (book study time and flight simulator practice) to get the most out of the class. However, this is a recommendation and not a requirement. There will be no pass/fail tests during the course. Thus, if you do not have as much time to study, we still recommend that you attend the course and simply get as much out of it as your time allows. The only tests relevant for your journey as a student pilot are the ones mandated by the FAA (Pre-Solo Knowledge Test, FAA Knowledge Test, FAA Practical Test).

While rote memorization is the lowest level of learning, and higher learning levels must be fostered in a pilot during flight training, the most efficient way to study and achieve a high score on the FAA Knowledge Test is to memorize an up-to-date commercially available question bank, containing all possible test questions that may appear. We highly recommend this approach. Just make sure that during the rest of your flight training, the higher levels of learning (understanding, application, and correlation) are exercised as well (we will do so in class).

A flight instructor endorsement is required to take the FAA Knowledge Test. However, we recommend that at the end of your memorization process above you simply take several practice tests, generated by the same software that you used to memorize the question bank. If you score 90% or higher on several of those practice tests, any reasonable flight instructor will give you the endorsement, even without you having studied with them. This way, your training costs for the FAA Knowledge Test are limited to the cost of the question bank software (ca. $40), as opposed to paying a flight instructor by the hour (typically $60/hour or more) to tutor you.

We recommend a very simple flight simulator setup, consisting of X-Plane 12 ($65) and the Logitech 3D Pro joystick ($35). If you already have Microsoft Flight Simulator, this works, too. For students interested in glider flying/soaring, we recommend Condor 2, which allows participation in multiplayer cross-country soaring competitions over the internet. In any case, start out with a very simple, inexpensive setup – it’s the best value for the money.

Your flight simulator will primarily be a procedural trainer without much realism. This will not change, even if you were to spend $100,000 on it. The expensive flight simulator at your local flight school is likewise just a procedural trainer and not significantly better than what you have at home (which is why we recommend flight simulator practice at home rather than using the flight school’s simulator, as it is much cheaper). To have useful realism beyond procedural use, you would need to spend several millions of dollars on equipment that would not fit into your living room (e.g. the large simulators used in airline training). This makes sense: it is more expensive to recreate reality artificially in a fiducial manner than reality itself.

While flight simulators do really shine for instrument training and are the most effective for this application, you will find that you will get quite some mileage out of your flight simulator even for private pilot training, practicing procedures, maneuvers, use of avionics, VOR/GPS navigation, and rehearsing your flight lessons, before you step into the actual airplane.

Just as a sidenote, while moderation is oftentimes wise, in order to achieve something big you often have to go all out. But sometimes less is more, and in this particular case, we really suggest you spend as little money on your flight simulator setup as needed. Do spend lots of hours practicing with it though, and structure your exercises well, such that you have great learning benefit.

Ideally, you would complete all academic ground instruction, before taking flying lessons. One or two intro flights to help you relate the theory to the physical world may be helpful, but not more than that. The parallel answer choice also has a lot of truth in it, since meeting with an instructor regularly and getting to fly an actual airplane can have a motivating effect. However, it is not the optimal way to pursue flight training, because you may arrive for some lessons unprepared, and more often than not, you will actually fall behind with your academic studies, despite your initial intention of doing ground school/studies and flight training in parallel. Also, being a novice at this, it is hard for you to judge how much understanding you actually need, in order for you not to take longer in your flight training due to lack of understanding. It is best to learn as much of the theory up front, and that is also how the military tends to approach flight training.

Finally, you do not need the academic theory primarily to pass the oral on the FAA Practical Test. You need the theory (in particular aerodynamics and flight dynamics) in order to survive and not kill yourself. The air is a very unforgiving environment.

The control inputs of the pilot create moments and forces, which only via a bunch of convoluted kinetics (such as F=ma) and kinematics (description of 3D motion) lead to accelerations, velocities, and ultimately positions/attitudes. Unlike in a car, there is no button or lever directly for up/down, left/right, faster/slower in an airplane. (One day, with better technology, and a computer that handles all the kinetics/kinematics this will be so.)

Therefore, the pilot must understand what complicated combination of control inputs leads to the desired outcome, also taking into account the current state in the aircraft. Different situations may require different control inputs to lead to the same end result. Likewise, the same control inputs may lead to completely different outcomes, depending on the situation.

Many aircraft (especially small general aviation aircraft) actually use older technology than cars do, because getting new systems approved in aviation is expensive and takes a lot of time, so manufacturers postpone the effort. Have you ever wondered why in your basic training airplane manufactured in the 2000s you need to adjust the fuel mixture to the engine manually (leaning), while your 20-year-old car does this completely automatically? Clearly, this could be automatized in an aircraft as well.

Military flight training is very demanding, and you are not given much flight time to learn anything. It is the military’s way to weed out candidates, even though a candidate’s ability to learn how to land an airplane quickly does not necessarily correlate with the person’s later ability to fly well. Some people take a little longer to learn something, but once they get it, they may perform exceptionally well. Similar arguments apply instrument flying, which involves its own kind of mental gymnastics.

The USAF Academy views obtaining a private pilot certificate favorably during the application process. However, obtaining a PPC will make you ineligible for Initial Flight Training (IFT) in the USAF, and you will go directly to Undergraduate Pilot Training (UPT). Therefore, especially if you have been already selected, do not complete your PPC unnecessarily without particular goal, because getting prior exposure to military flight training procedures in IFT can be helpful for UPT.

On the other hand, the military likes to train pilots according to the military’s own way. People with lots of prior civilian flight experience may have developed habits that would need to be broken first. Thus getting hours beyond a certain point has diminishing returns. It also depends on what kind of flying you have done. 1000 hours in a Cessna 172 are not very interesting at all for the military. If, on the other hand, you happened to accumulate these hours practicing for aerobatics and cross-country competitions, some of which you may have won, this may be viewed in a more favorable manner. Ask the individual branches of the military yourself, what their current take is in prior flight experience. Our question here aims more to educate you what to safeguard against, in case you are not the quickest picking up something new physical.

In order to safeguard against such a washout, definitely learn to land an airplane before going into military flight training. The same applies to prior exposure to aerobatics. Just because the rotating sensation of a spin is confusing for your body during the first few hours, does not mean that you will not become an expert in flying spins and aerobatics in general. But in the military you won’t get much time to learn it, so get some prior exposure to give your body a head start. This is particularly true, if you aim to get selected for a fighter pilot role.

Start with flight training as early as you can. If you are still too short to reach the rudder pedals in the aircraft, you can learn all the theory required for private pilot in the meantime. If you are then still too short, you can read the USAF Test Pilot School textbooks, and all kinds of other literature. You can also practice with your flight simulator on your home computer. And finally, you can pick an aircraft with a cockpit more conducive to your age-related short dimensions (such as some gliders for instance).

Also, there is no minimum age at which you can pilot an aircraft, as long a certificated pilot is on board in the other cockpit seat and acts a pilot in command.

Unlike driving, where you need a driving permit to start practicing to drive on roads under the auspices of a licensed driver, there is no such requirement in flying. There is therefore no legal minimum age for a child to manipulate the controls of an aircraft in flight, as long as a certificated pilot is on board in the cockpit to act as pilot in command.

In order to act as pilot in command of an aircraft, you have to have a pilot certificate with an appropriate rating (unless you are a student pilot with a solo endorsement). As such a pilot in command is legally required in flight. There are minimum age requirements for pilot certificates. There are also minimum age requirements for solo endorsements. But if a certificated pilot sits in one of the front seats and acts as pilot in command, there is no regulation that prohibits the other seat to be occupied by a child of any age and for this child to manipulate the controls under the auspices of the pilot in command, who takes responsibility for the flight. The pilot in command does not even have to be a flight instructor, but can be just a private pilot (or sport pilot).

Therefore, a child can start practicing to fly at any age, as soon as they are old enough (large enough) to reach the flight controls and meaningfully see out of the cockpit.

The most valuable feature of an EFB is that you see other traffic, if you also purchase an ADS-B receiver. We highly recomment it. Along the same lines, the EFB also displays your position on the map (even without the ADS-B receiver, just using the internal GPS, if the tablet has one). (Note: iPad have (or used to have) GPS built-in only, if you bought the more expensive model with a sim card, not the wifi-only one.) The EFB also integrates other information, such as airport info, for easy access from within the EFB.

On the other hand, the fact that you get spoiled by having your position indicated to you on the chart at all times may be detrimental to your development of navigational skills, such as determining the position yourself, by just looking out the window (pilotage) or using VOR navigation. Also, having an EFB should never be the reason not to learn a vital skill as a pilot, such as using a paper chart and using a plotter. After all, your tablet may fail, and you may have to resort to a paper chart (although most people these days simply use their smartphone as backup – the screen is small, but the EFB still works on it). Learning to use an E6B is also important for its convenient use in flight (fewest button presses/manipulations required, compared to electronic flight computers).

All of these are fascinating fields of mathematics, and many can have an application in flight in one form or another. But commonly (and as presented in the lecture), we will find a combination of trigonometry, linear algebra (based on abstract algebra), complex numbers, hypercomplex numbers (quaternions) which are an even subalgebra of the geometric algebra in 3D (a form of Clifford Algebra), differential equations, single- and multivariable calculus/analysis, complex analysis, statistics, etc. Applications using algebraic geometry, number theory, topology, combinatorics, etc. are less commonly found.

References to explore these math topics further were given in the lecture. Modern research publications can be found at https://arXiv.org. This question has been asked here to evoke interest and curiosity, what all of these fascinating areas of mathematics are, which many have perhaps not even heard about and would care to explore.

Some of our correct answer choices here are clearly somewhat controversial and your opinion may vary. But we would claim the following. It is not necessary for an instructor to have a very large number of instruction hours. We would prefer to see a portfolio of past students who have soloed reasonably quickly and gotten their private pilot certificate successfully in the legal minimum number of hours, as well as no student accidents. Not every student will achieve this mark, but if an instructor has had no fast students, then one must wonder, if it is not the instructor’s teaching and mentoring style that makes it difficult for students to finish quickly.

Along similar lines, and more extremely, as long as the instructor is a great pilot and keeps you safe, not having prior teaching experience is not necessarily a deal breaker (even though having experience is good). For instance, imagine your mother flies fighter jets for the military and obtains a civilian flight instructor certificate to instruct her kids. Provided that she has some recent flight experience is small single-engine aircraft as well and is proficient in them, she would be an excellent choice of instructor, from whom you could learn a lot. Lack of teaching experience may prolong your training slightly (or it may not and instead it may just make your training a bit tougher, because the instructor may push you harder than necessary), but the quality of training is primarily driven by the instructors general experience as a pilot, understanding of flight instruction, and willingness to teach, not by how many hours or how much experience they have accumulated.