Fundamentals of Flight Training

Our fundamentals of flight training articles discuss the foundations and underlying principles of flight training at multiple levels, and are not only intended for student pilots (unless marked as such). We hope that also commercial pilots and in particular flight instructors will gain a new perspective on their profession from them. They cover the underlying physical reality of piloting an aircraft, mental aspects of flight and flight training, teaching methods and the roles of the flight instructor, etc. These articles also motivate why ground instruction is so important in flight training and why most of flight training happens on the ground.

• Fundamental Principles of Vehicle Control – Part 1: Predicting Vehicle Motion: Connection between input (control) and output variables – why is learning to fly so much more difficult than driving a car?
• Fundamental Principles of Vehicle Control – Part 2: Controlling an Aircraft: kinetics, kinematics, aerodynamics, vehicle state estimation, and human executable control instructions.
• Fundamental Principles of Vehicle Control – Part 3: Selected Basic Aspects of Control Theory: open-loop and close-loop control, system response time delay, pilot compensation, pilot induced oscillations; basic properties of first-order and second-order linear systems (mass-damper and mass-spring-damper systems).
• Learn to Fly: How Do I Become a Pilot?: Article for student pilots, how to structure and plan their flight training most efficiently.