Quick thoughts on Ground School

Hi all,

Currently I am two weeks into four weeks of ground school. Hopefully the following gives you some idea of what it's like:


The Class - LGCV 1 2010
There are only four other students - I was expecting many more.  Either very few people knew about the program or there weren't very many places in the program to begin with.  Whatever the cause, the lack of students is good for me; it makes for a less formal classroom situation, where there is time to address everybody's questions.
What's more, all of the other students seem quite friendly and reasonable.  The lecturers have been good, too - in addition to the course material, they relate many of their more interesting flying experiences, which only serves to get me even more psyched to fly!

Time
For these first four weeks, there are four hours of lectures, three days a week.  This schedule slackens when the flying begins - down to two hours of lectures, twice a week.  Home study is probably at least twelve hours a week. This is just a guess - I spent most of the last two months studying in order to avoid having to study so much right now.  I still spend about five hours each week revising and continuing to study ahead...when the schedule changes in a couple of weeks I will plunge back into deep study.

Difficulty
My early study has prepared me well for the lectures - I am finding them a useful for revision, and for picking up extra detail that wasn't revealed in the textbooks.  I can see that the course could be overwhelming without having done all of that study, so I recommend getting into the books far in advance of starting a course like this!

The material itself is quite straightforward and practical...I think my early studies in physics have helped me tie together many of the aerodynamics and meteorology concepts. If it wasn't for this, I would probably have the feeling of trying to remember a bunch of details, which is harder on the mind than just applying known concepts to new situations.  I definitely get that feeling from studying air law! Navigation, loading and performance so far are all nice and logical, and what I've read about human factors is interesting enough to be memorable.

Still, looking at the stack of textbooks next to this desk, I am reminded of the information that remains to be crammed into my skull.  These four weeks of ground school cover only a minute fraction of what is required at the end of the course...I will have to work hard to maintain a good lead on the lectures and have time to process all of the new ideas.

Hope this helps! I will return to this topic once the first four weeks have finished and the lectures begin to accompany flight training!

Further costs!

Hi all,

More costs in getting started in this program have emerged - this post is the second of what will no doubt become a series of updates on the price tag of the Graduate Diploma in Aviation. 

Owners Manual & Checklists for Cessna 172S: $25.00

These are very necessary reading for the prospective pilot - it is a good idea to know about the aircraft you are going to be flying! Additionally, in order to get an endorsement on the aircraft type, you have to complete a questionnaire (issued by CASA) about the aircraft, which pretty much forces you to read the manual. It would have been nice to have the option to purchase them; I was handed them with the words, "we'll bill you later," softly spoken. Still, I probably would have bought them anyway - these booklets constitute good reading for anybody interested in the sort of stuff contained within.

Pilot logbook: $22.95

This is one of those necessary things - it becomes a legal document and record of all hours flown.  We were warned not to get 'the cheapest one' as it doesn't have the right layout.  The one I chose was the same one I saw our lecturer holding - the thinner ATC logbook.  I found it at downunderpilotshop.com.au for the above price.

VTC and VNC: $18.40

I haven't purchased these yet - charts covering the area around Adelaide at two different scales.  The VTC of Adelaide/Melbourne and VNC-8 are the ones required: these can be found at Airservices Australia and various other places.  A subscription is available if purchasing through Airservices, but the shipping is about $10 on top of the basic price; downunderpilotshop has free shipping but the charts cost an extra dollar apiece.

License Wallet:  $34.95

This is a nice way of keeping the Pilot License and Medical Certificates in one easily accessible and safe place.  The only one I could find is a leather job produced by Airservices Australia - it may last a long time so I am happy to fork out just this once - well, when I have some money again at least. 

 

Flight Computer: $25.00

This is a circular slide-rule kind of doohickey that is very useful for typical flight planning calculations.  It can be used to convert units, calculate Calibrated Air Speed (CAS) to True Air Speed (TAS), work out wind corrections, density altitudes and much more.  The only calculation so far that it can do that I haven't been able to do by hand is conversion between CAS & TAS for a given density altitude...the flight computer is about as fast for the other calculations. I think if I had one of these, I would end up checking by hand - or calculating by hand and checking using the computer.  I may get one just for this extra reassurance.  There are numerous online versions that perform the same calculations - look for online E-6B and CR-3 calculators.

The extra wad of cash required to cover all of this is around the $130 mark, bringing the total so far to approximately $2030!

Still, there is no cheap way to fly; I'd have to front with most of these costs if I were learning privately anyway.  At least I won't have to immediately pay for the lessons when the flying begins in two weeks!

About aerofoils and lift production

While I'm at this activity of posting links, here are a couple that clear up some misconceptions about lift production by aerofoils:

• Aerofoil misconceptions at amasci.com: This leads to several articles about lift production, and about how the most common story about how wings work is seriously flawed.  Very entertaining and enlightening stuff! Also be sure to check out some of the many other articles at this site, you are bound to learn something interesting!

• Workings of aerofoils at See How It Flies: This is but one chapter of a no-nonsense online book about flight, by John S. Denker.  Excellent diagrams, examples and technical explanations...but nowhere near as ranty as the link above.

Enjoy!

A few scattered links

Here are a few of the links that I extracted information from over the last several months, as I began my ascent towards aviation-nerddom. I wrote this list at Mindcloud Wiki MOMENTS before beginning this blog. I hope you enjoy some/all of the following:

Informations

• Learning to Fly by Claude Grahame-White and Harry Harper: a beginner's introduction to what it means to be a pilot, 1916-style! Reasonably relevant and at least an interesting and amusing read. Out of copyright and brought to you by Project Gutenberg.

• Stoenworks Aviation Pages: Many interesting articles, stories and tutorials on a range of aviation topics. Much of it can be applied to simulated flight - I found these pages a very useful in learning my way around the cockpit and about flying in general. The author has a lovely writing style, but this is just icing on the cake.

• Choosing the Right Flying School: an rather frank article about the costs and pressures in flight training, and good approaches to organising training.

• Civil Aviation Safety Authority - Pilot Guides: a selection of useful documents from CASA. The Pilot Careers Booklet is helpful in getting a good overview of the process and becoming more excited about the whole thing. The Flight Instructor Guide is a handy syllabus that could be useful in preparing for training exercises. The VFR Guide is a tome of information, could be extremely useful in understanding how the law and operations fit together.

• King Schools: producers of many educational videos related to flying. The videos are a little corny but make for informative viewing. Use your imagination to find a way to obtain a set, if you can't afford the rather steep price.

• Ask the Pilot: a regular column aimed at the general public, from the perspective of an airline pilot. Articles cover such things as security theatre, the nature of the airline industry, aviation accidents, aviation history, aircraft aesthetics and there's a fair bit of answering of reader questions. Often quite ranty - browse the archive for interesting-sounding articles.

• Austin's Adventures at X-plane.com: Several excited rants by the chief creator of the flight simulator X-plane. Some of these are hilarious, others have the tone of an insane wealthy person complaining about things...also hilarious. More importantly, most of them are interesting!

• My Flight Training Blog: the personal blog of a UniSA Aviation Academy student, detailing his progress through, and thoughts on, the training he's been undertaking. The inspiration for the creation of the blog you are reading right now came from his blog! Yay!

• My Life and Air Traffic Control: the blog of an air traffic controller based in Australia...it's good for getting a quite different perspective on this flying thing, and probably useful for anybody thinking of becoming a controller. Somewhat ranty at times.

• AOPA (US): Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. The site contains many articles of interest on a range of topics.

• The Rules: This page at CASA's website has links to all of the air regulations...many individual files. To get everything there takes a while, is definitely not thrilling reading, but is totally free and will serve as a useful reference if you don't want to fork out for a hard copy!

• Flight Safety Australia: A regular publication of CASA - the magazine is good light reading, and quite entertaining for people of any persuasion. The summary of international and domestic incidents is a highlight - how many hijackings do you think take place in the space of two months? Find out!

Simulation

• X-plane: X-plane by many accounts is a very good flight simulator. The free download is a time-limited demo (it only listens to your joystick inputs for 10 minutes each time)...the full version is less than A$40 and comes with 6 DVDs of scenery covering most of the planet. If you are enterprising you can probably get it for free. Also comes with aircraft and scenery creation tools that don't take much effort to learn how to use. I have found X-plane very useful in understanding many flight concepts: it's kind of neat to read about something then go and try it out in the simulator, and have it actually work. Aside from this, it's just plain fun to fly around in the simulated world.

• Australian scenery packages for X-plane: The default Australian scenery with X-plane is a little bland - these packages contain scenery for the hundreds of aerodromes and airstrips and their surrounds. For instance, the default scenery for Adelaide overlays the right general class of textures over the right areas (urban, desert, etc); these scenery packages added all the buildings at all of Adelaide's airports, 3-d objects for buildings in the CBD and a few other landmarks...makes the simulation FAR more enjoyable.

• GMaps: a utility that creates photorealistic ground textures for x-plane, deriving them from Google Maps. Large areas at high resolution take a long time, but the improvement in the simulator experience is well worth it.

I hope you find at least a few of these useful, interesting AND entertaining. Happy flying!

Tristan

Why University and not some other way? Plus: initial costs.

Why University?

Given that there are a number of different flight schools around the place and some excellent self-study materials, why did I choose to enrol in the Graduate Diploma in Aviation at UniSA?


The most important factor was money: enrolling in the Graduate Diploma has given me access to FEE-HELP, a kind of Commonwealth student loan that attracts no interest and is paid back through taxation once earnings go beyond a certain threshold.  Through this, I have been able to defer the previously prohibitive cost of learning to fly. The overall amount through this route is probably a bit higher than going through normal channels - the tuition fees come to $82,000 instead of something like $65,000.  However, there may be some advantages in that it is a structured program that goes beyond the minimum requirements of the various license types, in that I will gain a degree from a reputable university, and in that I may make some good contacts within the university that will help me gain experience and employment after I'm done.  Being a full-time student also gives me access to Austudy, which will help to supplement my slightly reduced income from work.

Good for me. None of this would be possible if I hadn't been lucky enough to get into Honours after my fairly crappy undergraduate performance - and lucky enough to make the most of the opportunity. Apparently my timing was pretty good, too. The Grad. Dip. has only been around since the start of 2009 and probably not too many people outside of the Aviation Academy are aware of it.  So my decision to work hard in Honours in 2006, the recent existence of this degree and the random pushing and pulling that surrounds my existence all happened to line up favourably this time.

Initial costs

While the government loan covers the lectures and the flight training, and a couple of other things, there are many things it doesn't cover. These things include CASA exams and licenses, various pieces of equipment, uniforms and pilot documents. Additionally, if too much remedial flying is required, it may deplete the government loan to the point where I will have to start forking out more cash to cover the training, too!  I have also been told that I may need to cover some of my multi-engine training, even if I maintain reasonable progress through the rest of the training.

Much of those costs are hypothetical right now...they exists in the future, and right now my savings have been almost completely depleted by the costs of getting started.  I think I have just about everything I'll immediately need: here is a list of what I've gathered so far.

Trial Introductory Flight (TIF): $135

This is a half-hour flight in a training aircraft, during which you get to control the machine in flight. I went on one of these before applying for entry into the Grad. Diploma; I had a theory that I would enjoy flight but wanted to see if I would actually find it nightmarish (I had been a passenger in large aircraft many times, but never flown a small plane)!  Of course I had a blast, but was constantly reminding myself that much of the novelty factor might wear off after 10 years in an aviation job!

Most flight schools offer such flights; they are probably a good way to get an idea of the planes and people of any particular training organisation.  I decided to go with the University as I was either going to do my training with them or nobody, at that stage! I later found out that I would have had to take a TIF with the Uni anyway, as part of the application process.

Even just as a thing to do, I recommend taking an introductory flight...it's not horrendously expensive for such a crazy experience!  Doing a little bit of research and simulation beforehand may make the experience more satisfying, too.

Student Pilot License (SPL) and Aviation Security Identification Card (ASIC): $250

These two are required in order to fly solo, and are worth getting sorted out as soon as possible - the turnaround time can be longer than six weeks! The two are applied for together, and the process is a bit of a pain as it involves getting copies of things certified by a Justice of the Peace, attaching passport photos, and getting the signature of the Chief Flying Instructor (CFI) of the flight school.  Part of the application involves background checks by the AFP and ASIO - I had to attach a separate sheet in order to fit in all of the places I've lived in over the last decade!

The SPL is black and white and printed on paper - I was hoping it would be more like a car license, thick plastic and wallet-sized.  The ASIC fits this description...it's bright red, and comes with a solid holder attached to a lanyard, so it can be worn visibly in secure areas.  The hologram on the card is pretty neat, too.

In applying for these, I was immediately given an Aviation Reference Number (ARN), which is yet another serial number for dealing with another government agency (CASA in this case - I can add the number to my tax file number and Centrelink serial number).  This number allows access to CASA's Self Service portal - where applications can be tracked and screens refreshed for months while waiting for the issue of a license!

Aviation Medical Examinations ($400)

A CASA Class 2 Aviation Medical Certificate is required to fly solo, but UniSA wants its students to have Class 1 Medical Certificates.  The Class 1 is a more stringent exam with a shorter validity period than the Class 2, but is a requirement for commercial flight.

To get this certificate, I had to be examined by a Designated Aviation Medical Examiner (DAME) and a Designated Aviation Opthamologist (DAO). It's CASA who does the designating - a list of DAMEs and DAOs can be found here. I had to book the DAME a month and a half in advance, so I'm glad I called early...on top of this waiting period, it can take CASA three weeks to issue the certificate. On the other hand, I only had to wait a week for an appointment with a DAO.

The aim of the medical is to make sure there are no complications that may cause unconsciousness or death mid-flight.  Blood glucose and cholesterol levels are tested, along with heart function using an ECG machine. Along with these there are hearing and vision tests to check that operational requirements will be met, and of course, no medical would be complete without urinating into a plastic cup. After these initial checks, exams are required yearly but are only as stringent at 'landmark' ages - 30 years old, 40 years old and so on. 

The DAME appointment cost $190, the DAO appointment cost $135, and just for fun, the CASA processing fee attached to the whole process was $75.  I may have been able to get a better price had I shopped around more, but probably not a whole lot better - when I asked about how much it might cost, the Aviation Academy estimated about $500.

Textbooks ($600)

I purchased the set of textbooks recommended and ordered in by the UniSA Aviation Academy...Bob Tait's aviation series. It was a big load of cash to lay down all at once, but they are supposed to be tailored to CASA's examinations all the way to Commercial Pilot License level.  They are reasonably well written - I have been studying the hell out of the books since I obtained them in December and have learned an awful lot of things about aviation. I am hoping this puts me in a good position to get the most out of the lectures and training with a minimum of stress!  I have been periodically trying out the things I've learned in a flight simulator on my computer and this has helped a great deal.

Headset ($350)

'You get what you pay for,' I was told.  I did a bit of research and a lot of deliberation and finally sprung $350 for a Flightcom 5DX Classic.  This is still regarded as an entry-level headset, but the silicone ear seals (more comfortable, more effective than foam) and the padded headband (again, good comfort) were what sold me over the cheaper 4DX.  Some headsets, with added technology like Active Noise Reduction (ANR), cost around the thousand dollar mark! Undoubtably, these are lovely headsets, but at this stage I am interested in something that will do the job properly - reduce the amount of ambient noise getting to my ears, while making radio communication clearer. The headset seems sturdily constructed, and comes with a three-year warranty, but I still need to test it out! Unfortunately it is not designed to work with a computer, so I don't actually know yet whether it works or just looks pretty.  I found this and this useful in working out what a headset does and what to look for.

Uniform ($150)

UniSA's Aviation Academy requires its students to wear uniform while present - they are geared towards training people for the airline industry and like to get their students comfortable with this aspect of airline employment.  It probably also helps students to feel more like pilots - a costume to wear as they begin to fly.  It may generate a professional look, but professionalism is an attitude...one that I hope I find prevalent in the Academy! Anyway, the uniform is non-negotiable, and of course I had to pay for my own - the combined cost of UniSA epaulettes and tie was about $65, and the two pilot shirts and pair of pants I bought were about $85 altogether.  Tip: Trims give a 10% discount on clothing if you hail from the UniSA Aviation Academy - I showed up during a 20% sale so I was unable to exploit this deal, though I did confirm its existence.

A pilot belt is also available for purchase from UniSA. Given that I already own a serviceable belt, along with black shoes and dark socks, I decided to cut my spending on clothing right there.

So before I have even begun, I have already had to spend just under $1900 on books, uniforms, equipment and licensing.  I was told in the entry interview that my total out-of-pocket expenses may pile up to $6000 by the end of the course, so I guess that leaves about $4000 to go! As long as my life doesn't take a series of dramatic twists and turns I should barely be able to cover this...hopefully my employer doesn't get too annoyed at me sharing my time between work and university!

In the end, the cost is not such a worry - learning to fly is an opportunity I will gladly endure poverty and dirt for.

Hope you find this useful,

Tristan

Welcome

Greetings from a recently-categorised and serial-numbered student pilot.

I will be beginning in the Graduate Diploma in Aviation at the UniSA Aviation Academy next week. Over the course of the program,  I will be undertaking flight training, with the aim of graduating with the licenses and endorsements required to work as a fixed-wing aircraft pilot. At this stage,  I am interested in the following kinds of flying work: flight instruction, working for the Royal Flying Doctor Service and aerial firefighting (much to the extreme dismay of loved ones). Any flying job that isn't actively ruining people's lives and pays enough for me to live on would be great, really...though I would like to stay in this wonderful city of Adelaide if possible!

With this blog, I will provide a sort of running commentary on my training, and on my prospects as they change throughout the year (and perhaps beyond).  I will try to give emotional self-reflection a wide berth, unless something extraordinary happens.  Instead I will stick to the sort of information that other prospective pilots and general humans might find useful, and try not to repeat things that can be easily found elsewhere.  That said, expect opinions to gush forth with little control. 

One mystery I would like to solve is how somebody can become a water bomber pilot.  It's likely that I'm just bad at finding information, but there appears to be some kind of media blackout on the issue.  I've found a few weak leads, and already know about the need for what's called an Agricultural rating, but that's nothing - I require far more information than this! Anyway, if I find out anything, I will post it here - I'm hoping to build a reasonably complete picture of the career and how to get into it.

Anyway, thanks for reading. I hope you find these writings to your liking!

Tristan