Learning to fly, everyone can do it !

I encounter many people that tells me their dream for learning to fly.

I am one of them, only difference is I am already flying and I love it. Definitely living the dream. You must think that I either have lots of money and time to afford this. Well guess what I don’t have money or time and that’s why I am blogging about this today.

I call it: Leaving the dream, the smart way.

The question is how?

Simple you need to follow my tutorial, but not only that research some of your own, be completely dedicated to spend time on this. Truth is if you wanna save money, means you have to loose something, can’t have both here so you’ll loose time. But if you’re smart about how you manage time then you can also save lots of time.

Let’s get started 

What is your goal, choose your options and budget: https://www.aopa.org/training-and-safety/learn-to-fly

What do I need?

  1. Be legally able to fly in the U.S. means be a U.S. citizen or legal immigrant with a working visa
  2. Obtain your TSA clearance if you’re not a citizen
  3. Find a school you would like to join that close enough to your home so its not a pain to meet with your flight instructor. Make sure your flight instructor is dynamic, nice and interested in your success (if he talks a lot its a very good sign). Also make sure the school has good reviews, good plane maintenance (100hrs) and a good reputation. Don’t hesitate to ask to look at the planes condition or even do a discovery flight with the school to get a feel for it.
  4. It’ll take about a month to get TSA clearance and fingerprints done meantime don;t waste time, buy the materials and start learning.

What should I buy?

Make sure your flight instructor tells you which study material or book he would like to go by, because in the end of the day he is the one teaching you

Minimum to start

  1. Jeppesen private pilot book – $90
  2. FAR/AIM -$15
  3. Headset (rugged air on Amazon) – $85
  4. Pilot logbook – $10

I recommend going further to save cost

Why? the meat of the cost of this course will be on flight. You’ll pay a wet plane that range from $100/hr to $140/hr for the cheapest cessna 152 (two seaters) in addition to you flight instructor time from $30/hr to $80/hr

I know its exciting to fly and spend time practicing in the plane, but trust its not worth doing more than what I advise.

Tips: spend about an hour each flight, no more than that as the brain need time to process the info and be efficient so if you do 1.8hr flight then you wasted about 0.8hr money in most case scenario, and you can do the math how much this will cost you.

Spend more time on ground, chair-flight your procedures, repeat and repeat until you can do it while sleeping, then when you come to the plane you already know what to do and how, you’ll be just showcasing it real life scenario to your instructor make so he can correct the tiny mistake you’ll make. He will be impressed and you will feel more confident and you’ll save money. Everybody wins !!

How to chair-flight your procedure? That’s where I come in to the game

  1. always ask your instructor to pre flight debrief and post flight debrief in which he should tell what you’ll be working on next.
  2. make sure you have the required ground knowledge of that part at least and that you have all the necessary info.
  3. Buy xplane simulator, and pedals and yoke total cost about $150 used
  4. Buy extra procedure books and watch youtube videos

I’m just gonna dump bunch of awesome free ressources and Ebook here and then will need some time to categorize and explain how each of them are valuable

Flying Again

 

https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/aircraft/airplane_handbook/media/FAA-H-8083-3B.pdf

 

http://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/aviation/phak/media/pilot_handbook.pdf

 

http://tfr.faa.gov/tfr2/list.html

 

https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/aviation/media/FAA-H-8083-1.pdf

 

https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/aviation/media/tips_on_mountain_flying.pdf

 

https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/aviation/media/student_pilot_guide.pdf

 

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/user/SportysVideos

 

https://www.youtube.com/user/asa2fly

 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCWbc38ZLnbvdFiFJKDawCQ

 

https://www.youtube.com/user/MzeroAFlightTraining

 

More ressources:

Gold Seal Zulu time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5idIb8ji78

Gold Seal Library: http://www.faa-ground-school.com/library-main.aspx

Gold Seal Examograms: http://www.examograms.com/

Garmin 430: http://www.goldsealgroundschool.com/Library/g430-intro/index.html