How to Organize One's PPL Training the Closest to The Real World

In the U.S.A. and most of the industrialized countries, the training of GA planes pilots have gotten uniformized as it mostly consists into the a base certificate and the PPL -for "Private Pilote Licence"- proper. The PPL is, throug piloting GA planes, the entry into the aviation world. Any apprentice-pilot must first pass through a medical consultation at a specialized physician, which aims to check one's physical ability to pilotage. The base certificate, usually since the age of 15, is a 20-25-flight hours training concluded by a theoretical examination. That certificate allows to fly VFR, by daytime, in a radius of 16 NM from the terrain outside controlled airspace. The apprentice-pilot will have to have performed at least 6 hours of flight in double-command, 4 hours solo and 20 landings. Then, with a total of flight hours -the base certificate included- of 45 (of which at least 25 hours in double-command with a instructor pilot, 10 solo -of which at least 5 hours of navigation flight), a minimal age usually of 17, a theoretical examination and a in-flight one with a examinator pilot, the apprentice eventually gets to the PPL. The PPL allows to fly VFR, by daytime and to carry passengers at no fee. The PPL then constitues the base upon which a GA pilot may obtain varied qualifications allowing to more types of flight like night VFR, mountain flight, etc.

How a PPL training is performed, in terms of time, is mostly at the convenience of the apprentice. The PPL training usually goes from the easiest to the most complicated, under the supervision of a flight instructor as the pilot-apprentice is seated on the left seat of the plane -the pilot in command's seat- and the flight instructor seated right. Each training session first begins with some ground, theoretical exposure by the flight instructor of what is to be practiced during the flight. Such a presentation comprises the theoretical elements at play during that flight. For a training flight dedicated to turn, your flight instructor, for example, will explain to you the point of the differential lift of wings and the consequential need to balance a turn with the rudder. When back to the parking, by the end of the flight, the instructor will also make a debriefing through which he will, for example, stress such or such aspect

The tutorials of our site usually are working like that too, but generally only however as we did not segmented our explanations in training modules of the appropriate duration. Explanations, at the contrary, are displayed in a whole set as, originally, we did not have in sight to write a PPL training cursus similar to the one of the real world. That tutorial thus is a view of how you may use our tutorials the closest to a real world training. Let's remember too that, in the real world, the PPL training is unfolding at a quite rapid pace and your flight instructor is awaiting from you that you have a swift understanding of what he says and demonstrates (likely because pilotage needs quick actions and reactions). A good way to procede, in the real life, is to write down, when back to ground, all is to be -and all you have actually- remembered of the theoretical lesson which preceded the flight, and the additional remarks given by your instructor during, and after the flight. More generally, just try to correctly follow our tutorials. But do not overload you with training and activity! On a other hand, do not try to instantly master every aspect of a lesson and fly session of 20 to 40 minutes during the first sequence of 20 training hours. Get some help too with the flight recording function of FS and even from the autopilot! At last, you will note that a difference in accuracy, generally, may be spotted from how the US training is performed as derived from documentation. As in the USA, accuracy tends to be stressed with accurate techniques and maneuvers, or descriptions in the manual, in other countries, like in France, pilotage tends to be trained to in a more intuitive way, and manuals less technique. You will thus have to also take that point of view into account function of how flight training is generally considered where you'll train

The Base Certificate

A PPL training is usually beginning with a presentation of what a plane is and of how a plane flies (use tutorial 'General presentation of a GA plane'). One just continues through the pre-flight checklist (pre-flight checklist part of tutorial 'The Steps of a Flight in a GA Plane'). Before any flight, that checklist will have to be performed and you will eventually have to perform it by heart. Following that, during 20 hours, you will be trained to the basics of flight, to takeoff and landing, and to the airport traffic pattern. All the sessions dedicated to that have the flight instructor aboard with you, which is termed the 'double-command formation' as the flight instructor is seated right whence he can take the plane's control back. For the beginnings of the training, he also has the plane taking off and landin. note! each stage of a GA flight, from takeoff to landing has its own checklist. All those basic checklists have to learned by heart! That first part of our PPL training is going to ask you to perform some of those checklists; just check those which are to be used with 'The Steps of a Flight in a GA Plane' (Climbing Onboard, Engine Start, Taxiing to the Active, Before Takeoff Check, Take Off, Climb, Departure, Cruising, The Approach, Final, Landing, Clearing the Runway, Taxiing, Cutting Off the Engine and Configuring the Plane for the Parking)

• engine start, taxi. The pilot-apprentice learns now to start the plane's engine from the parking lot and then to taxi to the active runway (Climbing Onboard, Engine Start, Taxiing to the Active et Before Takeoff Check parts of tutorial 'The Steps of a Flight in a GA Plane')
• flight basics. You now are to learn to control the basic attitudes of your plane during a flight, which are level flight, climb and descent, and turns (climb and descent turns included). Each of those three steps will be cut from our tutorial 'Level Flight, Climbs, Descents, Turns Aboard a GA Plane')
• runway clear, taxi, securing the plane. You now will be trained to how, once the landing performed, a pilot exits the runway and then taxi back to the parking lot, where he secures the plane (check Clearing the Runway, Taxiing, Cutting Off the Engine and Configuring the Plane for the Parking parts in tutorial 'The Steps of a Flight in a GA Plane')
• takeoff. The pilot-apprentice now learns how to takeoff (check the appropriate section in tutorial 'Taking Off and Landing in a GA Plane'). Once the basics of takoff acquired, one may considered that more training will exist by each training session, as you necessarily will have, by the beginning of it, to takeoff. That will have a cumulative effect in the domain
• landing. Passing to landing now! You will be trained to land by using the appropriate part of tutorial 'Taking Off and Landing in a GA Plane'). Landing with a plane is a seemingly delicate phase of the flight, which thus necessitates some stress on that training part. There too, once the basics aquired, a cumulative training will be due to that each training flight will necessarily en with a landing
• ground reference maneuvers. Once considered you have developed a sufficient skill into mastering and handling your aircraft, you might develop a tendency to solidify that into a fixed habit. To complement what you learned with ease and safety, now perform flight maneuvers performed by reference to neat ground landmarks, like a S turn about a straight road or railway, for example, which will require more divided attention between plane handling and checking the environment! For those exercises, you will use our tutorial 'Ground Reference Maneuvers'
• airport traffic pattern: another -and may the- main aim of the first 20 hours of the PPL training is that the pilot-apprentice master the standard airport traffic pattern, that quadrangular circuit around a terrain which is both a training methode and a way to arrive, or depart, to a small terrain. Once the previous trainings mastered, the formation focuses now upon that flying circuit. You will have to takeoff, to fly the sequential legs of the traffic pattern, to land and, through a touch-and-go takeoff back to another one. And the same a certain number of times at the effect you feel how all that is chaining together (The Traffic Pattern like a Training Feature part of tutorial 'The Standard Airport Traffic Pattern'). Then your training mostly consists into flying the airport traffic pattern again and again until that moment when, at about 14 hours in the 20-hour training, your flight instructor will deem that you, like a pilot-apprentice, can now fly alone aboard! You, like the pilot in command, alone aboard, are going to fly a airport traffic pattern. Then the last hours of training sessions keep being about flying circuit pattern alone aboard. The pattern surroundings on the other hand allow to learn the traffic pattern like the way to depart, or arrive to a small terrain (The traffic pattern like a way to Get Inserted into an Airport's Environment, or to Leave a Terrain part in tutorial 'The Standard Airport Traffic Pattern')
• one or both training flights will encompass the concept of slow fligth -slow flight at speed under cruise speed or slow flight propre- that ability of a pilot to master his plane at slow speeds (check the tutorial "The Concept of Slow Flight")
• some double-command sessions keep occurring however with the purpose to train into further techniques. The stall, the engaged turn, the engine failure on downwind, or the base leg are those (see those points, at their name, in Emergencies in tutorial 'VFR Miscellaneous: Radionav Aids, Advanced Pilotage, Emergencies')

The PPL

The second part of the PPL training cursus is dedicated to learning the distance, or navigation flight. Like a pilot, you will train into to fly from a terrain to another according to the VFR navigation technique. note: that part of your training needs that you master the checklists of the previous 20 hours and, too, those specific to the current sequence (see 'The Steps of a Flight in a GA Plane' (Take Off, Climb, Departure, Cruising, The Approach)

• first, you will learn how you will, in the pilots' room, to draw a route between two airports. Then you will fly that route (tutorial: 'To Navigate Aboard a GA Plane'). Following training sessions are all dedicated to that same exercise. The training's theoretical part is about weather conditions, flight plan, airspaces, NOTAMs (those recentest advices concerning aerial navigation in terms of time-localized, or general activites and rules), air rules (priority between planes, minimal altitudes, fuel reserves, airspaces). About those, check the same tutorial 'To Navigate Aboard a GA Plane'; about weather and flight, check 'The Weather Fronts in the Mid-northern Latitudes (with General Data About the Weather Systems in the Other Regions of the World)'); about airspace, swiftly use the 'Airspace' part of tutorial 'Airspace Control and Phraseology'. During the first 10 hours of the sequence, your navigations will be performed with your flight instructor seated beside you (as far as computing a route is concerned, check too swiftly 'Alternate Technique to the Computation of A Navigation in FS'). Flying a VFR navigation obviously needs too that you master the aerial phraseology which will allow you to communicate with the ATC (check Aerial Phraseology (the commercial flight example excluded) in tutorial 'Airspace Control and Phraseology')
• those VFR navigations are cut with some specific trainings, like the waiting maneuvers in the traffic pattern (with the turn at a standard rate), the go-around (on both these, use Advanced Pilotage in the tutorial 'VFR Miscellaneous: Radionav Aids, Advanced Pilotage, Emergencies'), the engine failure in flight, the entrance into unfavourable weather conditions (check both points at their name in the Emergencies part of tutorial 'VFR Miscellaneous: Radionav Aids, Advanced Pilotage, Emergencies'), and too, eventually of flights in the traffic pattern of your terrain
• you will also be trained -mostly from a theoretical point of view- to use the radionav aids during a flight, like the VOR, DME and NDB (use the The Radionav Aids (VORs, NDBs, etc) part of tutorial 'VFR Miscellaneous: Radionav Aids, Advanced Pilotage, Emergencies'
• during the last 10 hours of the second training sequence, the pilot is flying navigations alone aboard. One of those will be flown to a airport with a controled tower. On that terrain the pilot-apprentice will have to fly three traffic pattern while communicating with ATC and executing the orders thereof like waiting along the pattern, go-around for example). Three of the navigation flown must have a minimal length of 43NM, which is attested by the authorities of the terrains where you will have land
• your training will also be added with exercises linked to the tutorial 'Short-Field and Soft/Rough-Field Takeoff And Landing, Turbulent Air Landing' which will improve your takeoff and landing skills on miscellaneous terrains

PPL Examination. Renewal

After the number of flight hours required, the apprentice-pilot is subjected to two examinations, a theoretical, and a practical one. The theoretical examination allow to check, through a multiple-answers questionary whether you have acquired and memorized the theoretical aspect of your training. Questions will be about the plane, gauges, controls, aerodynamical forces, theory of the miscellaneous maneuvers, traffic pattern, navigation, weather, air rules, etc. The practical examination, as far as it is concerned, consists into that you will have to fly a VFR navigation with a flight examinator from your national air administration aboard. He will estimate your pilotage and your navigation as you will have to spell any of the operations you will perform along the flight. The examinator is allowed to ask questions, to have you giving details about a operation, or to order you to a alternate terrain like in a emergency. By the end of that flight, the examinator will decide whether or not you are apt like a private pilot. Should you succeed into both those examinations, you are getting your PPL and become a private pilot. No way to simulate all that in FS however as the FS examinations are not very realistic. Just follow the training above by each step and once the training completed, and with some comparisons allowed (like realistic TV documentaries, Internet, etc.), when you deem that your pilotage, and your navigations, are correct, realistic and smooth, you may rightly decide that you have reached the PPL level

As the PPL is acquired for lifetime, the right to fly which it is granting is, stricto, only associated to it as it is a qualification and thus subject to a number of conditions to be renewed each year. In France, for example, the private pilot will have to have performed, during the 12 months previous to the renewal, 12 flight hours of which 6 like pilot in command, with 12 takeoffs and 12 landings, and one hour of flight with a flight instructor (as that controlled flight may, or not, bring to a obligation of re-training). On a other hand, 3 takeoffs and 3 landings are required in the last 90 days for the pilot to be able to carry passengers