Month: September 2005

Seems we had a minor outage, unsure of the cause at this time.

Not expecting anything further.

Flight got cancelled again this morning. Thundershowers and gusty winds are the culprits today. Rita passed well south of here, but the bands that came off of her are what seem to be causing our bad weather.

My instructor has been hired with Trans States airlines, and his last day here is next Friday. He had hoped(as well as I) to get me to solo, and done with Part 1A of my Private. This doesn't seem possible with the weather delays we've been having here. He's going to try and get me set up with a new instructor as soon as possible.

I'm a little bummed about this, but I'm sure it will be nothing big.

So if I finish up ground school next week, with my written done as well, I can get a ton of flying in. I'm going to try for two lessons a day.

I can't wait to be out of this ground school!

Down the hatch!

This second test was a little more complicated than the first. The subject matter a little more in depth than the first, and questions that required some work to complete.

I finished with an 88, after missing 6 questions.

Overall I'm happy with my grade, I skipped one question, because after working at it for about 20 minutes, I decided it wasn't worth it. None of my answers, no matter how many times I reworked it, came close to the three choices I had.

Next week is my last week in this ground school. My final in the class is next Thursday, and either Friday or Monday, I will be taking the FAA written exam.

Moving right along!

Today marks the official second half of my private ground school. Tomorrow is my second test. This test will be covering performance, weight and balance, AIM, ADF, VOR, and the calculator side of the E6B flight computer.

Since this is exactly half, I will give you a brief idea about how I'm liking the ground school so far.

Right now, I have had 5 ground school instructors. All classes are 4 hours long, sometimes with an hour break in the middle, sometimes just a small break every hour, on the hour. Sometimes the same teacher for all 4 hours, sometimes half and half. Right now the problem with the ground school that I have, is that sometimes we seem to be getting repeat information.

One instructor is responsible for a certain subject, and then another instructor will assume we know what he's talking about. I have noticed that there seems to be a lack of coordination between the instructors. Sometimes I hear the same thing, four different ways. Sometimes, I don't even hear about a subject, and then I'm given homework on it, or even tested on it.

Example- yesterday we had a class on the AIM. Our instructor gave us a lecture aided by a projector slide show. After that, we were given some worksheets to go over the material we supposedly just went over. There were questions on the worksheet that we did not cover. It is really frustrating when your scored on something they don't teach you. I understand that some of this is expected of us to learn on our own. I just thought this was a little bit extreme.

This doesn't mean the instructors aren't good instructors, but I think that having multiple people essentially doing the same instruction, is a waste of all of our time. Sometimes I think a reading assignment would be more productive.

So in summation, my overall opinion of the groundschool thus far, use it for a question/answer session. I haven't yet, but I think I will start reading the entire lesson the day before. You know exactly what lesson they will be teaching that day. I think it would be a good idea to read all you can on the subjects, do any assignments possible, and take to class any questions you have. It's my opinion that you can't count on the class instruction for actual instruction.

Take my word however, with this knowledge I have now about the ground school, I would still choose this school. You have to remember, this place still is one of the best schools you can go. There are some things that this place definitely excels at. You can't get this anywhere else as far as I'm concerned.

A lot of people, including myself, had to cancel flights due to weather. We're getting the outlying bands of hurricane Rita. Mainly causing gusty winds, and rain.

Hopefully it will clear up soon.