Free you say?
I have to shell out big bucks for every flight for the airplane and the instructor. Yup you do, but just remember that education is all the time, in the plane or out.
The moment you put a booking onto the flight sheet for the next flight, is when the education for that flight begins. You are committing to a future event that you know will make you a better pilot. Perhaps its getting to solo, perhaps it’s a practice flight prior to your commercial flight test. So now that the mission is booked what do you do? Many people do very little, perhaps read a bit of assigned material that their instructor told them. Perhaps some people do more. So you get to your flight session and your instructor asks, “did you read that section on landings yet?” and you say “ah, no, not really”. Just then, you experience your flying account money get drained out sooner because now your instructor has to review more extensively the things he wants to cover in the flight, in the pre-flight briefing. Had you read that material beforehand then he would have skipped or skimmed over the material recognizing that you have a reasonable grasp of the things he wants to show you in the plane. Pre-Flight prep saves you big time in the briefing room and the airplane time.
The Aircraft is a horrible environment to learn something new, with the stress, noise, movements, yacking instructor. So you want to make the most of the things you do with the airplane while flying. It’s the place to practice the things that you have already learned. It’s a place to do stuff with your hands, feet and brain. Sure at times, your instructor will demonstrate new things, or fly the plane for you and do things with the plane that you would not have seen or done before. “hey, I have control, let me show you something that we are going to be doing next, or soon”… But at that point you will have many questions
So you go through your flying lesson and you do the aircraft handling that your instructor asks, and all is OK. You land, and complete the flight, fill out the papers and go away from the flight school. The rest of the day, or early evening, you review what the flying day was like and you go Hmmm. Why did my instructor do the landing the way he did? How does he do that? Why can’t I do that?
So you now realize that this is the opportunity to do some homework and review the mission of the day. “Just Because The Flight Is Over” does not mean that the learning has stopped. Many people go on with the rest of the week not giving more review thought to what went on during the last flight. They just barely do some minor review of what is to go on for the next flight. But some magic occurs in that reviewing the previous flight and getting your understanding of what you did wrong or what you did not like are clues that you can use to do some more homework.
Make a list of questions for the Instructor.
Practice the procedure routines for the different flight exercises that you have already completed. Commit these routines to memory. How you do Slow Flight, How you enter, and recover from a spin. How you set up your circuit, approach and landing.
Look up education, videos, anything on the internet to help you learn about your flying.
Read the manuals that your flying institutions provide, they are the backbone to what your flight instructor is going to do and show you.
Remember, the time you spend after each flight and before each flight is free flight training, you will not work so hard in the airplane and the briefing room with the pilot instructor that costs you big money.
The time you spend reviewing what you have done in the airplane that day, is a big deal that saves you good money. What if, as you sit there, with your coffee, you remember that demonstration of the approach your instructor did, but you were too distracted at the time being in the plane. Now, you review and remember just what he did and what he said at the time things were happening, just what was happening. AND Click… “I get why he did that”.
So you just taught yourself some flying and saved at least another circuit at, at dual rates. So next flight you remember, “I am going to try that, what he did on last flight” and so you do and it works.
The power of pre-flight and post flight preparation is a game changer, we all need to be working more, out of the plane, in our resting times, reviewing more and reading often.
The words your instructor says in the plane are words that come out of the textbooks. The last thing you need to be doing in the plane is not knowing a important word.
Take the time, do the homework read and review things you do and you will be a better pilot and save money for the future dream plane that you want, for real.
