Not speaking from any deeper knowledge, but "one student to another"-type advice...
a) You asked for tips, and you got plenty, so one more then:
Don't overthink it! It
will come together with experience; at our stage, it is
practice we need most.
b) Read up on and practice the checklist and procedures used at your school, but
don't do it any other way, no matter how sensible some pprune advice might seem... If we take what our instructor says, add in some good ideas of our own, and a few good suggestions from elsewhere, it'll all be a fine mess in the end, even if the individual ideas are great (been there, done that
).
For instance, at my club we take a very different approach to landing checks from what G-EMMA (and others here) speak about... Maybe theirs is better, maybe ours is, but either way I'm not even
considering changing until after I have my PPL! We have neither the knowledge nor the experience to go second-guessing our instructors, IMHO, so for better or worse, their method is the one we'll use...
c) Echoing the Flightsim advice, if you're even a tiny bit into such things... Has helped me tremendously, by being a far more immersive way of "dry flying". Not just for pattern training either; can go through the whole flight, including preflighting and actions on the ground before and after the flight, in the sim... Near useless (or worse!) for stick and rudder skills;
superb as a procedure trainer!
