I've just passed my PPL Skills Test (
yippee) and while I wait for the little brown deposit through my letter box (UK PPL Licenses are apparently delivered in a dark brown folder), I thought I'd make a list of some reading material that motivated and educated me during the course. This is in addition to the standard PPL course material (I used the Trevor Thom books which were enough on their own for self-study).
Several people have documented their PPL training in great detail as blogs or eBooks, which gives some insight into the frustration of circuits, aspects of the different parts of the course and that everyone really does get the same syllabus.
These might not be to everyones taste, but it takes courage to publish the “warts and all” events of learning to fly and nobody is forced to read them, although many do.
Those I read included (in no particular order)
- Leia Fee, who learnt on a tight budget within the 45 hour minimum
- Andy Hawkins, who learnt at Brize and has now also done IMC
- Michael, who kick-started his training in Spain but learnt near Oxford
- Stevelup, how learnt at Gloucester and now owns a share at Oaksey Park
I also read a
about Phil Stone, a management consultant from Newcastle who learnt from scratch in 3 weeks in Florida. This certainly put me off this option (taking 3 weeks out isn’t really feasible for me anyway). The pressure on candidates taking this path is really very strong, despite it being a hobby, and I suspect there is still some learning about UK environment required.
There are several podcasts on iTunes worth listening too – some variable in quality and some very much better than others – mostly from the US. I haven’t found anything from a UK PPL pilot yet. Some record two-way radio conversation between tower and pilot, giving a commentary on what’s going on. (This is almost certainly illegal to publish in the UK). I found it useful even if the radio technique isn’t the same as the UK (there is no separate VHF radio practical exam for the FAA PPL course). One or two are video rather than just audio, which I can’t say I found much more useful. For those interested - the Student Pilot Podcast episode 24 explains the gizmos required to video your own flights.
Flaps podcast is a fairly recent monthly edition – not just for PPLs – humorous style, covering topics of interest to GA pilots in general.
Finally, I’d say I also found the pprune forum very helpful – there is a huge archive of useful posts - and following many of the threads allows the newbie to figure out how some things (should) work in real life, including after passing the test. It also gives some insight into what you can do once you've passed.
Hope the above is useful.
Thanks to all those who contributed to any of the above.
SDiW