Study material for PPL
Hi Gally2,
I have been out of flying for about five years or so, so you must forgive me if some of my advice is a bit vague. But I'll do my best.
First of all, there are two main ranges of books for PPL, the Trevor Thom series and the Jeremy Pratt series.
Mr. Thom has been dead for many years, so current editions of the books in the series named after him have been written by different authors (and almost certainly by two or more different people).
I have no idea whether Mr. Pratt is still in the world of the living or who actually writes his book series; (anybody know)?
Of the two, my own personal preference (when I bought new books in about 2005) was for the Jeremy Pratt series. I found the writing style in the Thom series heavy and stodgy and the type face harder on the eyes. However that is purely a personal view.
One thing not to fall for is to be talked into buying the PPL 'kit' which consists of a cheap pilot case full of J Thom books a basic whizz wheel and some cheap nav instruments. This will make you shell out upward of £200 up front, will tie you in to the Thom series and will remove all opportunity to exercise personal choice over your nav instruments. (For example, if you have ambitions of going commercial later then you may as well by a CRP-5 whizz wheel to begin with rather than get the CRP-1 included in the kit and then have to pay much more for a 5 later). If you want a pilot case, there used to be a very good 'Pierre Cardin' case available for about £20 mail order.
My advice would be to buy your text books one by one over a period and as you need them. Each time you buy, go to a pilot shop and browse among the textbooks and choose the one you feel best able to work with. The result will probably be that you will choose some books from the Thom series and some from the Pratt series and one or two odd ones from other sources.
The PPL Confuser has been out of print for a good many years (as also has been the IMC Confuser). The 'Confusers' were books of questions of the same sort used in the PPL ground examinations. Essentially they were books of multiple choice questions each giving four answers to choose from. They were very good in their day, but as the years pass I suspect they will be losing their relevance to modern day flying, especially in regard to aviation law. (Don't risk using an out of date book on aviation law).
Rather than chase around looking for obsolete books I suggest you subscribe to an on-line question service. I never used these for PPL; (I originally did my PPL in 1960), so I can't tell you the names and web addresses of the on-line question banks but I am sure others will be able to. I would imagine these will be much better for a current student than the confusers.
There could also be other possibilities. I seem to remember that a few years ago a series of DVDs was put on the market which were effectively textbooks provided in animated form. (Rather like the series OATS published for the ATPL). I would guess that these would be excellent as they would deliver the knowledge in a much more easily assimilated form. Here again, I can't tell you the name of the series or whether it is still available, but I am sure others will be able to tell you.
Anyway, I hope this helps.
Good luck with your training.
BP.