passed JAR PPL Air Law, Now what??

[fire-fox]

Hi I'm not an FI but guessing this is as good a place as any to ask my question.

I have just passed my air law exam but never thought to ask my FI which exam subject would be the best to study for next. unfortunately i can not contact them at the moment as they are out of the country (so am I, witch is why i guessed this would be the best place for an answer)?

I can see the three best would be Met, Nav or Comms/radio but witch is the most likely to hold some one back after they go solo?

thanks in advise and i hope every one has a happy new year.:ok:

[FREQUENTFLYER1234]

Personally I'd go for the Comms and HPL as they're pretty straight forward and you'll really feel like you're getting through them.

[ab33t]

Well there are two schools of thought get the difficult ones out the way and then relax on the easy ones

[ozbeck]

In my opinion the best one to do in order to contribute to your progress is the Comms. The verbal practical part of this really helped me to make the RT second nature, early on. The benefit of this was that I didn't spend time in the air wondering what I was going to say next. For me this greatly reduced any nerves about flying solo and eased the way for learning everthing else.

When doing solo nav you will need to be able to plan a route, make track corrections in the air and read a chart, so the Nav exam should be a close second.

Your FI will not let you fly solo unless the weather is suitable but I'm sure you will be aiming to be making your own fly/don't fly decisions as early as possible and, at minimum, you should be able to understand the sources of information and to be able to interpret TAfs, wind and weather charts so the Met exam would come third for me.

The exam of least practical use is HP so why not do it last.

Also it may be worth checking whether or not your flying school have rules about exam requirements for solo flying (beyond the requirement for Law), they may for example require Nav to be passed before solo navs in which case your question gets answered automatically.

Good luck with the exams.

[fire-fox]

thanks all,

that confirms my thinking behind what i should do. just needed to make sure.

ill comms as Ozbeck and FREQUENTFLYER1234 suggest as i have felt a bit lost (verbally) at times :\

[DFC]

After Air Law do Meteorology. Then Technical and Performance. Then Navigation.

The reason is that you need to understand the met element of your flying so that you can start making go/no decisions regarding flights (on which your instructor will provide guidance and ultimate decision).

Aircraft technical / performance is next because this covers many aspects of aircraft operation and performance that you need to know before starting navigation enroute flying and landing at other aerodromes.

Rather than treating HPL as an easy subject that can be locked away, why not treat it as a useful aid to your operation. Most of it is common sense but until you have some experience it is impossible to see much of the common bits that make sense of it all.

The R/T test should be done last. The test involves a simulated crosscountry flight and until you have done some crosscountries and been shown DAAIS, DACS etc etc it will not be as easy as it should be.

Most importantly, learning the subject matter for the course should nto be tied simply to exams. You should be learning all the subjects from day 1. It is a PPL course not a series of courses that at the end get you a PPL.

Your RTF/FTO is required to provide you with the groundschool laid down in the sylabus. Make use of that and if it is a good school then the ground learning will parallel the air learning and your knowledge will increase with your skill.

Recent accidents in the UK are highlighting a sever failing in many training aspects. We have had a PPL who could not file a flight plan fly their aircraft into the side of an Irish Mountain killing all on board. Filing of flight plans is on the PPL sylabus!!!!! However, the biggest failing was not being able to recognise dangerous weather.

As long as students can ring in and ask "are we flying" and receive a yes/no answer they will never learn to make a good informed decision for themselves.

Students need to get into the habit and practice of checking the weather and making decisions from day 1 and schools should not tell a student that say "the weather is not suitable" that "we will go anyway / have a look and see".!!!!!

Until the student is shown that the weather is different from what they believe and understand their error then the only place to be is on the ground.

It is about time that the CAA atleast required an PPL candidates to file a correct full flight plan as part of the LST.

[BEagle]

It is about time that the CAA atleast required an PPL candidates to file a correct full flight plan as part of the LST. (sic)

What on earth for? A plain vanilla day VFR PPL pilot in the UK has absolutely no requirement for a FPL.

[fire-fox]

hi after reading all the above post's. and the fact that having a look around the house. i already have the book for Met (Pooley's APM air law/Met) but not the Com's book and the my local pilots shop is closed till next week end :ugh:

Ive started doing met. thanks for all your info and comment.

[DFC]

What on earth for? A plain vanilla day VFR PPL pilot in the UK has absolutely no requirement for a FPL.


OK. I'll re-phrase that. A candidate for a licence that entitles them to fly outside the UK should be required to file a full flight plan as part of the LST.

Correct completion of flight plans are already a required part of the JAA PPL Sylabus. However, look at the flight plan form as filed by the pilot included in a recent accident report about a UK aircraft and one has to ask why a relatively experienced pilot in PPL terms could not fill in abasic flight plan.

Perhaps you have hit the nail on the head - RTFs are now churning out PPLs that are not trained to fly beyond the coast.