Groundschool
 

No doubt there's lots about this somewhere within Pprune, so pls forgive a novice question.

Anyway, my Flying School (Cubair, Redhill), don't offer groundschool. Sure they'll answer any questions I've got, but currently I'm slogging my way thru Air Law and Human Performance, page-by-page.

My question is surely the learning would be reinforced by groundschool, or is it a waste of time.:confused:

Opinions.........?

Different people lean in different ways. If you prefer a more formal classroom style of learning then, ideally, that should be available to you. But it does cost more. Many people are willing to self-study for the exams, to save money and time. So I guess the demand for taught groundschool is relatively low, at least at the PPL level where the subjects are relatively easy.

I sympathise with your slogging through Airlaw, I struggled to learn it - my technique was to imagine how the information would be of use to me in a practical sense.

I did the ground school for air law and I found it a bit of a waste of time, the very large school in question just put the Pratt book on slides and read it out without adding much. I used it as more of an incentive to get started on the exams and then I self learnt the rest. This is what I think about the exams

Air Law - Very (very) dry subject because there isn't a great deal of understanding, just learning but it is ok to do yourself if you manage to keep your eyes open. Sitting on a wooden chair is advisable

Navigation - Shouldn't be a problem to self learn once you have started cross country.

Meterology - Some tricky concepts, worth the groundschool or asking an instructor to clarify bits and pieces

Human Factors - Mainly factual but relatively interesting, definetly self-learnable

R/T - "

Technical - Fair bit to learn but you can do most of it yourself

Performance and planning - Always better once you have done some practical performance and planning with your instructor

Hope this helps

I did all of my exams by self study. This was in the early 80's mind you, when there were (from memory) only three written papers and an oral exam taken with the examiner after the General Flight Test. All of my papers were first time passes, so self study can be done successfully.

The best available books then were the series written by Ron Campbell. While they were good, I think that Trevor Thom's books (which appeared a few years later) are better.

If you're happy to do so, I suggest that you obtain whatever books your club reccomends and work your way through them. I found that doing the sample questions was an important way of checking understanding and targeting areas requiring further study.

I had the advantage though of studying for my exams only a few years after finishing full time education, so I still had my "study skills".

Best of luck for the exams.

P

I am not convinced that groundschool is necessary for PPL training, but personal choice may depend not only on one's own disposition to self-guided study, but also on the quality of your instructor's briefings and bar chat (stude buys the beers, naturally).

The combination of reading the books, discussing the difficult bits with my instructor (informally, before or after a lesson) and then testing myself with the Confuser worked for me.

Don't forget that at CubAir you have access to Flyer magazine's Instructor of the Year (Ed) so there are no excuses!

TG.

:ok: Thanks to all for taking the tinme to advise a newbie!

My groundschool for PPL training (in 1992) consisted of a ten minute briefing before each flight followed ,if i really got lucky by five minutes after the flight.

I did get half an hour on the whizzwheel when I was struggling with Nav, but the rest was self briefing from Trevor Thom. I gather T T has been revised now as IIRC there were many mistakes in it.

But for PPL I'm sure its adequate.

If you've got a reasonable instructor your should be able to get him to answer anything that is not clear from the books.

Best "ground school" is a copy of the PPL Confuser. Get 90% in that and you are guaranteed to pass the PPL exams.