Ppl equipment while training
 

Hi all,
So what all equipment did you use in and outside of the cockpit to make things a little more comfortable for yourself?
Did any of you use an a4 size kneeboard or smaller?

Welcome Sean,

Don't be too worried about having all of the right equipment when you fly. It's easy to have too much equipment, costing too much, and cluttering a cockpit, or going unused. I knee board is handy, though I've never used one. A4 would be much too large, consider the smallest one you can buy. Fly a while first, and see what you miss, then consider buying. Ask your instructor, then ask he/she if you really need what they recommend - maybe you don't, at least yet.

Once you're flying IFR, recording clearances and such does increase what you must have to be properly equipped.

A5. Elasticated round leg and velcro fastened. 2 penholder on side. Clip at top to hold plogs, and folds open, so that you can keep airfield plates in see-through pockets inside. Good investment - still using after 30 years.

What curlytips said. Nothing else until your instructor tells you that you need it.
Though (in the UK) it's worth getting the CAA half million chart for your area of the country and spending many hours learning the symbols from the chart legend.
Buy anything else you fancy. No problem. But be careful not to look a poser. Especially avoid expensive flight bags- a Tesco carrier bag is just as good.

Thanks guys, I use the a5 size with a strap, have my map and few pens few small things, I've had to cancel today for flying due to weather, I've a few hours logged alright but I was just curious how some of you were kitted out during your ppl phase :)

Sounds about right to me. Best of luck!

I got into a fellow's 182 to fly a flight check with him. A very well equipped, partly glass cockpit aircraft, with an additional: kneeboard on the pilot with an Ipad strapped to it, an Ipad on the control wheel, and an Ipad on a bendy stand fitted to a box in between the seats, which held heavens know what else. This pilot was not IFR qualified.

I pointed out that as the checking pilot, I could not reach the engine controls at all (third Ipad), and his reach was interfered. I insisted that Ipad three be removed before we flew, and unclipped fairly easily. He was over equipped.

In contrast, I once had to deliver a open cockpit aircraft a few hundred miles. I carried three photocopies of the relevant chart area (so I could have two blow away), and a wrist watch. I did just fine....

I agree with that. I learnt to fly helicopters in Perth,Australia with no doors. Cockpit management meant little or nothing apart from a chart you sat on.

Situational awareness should be taught long before the toys are allowed.

I totally agree with what you're saying :)
I'm not going to that extent lol

dont forget white shirt and gold epaulettes!

There was a growing habit a little while ago amongst the young not to wear a watch, instead relying on the (then new) smartphone for the time.

I joined a student for a navex and noticed the lack of timing device. He showed me his phone with the time on it, then tucked it under his thigh while we took off and set course. At the first waypoint, I asked him to note down the time, he whipped out his phone which of course had turned itself off. I lent him my watch. When we landed, I said you're not flying again without a watch. He spent less than £10 and got a fine timepiece, which I suspect he only wore for flying...

TOO
ps I've yet to find a C150 or PA28 with a working clock. Fortunately, the ANO allows the substitution of a personal timepiece.

Patience, humility, thirst for knowledge, eagerness to lean, respect for your instructors experience and perhaps pencil & paper

BRILLIANT!!!

:D

Clocks
 

Definitely need a good timer. In my early days, the simplest was to buy a Casio digital watch (about a fiver - probably similar today) take the wristband off, and velcro it to the centre of the yoke. Perfect for brakes off and on, and also had a timer function. Cheap!

More recently, a digital kitchen timer clipped to the side of the screen using a phone holder suction device (bought on motorway services) is larger and has two timer devices. Boots used to do a really good one, but now you need to surf to find one. Current one I use is "Brannan dual timer and clock". Same as old Boots.........

When my ( late ) wife decided to learn to fly she was unfortunate enough to walk into CABAIR these people sold her a flight case full of all sorts of overpriced stuff most of it never got used.

Being new to aviation she did not pick up on fact that the whole operation was just designed to extract as much money from the punters as they could, this attitude continued with the flying order book written in the same vain.

She was about to give up on flying when a friend suggested a move to another flying club, she never looked back and ended up owning two aircraft and putting about 700 hours in her log book before illness took her medical away.

The moral of the story seems to be don’t trust anyone who try’s to sell you more than you need ( usualy wrapped up in a flash package ).

Agree with above posts, you really don't need very much.
You probably already have one, or maybe your flight school supplies it for the trainers, but a good quality headset would be at the top of the list.

I'm trying to think what I've invested in...

From gliding, I have sunglasses (about my 10th pair at the rate i break them), a hat, a cheap digital wristwatch, a chart, some pens for the chart, a ruler marked in nautical miles, a glider pilot's licence, and an FRTOL.

Since starting my NPPL, so far I have invested in a logbook, an A5 clipboard, some Pooley's books and an Air Quiz subscription.

This collection of items lives in an old rucksack along with old food wrappers, gloves and half-used bottles of suncream.

I find this list hard to believe. No old batteries? When I switched flight bags a year or so ago, I found enough of them to fill a plastic sandwich bag.

As far as what I do use: folding A4-ish kneeboard (charts to the left, notes to the right), iPad on a yoke mount. Pens, couple of torches/flashlights for night flying. Headset (Bose A20) of course. Pretty much nothing else that I take out for most flights. I carry a generic PoH for my plane in my flightbag (not sure why since there's one in the plane anyway), and the Pilots' Guide to California Airports (Pooley's equivalent) since it's nice to have on paper even though they stopped issuing paper updates a couple of years back. An E6B and aviation ruler for old times' sake. Check(que)book, you never know. I have a pulse oximeter but haven't been up far enough to need it in several years - not much use in the UK anyway. Spare key.

Nearly everything that the pilot supplies outfits try to sell you is unnecessary. Not to say I haven't fallen for quite a lot of it over the years.

A5 kneeboard, still use it after 30 years!

A bottle of water, a torch (flashlight), and a current chart - I cut up the chart - no use including France or Scotland if I'm staying local....and a baby blanket. Gliders don't include heaters.....

And in the back of the Supercub, the operating handbook. Flying with a friend, with the Supercub doors open on a lovely warm day, suddenly the book (which had been forgotten in the back luggage area for years) came apart in the draft! My passenger managed to gather all but three of the pages, we found one on the tail after landing, but the other two were lost forever.