Question 4146. What procedure is recommended if a pilot should unintentionally penetrate embedded thunderstorm activity?
C — Set power for recommended turbulence penetration airspeed and attempt to maintain a level flight attitude.
Let's get to the stormy truth right up front. I hate school, and I especially hate tests. I took a 3-day intensive private pilot written ground school nigh on a decade ago, given by my first FBO, in which my class spent a total of 24 late-summer hours inside a locked, windowless room, highlighting every presumably right answer in a thick government-issued test book. "The correct answer will jump right out at you," the pitiless drone of an instructor assured us every hour on the hour. A couple of guys took to setting their watches by the announcement.
As for me, enough of the answers jumped out at me that I scored a guaranteed passing grade — barely — of 73 percent on the test. But the horror lived on; the last time anything jumped out at me (it was in Central Park), I screamed and ran. It was an elderly jogger, but you can never be too sure.
Now, though, after avoiding the inevitable for years, I telephoned my local branch of American Flyers to reserve a seat in the next session of its instrument written ground school. The American Flyers facility closest to me is at Long Island Mac Arthur Airport near Islip in the middle of New York's Long Island.
A cheerful desk staffer there directed me to a pile of doughnuts and a pot of fresh, hot coffee. A couple of the other students had already arrived (I'll call them Encyclopedia Brown and Chris Darden), and by their conversation they'd already had experience with instrument flight. As I looked on, the conversation turned so dark and stormy that I found myself forced to descend rapidly on the nearest desk while I was still clear of clouds.
4186. When are severe weather watch bulletins (WW) issued?
C — Unscheduled and issued as required.
There were eight of us spread out in the classroom when our ground school instructor arrived. Greg McGee was tall and thin, with a shock of brown hair and a pleasant sounding Irish lilt to his voice, which I thought especially important because I figured it'd be reading me the answers to 941 questions at the approximate rate of one every 96 seconds. After a few initial pleasantries we got right down to work, starting with a practice test. I discovered only at the end of the course that I had scored 60 percent — just 10 points below the passing level.
4202. A ceiling is defined as the height of the
C — Lowest layer of clouds or obscuring phenomena aloft that is reported as broken or overcast.
After I became the second to turn this test in, I joined Chris Darden near the coffee pot, and we appropriated the remaining doughnuts and coffee. "How can you take tests so fast?" I asked, chomping a mouthful of dough and cream filling.
"Practicing for the bar exam," he chewed back.
After everyone else had finished, we filed back into the room and this time really got down to business. Within a few seconds I could tell that this one was going to be different from my private ground school. First, Greg would start each chapter with a short lecture; in this case — the initial chapter of our textbook — he covered IFR requirements. Second, the guy had an original wit. Take, for example, his comment on this weather theory question:
4155. A jet stream is defined as a wind of
C — 50 knots or greater.
"That's all it is," Greg said. "A strong enough blow dryer and you'll have a jet stream in your bathroom."
During and after the Chapter 1 lecture he answered our questions, then directed us to the test questions in the back of the book and handed out the first "stage test." There was a carrot attached, too: After each stage test — 11 in all — another break would follow. It wasn't even 10 a.m. on the first day, and I had already surpassed the total break quota meted out by my previous ground school. Of course, that's nothing like what my father said he had to go through for his ground school: He walked 6 miles barefoot through a blizzard every day — even in summer — just to get to his tiny one-room airport.
On my second break I talked with Ed Farrell, director of the Mac Arthur branch of American Flyers. Farrell said that the company has been around for 56 years and does nothing else but train pilots. "Even I couldn't go out and rent an airplane here," he announced. The bottom line, though, is that the company has the test preparation thing down to a precise science.
After returning to class, I noticed that a pattern was emerging: When Greg asked a question, Encyclopedia Brown would hop right in with the answer. And so a race developed among the other students to beat him to the punch. Being no surly bunch of idiots (indeed, all of us were surly certificated pilots), each time at least one of us managed get to the buzzer and score first unless the question was exceedingly complex and difficult. Then it belonged to Encyclopedia. During one of the breaks I quizzed Mr. Brown and found that he was already a CFII. He was here to take the test to become an instrument ground instructor — and he hoped to snag a job at American Flyers. That explained why he always wore a tie.
The first afternoon went by fast, partially because we'd managed to turn it into the game of Beat the Brown. Still, it felt good to get back home that evening. And lousy to be at Mac Arthur so early the next morning, which we spent looking at poor, blurry black-and-white government-issue depictions of navigation instruments, attempting to decode our location from them and a map of, say, a plan view of an airport and a few navigational fixes. It was tough sledding: I've logged only a couple of hundred hours, sure, but I've never suddenly awakened in a cockpit and, blind to everything but two VORs, had to decide whether it's time to retract the gear or set the flaps.
Still, I became more and more impressed by our instructor and especially his capacity to remember an anecdote illustrating every question. For example, one on standard terminology reminded him of the time one of his students was told by ATC to "Repeat Clearance," and the student kept radioing back "Clearance." As it turned out, like any New York Irishman worthy of his brogue, Greg had been a bartender.
4143. During the life cycle of a thunderstorm, which stage is characterized predominantly by downdrafts?
B — Dissipating
The third and final day, I had the distinct feeling that I'd been drinking from a high-pressure firehose during the past 2 days. This day I also noticed that the signs of information overload had set in with my classmates as well — and that, along with the closed classroom, was making everyone feel disoriented, sleepy, and headachey.
4809. Why is hypoxia particularly dangerous during flights with one pilot?
B — Symptoms of hypoxia may be difficult to recognize before the pilot's reactions are affected.
We tried to reset the oxygen controls in the classroom to below 12,500 feet (answer C to question 4045), and then even Greg started pointing out the many examples of what he called the "conspiracy theory." In one question we were asked to find the pair of frequencies (besides 121.5) upon which we could receive a particular flight service station. Of the three pairs — and six possible frequencies — given, we could find only one on the chart: 122.2. We tried searching for its companion, 122.3, but no luck. When such inconsistencies arose, Greg advised, we should go with the closest answer. Also, if we weren't sure of an answer we should choose the longest, most complex one (that is, C — 122.3 and 123.3).
At one point he even allowed that the correct answer might (although he didn't use these exact words) jump out at us. Although I understand that, when in doubt, the first answer you chose is usually the correct one, I nonetheless cringed at this single similarity of sentiments between my past and present ground school instructors. And I had grown so fond of Greg.
As the long final day wore on, it seemed that we tended to establish ourselves on course, then veer off the airway with things like flying: jabbing hand signals, manly anecdotes about our favorite N numbers, and the impossibly huge fuel quantities that some friend of a friend had been able to load on his Cessna 172 after landing. Greg somehow always steered back onto the airway in time to make a changeover point or an initial approach fix, and then we would continue onward to sluggishly tackle a complex question about flight planning. Just after 5 p.m. and a short chapter on medical factors related to IFR flight, the ground school course was officially over.
We were encouraged to take the test as soon as possible — preferably the next day — while it was all still fresh in our minds, but I thought I would take a day and study. I spent several hours staring off into space instead. And so it was that on Tuesday, at the more civil time of noon, I entered American Flyers one last time.
There was another important difference between ground schools past and present. I'd gotten my private certificate sometime before silicon was discovered, so I had taken the private written with analog paper and pencil and got the test results back within a month. Now we have this newfangled computerized test. There was a delay getting started at the terminal — I noticed my last name on the screen had only one "t," which set my Bureaucracy Alert warning light to flashing. Sure enough, they had to re-download (and other computer jargon) my test, but now I was free to have at it. I finished in just under an hour. Right away, after pressing End, a graph popped up on the screen to illustrate the most pressing question: Yes, I had passed.
No, not prodigiously. In truth, I was a little disappointed at first, because I'm sure I know the pertinent material pretty well. But as I walked outside I felt the warm sunshine on my skin; heard small airplanes roaring off the runway; and, for the first time, saw that the leaves were beginning to turn their autumnal colors. And I was one step closer to finally getting my instrument rating.
Phil Scott, author of Shoulders of Giants: A History of Human Flight to 1919, published by Addison-Wesley in 1995, has been a pilot for 11 years. He holds a private pilot certificate and is still working on his instrument rating.
