AOPA Online Members Only -- AOPA ePilot Flight Training Edition -- Vol. 6, Issue 3

LESSON PREP
How do you prepare for your flight lessons? You check the weather. You bring along all the charts, publications, and pilot gear you'll need. But there is a lot more to it than that. Preparation for a cross-country flight should require the careful study of the planned route and dedicating a few practice sessions on the ground to work up flight logs and performance calculations.

A flight session consisting of ground reference maneuvers and steep turns should be preceded by consulting your training materials on the principles behind those maneuvers, plus a look at the Private Pilot Practical Test Standards (PTS) so you'll know what tolerances-governing altitude, bank angles, roll-out headings, and so forth-not to exceed. Speaking of the PTS, it also provides some valuable guidance for pilots who want to be on the same page as the examiner about how all tasks and knowledge elements should be performed or demonstrated on flight test day. Under the title of each task in the PTS are references to the official texts. Some of the tasks, such as ground reference maneuvers, have only one text listed as reference material. For those maneuvers the reference is FAA-H-8083-3, the Airplane Flying Handbook (AFH). Other tasks list multiple references. Not all the references are training texts. Note that for the performance maneuver, steep turns, the references are the AFH and the pilot's operating handbook (POH) for your training aircraft. Why the POH? Because the maneuver can impose a high load factor on the aircraft, and the POH will provide the correct airspeed to use-one that will not exceed the aircraft's design maneuvering speed.

The PTS is your "everything you need to know" guide to your practical test, as discussed in the April 5, 2002, Training Tips. Regardless of the study aids you use-and they come in an excellent variety of formats and media-a good policy for the conscientious student pilot or flight instructor is to consider no flight-test task completed until the references given in the PTS have been thoroughly reviewed as well.

DON'T MAKE ADIZ PERMANENT, BOYER TELLS FEDERAL PANEL
"I implore you; don't take this bad idea and make it permanent!" Nothing summed it up better than AOPA President Phil Boyer's presentation Wednesday to collected federal security near Virginia's Dulles International Airport, deep inside the Washington, D.C., Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ). Boyer was only the first of some 200 pilots willing to explain exactly why the ADIZ is a bad idea. Airline security rules have changed because of risk-based assessments, yet general aviation still suffers from misconceptions and misinformation. For the first time in public, Boyer revealed his own personal bad experience with the ADIZ. His wife, Lois, the pilot in command at the time, was wrongly accused of violating the ADIZ while the couple was flying their ADS-B-equipped Cessna 172 over familiar terrain on a Sunday afternoon. "The FAA assured us they would take steps to make sure this kind of mistaken identity never happened again," Boyer told security officials. "It still happens all the time." Many speakers said that the ADIZ did nothing to stop terrorists, but instead punished law-abiding pilots. And others pointed out the dire economic impact. Boyer went on to detail all of the steps that have been taken to improve general aviation security since the 9/11 attacks, including AOPA's Airport Watch Program. "And don't just credit AOPA," said Boyer. "Credit the more than 600,000 pilots in this country that, like a neighborhood watch, are looking around the airport for untoward things happening." For more, including a seven-minute video clip featuring excerpts from the meeting, see AOPA Online.

HAVE YOU UPDATED YOUR AOPA MEMBER PROFILE?
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SPORTY'S TEST PREP SOFTWARE NOW HAS FLASHCARD FUNCTION
If a knowledge test is looming, it's essential to study and prepare. Sporty's "Test Prep Guides" on CD-ROM have a new "flashcard" function that let you answer questions without looking at the answers to truly test your knowledge. A click on the screen will let you know if you were correct. You can view tables, charts, or figures on the screen, or print them out ahead of time to help you study more effectively. All "Test Prep Guides" let users take randomly generated timed practice tests and create individual study sessions in which you can choose only the topic you need to review. Software is available for private/recreational pilot, instrument, and commercial knowledge tests. Each is $39.95. For more information or to order, see the Web site.

Note: Products listed have not been evaluated by ePilot editors unless otherwise noted. AOPA assumes no responsibility for products or services listed or for claims or actions by manufacturers or vendors.