Training and Safety Tip: Tab as you go
Increasingly, flight students rely on electronic books for ground studies, with one notable exception: the Federal Aviation Regulations/Aeronautical Information Manual, better known as the FAR/AIM, a classic printed book that is published annually, updated to reflect changes to the regulations and to best practices.
And student pilots, pretty much since the invention of the sticky note, have heavily bookmarked the physical, paper FAR/AIM, and for good reason. It’s more than a thousand pages long and includes a lot of material a student doesn’t need, for example, rules and regulations for more advanced pilot certificates and ratings, flying other types of aircraft, and more. Bookmarks help you to quickly find relevant sections when you need to confirm details or refresh your memory, like during open-book oral exams.
But while a pre-tabbed volume is fine, I was recently exposed to a better way of using tabs that goes beyond the traditional "here's where to find X." I was chatting with a flight instructor candidate named Jonathan, and he shared with me what will now, and forever, be known to me as the "Jonathan Method." As a student, he bought an un-tabbed book and a set of tabs. But rather than burning the midnight oil tabbing out the entire book like his peers, he treated the tabs not merely as bookmarks, but also as study guides. He would take a tab, find the appropriate pages, read and study the section, then affix the tab as both a ";mission accomplished" checkbox and a quick locator of the regulation in the future. Meanwhile, as he worked his way through the sack of tabs, the unattached ones served as a work list, a quick visual way of determining how much more work he had ahead.
Absolutely tabbing brilliant. Thanks, Jonathan, for the tip. And to the rest of you: Tab your way to success; one tab at a time.
