All of Rod Machado’s books are now available as custom iPad applications or PDFs for your Andriod-based tablet. This includes Rod Machado’s new Sport Pilot “Airplane” Handbook, too. These are far more than just ordinary e-books for your iThing or Tablet. Download the free iPad book sample app and check them out for yourself. If you choose the iPad app, you’ll receive book updates any time Rod makes changes. Click here to ORDER.

Rod Machado’s IFR Handbook as an Audiobook!

Finally! It’s here! Welcome to your instructor in an audiobook. Written and narrated by veteran ground and flight instructor Rod Machado, this audiobook contains 30 hours of recorded material. It’s presented in a warm, conversational manner and spiced with humor. Rod’s tried and true methods of instruction, honed through more than 39 years of teaching experience, have achieved exceptional results with thousands of aviation students.
Now you can enjoy Rod’s popular Instrument Pilot’s Handbook during your daily commute, or at home in the comfort of your own chair. Download these MP3 files to your MP3 player (DVD does not play in car) and learn or review important concepts during those otherwise wasted hours that many of us spend driving. As one pilot said, “I felt like I had a flight instructor right there in the car with me.”
While you can listen to the first ten chapters of the book without referring to the text, you’ll still want to use the actual Instrument Pilot’s Handbook as a reference for reviewing pictures, graphs and many of the incidental ASRS stories scattered throughout the text. This exciting new audiobook is the key to learning faster and better, while maximizing use of your scarce time.  Click Here for product info, to order DVD or for direct download now!

Rod’s Books Available on Your iPad or iPhone

All of Rod Machado’s books are now available as custom iPad and iPhone applications, with unique capabilities. This includes Rod Machado’s new Sport Pilot “Airplane” Handbook, too. These are far more than just ordinary e-books for your iThing. Download the free book sample app and check them out for yourself. With these apps, you’ll receive book updates any time Rod makes changes. No more having to purchase a new book every year to keep up with major changes in aviation. While you’re at it, check out all of Rod’s new downloadable videos by clicking here.

The Ultimate “Minimalist” Private Pilot Syllabus

This link takes you to a page where you can download a PDF of the FAA’s original private pilot syllabus published in 1971. This syllabus was found in the back of the old FAA Flight Instructor Handbook which is no longer available. The newer flight instructor handbook no longer contains a syllabus.

This is a minimalist syllabus and is one of the very best syllabi I’ve found for preparing someone for the private pilot certificate–or the sport pilot certificate (no need to do electronic navigation or some instrument training). It’s the method by which thousands upon thousands of pilots successfully earned their pilot certificate over the years with minimum cost.

What makes this syllabus unique is that it’s a “Stick and Rudder” syllabus and makes no attempt to teach a student things he or she doesn’t need to immediately know during flight training. I heartily recommend using this syllabus for anyone training under Part 61 of the regulations. For students training under Part 141 of the regulations, they should use the syllabus the FAA has approved for that particular flight school.

And, of course, if you feel that other aspects of aviation should be added to this syllabus, then have at it. But please remember that your objective when teaching someone how to fly is to “teach them to fly.” Your objective is not to make them into the general aviation version of an “airline pilot lite.” Since private pilot training is already scenario-based by design, you’ll see that there are no make-believe flight scenarios in these lessons with which to distract the student. These lessons also assume that you’ll take your student to the practice area and actually “practice” the flight maneuvers listed. You are not expected to take your student on a cross country flight (however short) while you simultaneously try teaching them how to fly. (Read my AOPA Pilot Article titled, In Defense of Stick and Rudder Training due out in March 2012 for more info on the value of stick and rudder training.)

For the student reading this, keep in mind that this syllabus provides for ground instruction prior to each lesson. It’s important to understand that your ability to do well in the air is based on having a lot of good ground instruction. In fact, an acceptable format is to have at least one hour of ground instruction for every hour of flight instruction given. And you would be expected to pay for your instructor’s time at his or her full hourly rate, too (in the long run you’ll end up paying a lot less for your training as a result of good ground instruction).

What does ground instruction offer you? It makes the lessons far more meaningful. Good ground instruction and a lot of it is what allows students to solo in 10-14 hours and obtain their private pilot certificates in the range of 45 hours (training two to three times a week, of course). That’s a fact. Now, I realize that a one-to-one hourly ratio of ground to flight instruction is a lot for some folks (in particular, their instructors who want to fly), but this certainly isn’t an unreasonable request. Those flight schools offering accelerated flight training who are able to move students through the private pilot curriculum in three weeks or less (with approximately 42 hours of flight time) do so because they provide a lot of ground training prior to each lesson.

So try convincing your flight instructor to spend more time with you on the ground explaining the details of the lesson, reviewing what’s expected of you, running through the procedures, steps and techniques to be practiced.

Additionally, many of the higher order cognitive skills that are all the rage to teach nowadays (situational awareness, aviation decision making, risk assessment and so on) can be learned just as well on the ground or in a simulator as they can in the air (no, not all of them, but certainly most of them). In fact, these skills are often better acquired on the ground by reading good books, studying DVDs and/or attending aviation seminars in person or via the web.

Finally, for any student reading this, send your instructor this link. Let him or her know that you are interested in using a “minimalist” syllabus (this one or another one your instructor prefers) for flight training. Of course, your instructor knows best and will decide whether or not this fits his or her training philosophy.

Sincerely,

Rod Machado

Rod’s Books Available on Your iPad or iPhone

All of Rod Machado’s books are now available as custom iPad and iPhone applications, with unique capabilities. This includes Rod Machado’s new Sport Pilot “Airplane” Handbook, too. These are far more than just ordinary e-books for your iThing. Download the free book sample app and check them out for yourself. With these apps, you’ll receive book updates any time Rod makes changes. No more having to purchase a new book every year to keep up with major changes in aviation. While you’re at it, check out all of Rod’s new downloadable videos by clicking here.

The Cost of Learning to Fly

At a recent aviation seminar, I listened to a fellow lament the substantial cost of learning to fly. He confessed to spending upwards of $14,500 to obtain his private pilot certificate. Ka-ching! To him, aviation was too expensive for the average Joe. So I asked a few questions about his flight training experience. Here’s what I discovered.

When our friend, Lament Man, signed up for flight training the FBO suggested that he train in the airplane he’d most likely fly after receiving his certificate. That resulted in scheduling a technically advanced (glass cockpit) airplane for his lessons.

When I asked The Lamenter how he’d selected a flight instructor, he said the FBO simply assigned him one—as if they opened a closet, pulled one off a rack and said, “Here, make this fit.” Furthermore, he never used any type of flight simulation device at home to assist in his training. The FBO told him to stay away from desktop simulators because they don’t handle like real airplanes.

Are you hearing the warning klaxons sound? Our friend made choices that dramatically increased the cost of his flight training, most likely doubling the price he paid for his private pilot certificate. Surely there’s a way to earn the private license at less cost, right? There is. Let me explain.

If you elect to do your primary training in a technically advanced airplane (TAA), then you should have a technically advanced bank account. That’s one having a big pipe that moves money from your bank directly to the FBO’s bank. TAAs often rent at twice the cost of traditional two- and four-place aircraft. If you’re on a budget, there’s no good reason to start training in anything but the simplest airplane that you can afford. If that’s a J-3 Cub or an LSA, all the better. Learning in an airplane with traditional gauges instead of a glass cockpit won’t make you less of a pilot. But it will most definitely make you a pilot. As a budget conscious primary student, that is your objective. You can learn to poke buttons on advanced avionics equipment just as easily right after you graduate from private pilot school.

Here is where it’s important to understand our all-too-human nature. People respond to incentives, and flight instructors are people. Given a choice between a TAA and a basic training airplane, and without any input from you, a flight instructor might suggest that you learn in a TAA. And why shouldn’t he? To him it’s exciting, because the cockpit lights up like a Christmas tree on steroids. So, unless you can afford to fly such a machine, you’d better say that there’s no way you’re going to pay for a TAA today. Persist to insist on flying an affordable basic trainer. If the instructor suddenly feigns a long-term illness or claims he’s been called to join the French Foreign Legion, then you’ve just eliminated an instructor who was more interested in flying an airplane for his entertainment than flying with you for your training. Ka-ching! You’ve just saved some money.

Walking into a flight school without any idea of the type of instructor you want and need is also a very bad strategy. This is why you want to be an educated consumer. You want to find a flight instructor who loves to teach, and who uses a very simple and practical syllabus that emphasizes the essentials of stick and rudder flying.

In one sense, some parts of our aviation training industry have come under the influence of a very big Jedi mind trick. What trick is that? It’s the belief that it’s not possible to produce a safe, competent private pilot close to the minimum flight time specified in the FARs. While the reasons for this are far too numerous to elaborate here, let it be said that a private pilot taught primarily with emphasis on stick and rudder skills is far less likely to end up bending an airplane or a few bones. Statistically, nearly half of all accidents are the takeoff, approach, landing, stall and spin type. Good stick and rudder skills are the antidote to these problems.

So how can you identify a good stick and rudder instructor? I suggest you find out how long on average it takes for an instructor’s students—those who train two to three times a week—to obtain their private pilot certificate. Compare these numbers to the national average training time (approximately 70.1 hours) and the FAA minimum time for the private certificate (40 hours). You’re looking for an instructor capable of training closer to the FAA’s minimum than to the national average training time.

Finally, Lament Man’s FBO wasn’t incorrect in stating that a desktop flight simulator doesn’t handle like a real airplane. On the other hand, I’ve flown real airplanes that didn’t handle like real airplanes. When using a desktop simulation device, you’re not trying to replicate the actual flying experience. Your objective is to reinforce the motor, perceptual and cognitive skills you learned on the previous lesson. Any reasonable desktop simulator will serve this function, and such a device can easily reduce the time and cost of flight training by 10%.

Is flight training too expensive? It almost certainly will be if you’re not an educated consumer. So, find yourself a good flight instructor, a two-place steam gauge airplane, some simulation software and you’re in a position to earn a private license at a much more reasonable cost.

All of Rod Machado’s books are now available as custom iPad and iPhone (3GS and 4, not 3G) applications, with unique capabilities. These are far more than just ordinary e-books for your iThing. With these apps, you will receive book updates any time Rod makes changes. No more having to purchase a new book every year to keep up with major changes in aviation.

Every word and illustration is there, for your reading and viewing pleasure. It’s all in vivid color, and easily portable. This is the optimal way to take Rod with you anywhere you go.

Each book has a detailed and easily referenced table of contents that provides direct access to any topic, and there is a comprehensive search feature that provides instant reference to specific words or phrases along with the page numbers, title and subchapter where those references are located. Bookmarks? You bet. You can bookmark any page for reference, too.

Read a full page at a time in portrait mode, or go to landscape mode for a larger view of a little less territory. Turn the page with at the flip of a finger, just as you do with a paper book, and enlarge any spot with the pinch gesture.

Purchasing any book app allows you to read it on both your iPad and iPhone. For those without an iPad (you know you want one, right?), you can read the book on the iPhone. This does require a bit of finger spreading, but for many pilots the iPhone is their go-to mobile device. Pocket or Pad, the choice is now yours. Click here to visit app page.