Show Notes
Weight and balance is the one preflight task with a right answer, and you can find it in about five minutes. Most of flying runs on judgment. This one runs on arithmetic. The airplane has a max weight, it has a range where the center of gravity is allowed to sit, and your loading either falls inside those numbers or it falls outside. Jess opens with a hot-day Cessna 150 near gross, a flight bag in the back, and a row of trees off the departure end. It's the flight that turned weight and balance from a form she filled out into something she genuinely respects. If you've been treating your W&B like a box to check before the fun part, this one reframes it. In This Episode: Why W&B feels like a formality through most of training, and the day that quietly changes
Weight vs. balance: how each one shows up in your takeoff roll, climb, landing, and stall recovery
The five-minute method Jess learned by hand, using arm, moment, and the graph in the back of the POH
Forward vs. aft CG explained as leverage, including why a nose-heavy airplane wants more back pressure in the flare
Key Takeaways: Use your specific airplane's weight and balance card, not the sample loading printed in the handbook
Run both takeoff and landing numbers, since fuel burns off in flight and can shift your CG
Build the full-sheet habit on the easy flights so it's automatic on the heavy, hot, tight ones
Resources: Free Pilot Institute VFR Flight Planning Sheet Your Flight Controls is produced in association with Pilot Institute. New episodes drop weekly. Got a question or a topic you want us to cover? Reach out in the comments!
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A controller called traffic at my two o'clock, three miles. I was already scanning, and I still found it late. That was on a long trip from Fayetteville, North Carolina up to Flint, Michigan, with flight following on for most of it. This is part two on radio work, what flight following really gives you, how to ask for it, and the order of operations at a towered field once the initial call stops being the hard part. Also: radio work is a depreciating skill. It builds fast with use and fades just as fast without it, and that changes how you should think about practice. In This Episode: • What flight following is in FAA terms — Radar Traffic Information Service, AIM 4-1-15 • The four basic radar services VFR aircraft get, and why separation is off that list • How to make the request, word for word, and what ATC sends back • Setting it up with ground control before you taxi instead of building it in the climb • The three habits that keep the service running once you are in the system • The kneeboard method that cuts down say-agains • The four readbacks the FAA requires at a towered field • Why every runway crossing needs its own clearance, one at a time • What rusty radio work sounds like, and how quickly it comes back Key Takeaways: • Ask for radar traffic information on your initial call to ground or clearance delivery, along with your direction of flight • Write every frequency down in order before engine start, so ATC is confirming your page rather than filling it • Read back the runway assignment, any clearance onto a runway, any hold short, and any line up and wait — every time • Hold at the line until a controller clears you across; crossings are issued one runway at a time • Tell the controller before you leave the frequency, then squawk twelve hundred • If it has been more than a month since you talked to a controller, plan one flight with radio work in it on purpose Resources: Free VFR Radio Call Sheet (Student Pilot Kneeboard) https://pilotinstitute.com/radio-comm-for-beginners/ Your Flight Controls is produced in association with Pilot Institute. New episodes drop weekly. Got a question or a topic you want us to cover? Reach out in the comments.