Show Notes
You can score in the mid-nineties on practice exams and still be studying the wrong thing entirely.Jess hit a question on her real written that she'd answered correctly forty times — worded in a way she'd never seen. This one is about the gap between a practice score and actual readiness, why the FAA stopped publishing its question bank, and the free five-second test that tells you whether you know something or just recognize it.In This Episode:• Why the practice score feels like the only honest feedback in all of flight training.• What the roughly ninety percent pass rate and low-eighties average score really tell you.• Why the FAA stopped publishing its question bank in 2008, and what that means for prep apps.• The four levels of learning from the Aviation Instructor's Handbook, and why a question bank can be beaten at the rote level.• The fluency illusion: how familiarity registers in your brain as knowledge.• How the ACS codes on your Airman Knowledge Test Report get handed straight to your examiner.• Why explaining something out loud exposes gaps that multiple choice hides.Key Takeaways:• Use the three-exams-at-ninety-five rule as a gate for scheduling your test, then keep studying the subjects between booking and test day.• Cover the answer choices, say your answer out loud, then look — recognition and knowledge produce identical practice scores.• Switch question sources once your scores get comfortable; a ten-point drop on a new bank shows you exactly what to study.• Work weight and balance, density altitude, fuel burn, and crosswind math on blank paper with no answer options steering you.• Save your test report, look up every ACS code you missed, and work those areas with your CFI before the checkride.Resources:Private Pilot Made Easy Ground School: https://pilotinstitute.com/course/part-61-private-pilot/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 — details in the show description.
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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.