Let’s face it nobody likes ground school or exams. For many (well me, at least!) they were a penance to be completed as part of the reward of going flying. While many of us will doubtless have many fond memories of when we learned to fly the 14 instruments of torture en route to the ATPL, or ground exams as they are more correctly known, are something we’d rather place in the box marked ‘forget’. Assimilating huge volumes of information, some of it not necessarily intuitive, is always a challenge and everyone has their bugbear, mine was Air Law how about you?
So where does the Padpilot offering score over more traditional manuals and textbooks? We can start with the excellent animations and graphics that make otherwise thorny concepts clearly understood.
That’s always going to improve the going as you plough through the work. Moving swiftly on there is the structure which sees the programme broken into easily digestible chunks.
Even better for the neophyte helicopter pilot, is there is no need to wade through reams of elements applicable only to the fixed wing world. But for me the real winning elements are the end of chapter quizzes giving both students and their instructors the chance to identify knowledge shortfalls before there is a chance for those errors to become ingrained.
Having read and worked through two volumes of the series I offer a single thought. “I wish these had been around in my time”.
