Flight Training - September 2012 - 13

Closer to home
Finally a solo after many delays
“I’VE BEEN TAKING lessons for almost two years and I’ve gone through four instructors and logged 37 hours before I got to solo. The hardest part for me was the two-and-a-half-hour round-trip drive to the nearest flight school. I jumped at the opportunity when I heard a Cessna 172SP was available to rent at an airport just 15 minutes away. After a few lessons my new instructor said I was ready, but then I had to wait a month for just the right day when the weather was good, my dad was off work, and my instructor was available. I learned I was the first locally trained student to solo at the new Branson West airport. I can remember almost every lesson I’ve taken, but this is one I don’t think I’ll ever forget.” Share your experience on Flight Training’s Facebook page.

SUCCESS STORY

AOPA SUMMIT

New student learning experiences slated
MASTER CROSSWIND LANDINGS, get a handle on avionics, ace your checkride. At AOPA Aviation Summit, you’ll connect with experts and new tools that will help you retain and recall critical information when you need it the most. AOPA will offer more than 100 hours of education in Palm Springs, California, October 11 through 13. “Ask the CFI” roundtable discussions will cover topics such as making better landings, passing your checkride, managing risk, choosing a CFI, learning avionics, overcoming challenges in flight training, Name: Anthony Barnum what to do with your certificate after the Age: 20 checkride, and more. Event: First solo Seminars will feature topics such as Where: Branson West “How to Pass Any Checkride,” “iPad 101,” Municipal-Emerson “Aircraft Buying Workshop,” and “ATC Field (FWB) Playback—Emergencies and Real Life Airplane: Cessna 172 SP Situations.” Learn more at www.aopa. org/summit.

NEWS

FAA accepts knowledge-test reform plan
Will implement most recommendations
THE FAA HAS embraced the majority of an advisory committee’s recommendations for improving its testing materials in a prompt show of its support for the joint effort with the aviation industry to improve pilot knowledge tests. In a meeting with industry representatives June 18, the FAA announced its plan to implement most recommendations of the Airman Testing Standards and Training Aviation Rulemaking Committee, which in a new report offered nine ways the agency can enhance the content of airman knowledge tests and improve testing methods. The FAA agreed to begin

BY DAN NAMOWITZ

the process by creating a “stakeholder body” of subject experts to assist with development of questions and standards. The stakeholder group would also review and develop handbook content, and review current test questions. “While many questions in the FAA knowledge test bank are valid, relevant, and good indicators of an applicant’s ability to correlate information, many other questions are written to be an exact lift of a specific passage from an FAA document, without direct application to safety of flight or necessary airman knowledge,” the report

said, discussing test-question development philosophy. “This requires the applicant to train with an emphasis on rote memorization rather than understanding the big picture and application to operations.” The report gave an example of a test question with “no practical value” that asks how many satellites make up the GPS system. The question—from the private pilot knowledge test—was accompanied by three possible answers. But the correct answer might not remain correct if new GPS satellites are launched, or if existing satellites are decommissioned, it said.

Among the report’s recommendations was a proposal for the FAA to transition to a single testing-standards document called the airman testing standards, as an updated version of the practical test standards. The recommendation also offered a timetable for the transition for each pilot certificate and the instrument rating. The committee also recommended that the FAA “urgently allocate additional resources” for improved computer capabilities to develop and deliver randomly generated knowledge tests and regularly updated figures to replace the current testing supplements.

SEPTEMBER 2012 FLIGHT TRAINING

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Flight Training - September 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Flight Training - September 2012