3 weeks down

As the title suggests I'm a around 3 weeks into ground school now and it's already starting to get rather busy.
There are 7 exams which we are studying for in Term 1, these are:

Principles of Flight
Aircraft Systems
Instruments
Meteorology
Human Performance
VFR Comms
IFR Comms

We've made a start in all the modules apart from the comms ones, these won't be started until very shortly before the EASA exams. So far it's learning all the basic blocks that the rest of the course will be built on.

Up to now most of the technical type modules have just been building on the basics required to understand how the actual instruments and systems work. So covering ISA (International Standard Atmosphere) conditions and how they change with altitude, the Otto cycle (for piston engines), the gas laws, Newtons laws and the laws of thermodynamics (for pretty much anything involving a fluid, be that hydraulics or air over a wing). Even at this early stage though I can see it all starting to knit together and how it will be used to progress with subjects topics. We've also started going into the details of how different instruments and systems work that you find on an aircraft in a level of detail that isn't that far removed from that required for engineering! Though Meteorology does seem to be doing its best to try to turn us into weather forecasters!

The pace of delivery of the modules is incredible, in terms of shear volumes of information thrown our way I've never come across anything like it. Fortunately the instructors are all great and really know their subject matters and how to teach them. The fact that all of them have had years of experience in aviation (usually as military pilots) before becoming ground instructors means that they have some great stories and examples to share as the classes go on.

To give an example of the volume of work we currently taking on, a typical day consists of 6 1-hour periods. Typically 5 of these will be classroom based with one being computer based training. Sometime there's a computer based training session thrown in a period 7 as well just to nudge the workload a little more. Typically another couple of hours of additional study is then required in the evening to consolidate what we've gone over as we'll be moving onto new topics the next day and you really can't afford to get behind.

I'm enjoying it though as it's all interesting stuff. There are sombre times in the course however as we look back at examples where lessons have been learnt during the past. For example AF447 comes up quite a lot (the A330 that lost control and crashed into the Atlantic in 2009), as there's a lot of lessons pilots can learn from that one. Today we were looking at what is called the F100 Super Sabre Dance as a demonstration of how wing tip stall and ending up the wrong side of the drag curve can be very dangerous. You can look up the Sabre Stall on YouTube but I suggest you only do so if you've a strong constitution, it doesn't end well for the pilot's involved.

The next step will be the Test 1's which are at the start of week 6 (next week is the start of week 4), these will test our knowledge in the subjects we've studied so far and require a pass rate of 75% minimum to continue with the course. At the rate the ground school is going I'll be out in Phoenix doing the basic flight training before I know it assuming all the exams go well. There's a lot more to learn in the mean time however!