Keep Flying to Keep Our Flying Right-of-Way
The joy and feeling of accomplishment you experience when you’re piloting an aircraft is a true gift. Regardless of the type of flying, we have yet to meet a pilot who did not feel enriched by the experience. And, once you become a pilot, you’re a pilot for life. It can’t be undone—there are only active pilots and inactive pilots—and it seems to us that most inactive pilots would rather be active!
With the current political climate, it is more important than ever that pilots fly regularly. In England, there is an organization of trail bike riders who diligently log time riding ancient trails through the English countryside, in order to maintain ancient right-of-ways in a use-it-or-lose-it system. If we want to maintain free access to airspace, airports and ATC, we should look at flying the same way. It is truly in our best interests to both bring new pilots into aviation and to help inactive pilots start flying again.
You probably know a pilot that has been away from flying for a while. Maybe their career got in the way, or they just didn’t fly for a few weeks and that lapse suddenly turned into a few years. Now, even though they love to talk about flying at the drop of a leather helmet, they think it would take too much time, effort, or money to get current. Well, now you can help overcome all three of those objections by recommending one of our new “Return to Flying” kits (Return to VFR Flying Kit | Return to IFR Flying Kit). These products will make it quick, easy, and fun for your pilot friend to get back up to speed—and to address the “too expensive” part, we slashed the price by 50%!
The freedom to fly without excessive governmental fees and restrictions is not guaranteed by our Constitution. We need to remain diligent in fighting threatening legislation. Just as important, we need to make sure our population stays strong, vibrant and … flying! We hope that you will join us in helping to both bring new pilots into aviation and to get those inactive pilots flying again.
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Vaughn College Students Are Participating In The Redbird Skyport Flight Training Laboratory
You already know this—when a person learns to fly, it changes who they are and how they feel about themselves forever.
That’s why we were so pleased recently to stop by the Redbird Skyport in San Marcos, TX to congratulate the students from Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology in Flushing, NY on passing their ground school and starting their flight training.
These students are engaged in an accelerated training program for their Private Pilot certificates at the Skyport flight training laboratory. Vaughn College and the Redbird Skyport are working together to determine the most effective way to use simulators in Private Pilot certification. The goal is to turn out a pilot who is not only physically proficient, but is a good risk manager and truly ready to be pilot in command.
The accelerated program at the Skyport flight training laboratory uses the latest computer-based software from Cessna, developed by King Schools. Instructors will introduce flight maneuvers in a full-motion simulator, and then have the students practice what they have learned in the actual airplane. The folks at Skyport aren’t worried about how much or little credit the FAA will give for the simulator time – they’re just interested in whatever provides the most thorough, cost-effective training. (Very few pilots finish their Private Pilot training in the FAA minimum time, anyway. The average flight time is about 73 hours.)
Skyport will also be testing the Redbird Parrot program (interactive ATC) on the Vaughn students, as well as their GIFT program (Guided Independent Flight Instruction, which provides video instruction from us in the simulator before and after they practice maneuvers), to see what changes should be made to these programs in order to provide the maximum help to a student.
And they’ll also be testing the results from a fun, competitive cross-wind simulator
Experimentation over a period of time, with these Vaughn students and others who will follow in their footsteps, will establish the best ratio and sequence of simulator time to airplane flight time. That’s why Redbird calls the Skyport a flight training laboratory. And the good news is that Skyport will publish its results and conclusions, so every flight school in the country can benefit from what they learn.
You might be asking, are these Vaughn College students hand-picked and special? They’re special only in the sense that everyone in love with aviation is special – they are excited, enthusiastic, and motivated.
So congratulations to these ground-breaking, soon-to-be-pilot, students from Vaughn!
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John and Martha Lose 50 lbs! Just one catch…
Recently, AOPA conducted a survey in which 53% of respondents indicated that they used an iPad in the cockpit. Folks, this is a staggering number when you consider that the first iPad was sold less than two years ago. For the first 90 years of aviation, change came quite slowly to the cockpit, but what we have seen in the last 10 years has revolutionized almost every aspect of flying … and it’s accelerating.
We lost 50 pounds in only two months. We have gone from carrying that much weight in paper to the airport to only two iPads. That’s better than Jenny Craig, but when you consider just how much smarter these devices are than paper, you quickly understand the unbelievable adoption rate among pilots. From flight planning and weather briefing all the way through departure procedures, charting and approach plates, these little 1.5 pound devices do it all. But the work doesn’t stop at the chocks. Once we arrive, they serve up email, hotel reservations, driving directions, books, and music, just to scratch the surface. In a very short time it has become hard to imagine flying anywhere without the iPad.
Now, when you put a tablet computer together with online training you really hit the jackpot—training on your schedule, where ever you are, on an easy-to-handle, lightweight device. Wow! You can even sign up at this moment for an online course, and be taking it just moments later. We have come a long way, but believe that the future will provide even newer ways to train. You can count on KING to be there with products you can trust to help you reach your aviation goals. To learn about taking KING courses on your iPad or other tablets, see page on using mobile devices.
By the way, the only problem with losing all that weight the way we did is that it only works in the cockpit! We still need to keep up our exercise!
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KING Courses On Your iPad!
iSWiFTER on iPad for KING online pilot courses
The obvious, sheer pleasure so many pilots get from their iPads gave Martha and me iPad envy. We finally got one of our own, and found innumerable uses for it in the cockpit. But by far the biggest news is that the folks at King Schools showed us how you can take KING courses on it by introducing us to an application called iSWiFTER.
iSWiFTER is an iPad application that was originally developed to enable running Flash-based games on the iPad, but it also works for viewing any website that (like ours) is implemented using Flash. While not perfect, iSWiFTER allows quick and easy access to King Schools’ online training courses, including video playback and taking interactive questions.
At a price of only $2.99 per month a $4.99 ONE TIME FEE (that’s two four dollars and ninety-nine cents, folks!) to get out of “demo mode” and be able to run your KING courses on it, it’s a great value too. While, as we said, the iSWiFTER solution is not perfect, we are delighted with the flexibility this provides to fellow iPad owners, and we pledge to continue our quest to seek better solutions in the future.
By the way, we have fallen in love with the iPad. It is light-weight, fast, readable in sunlight, and provides a user-interface that is intuitive to learn. We are intrigued with the idea of a single device that pilots can use to train, brief flights and access in-flight information.
All things considered, we believe that the iPad provides a wonderful way to consume aviation information. If you use an iPad or other tablet, you will find that King Schools is there, making our courses available for you. You can count on us to continue working to ensure our training is available wherever you are, and on whatever device you find useful.
Now if our second unit would just arrive—so we can quit fighting over this one.
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Last week, we posted about our experiences learning to fly the Cessna Citation Mustang and also mentioned that we were finishing up production of our new course, “Flying the Citation Mustang—Single Pilot”. We thought you might be interested in viewing some highlights from the video that will be going into the course, so we put together a little preview below. We hope to have the course ready for purchase this month. UPDATE: Flying the Citation Mustang—Single Pilot course is now available for purchase here.
Related articles
- Learning To Fly the Citation Mustang – Single Pilot (johnandmartha.kingschools.com)
