By Adrian Rosevear 

As the end of the year draws closer, I took the opportunity to look over the training articles in order to sum up some points I have attempted to highlight to young pilots just starting out on their flying career

In these articles I have described various strategies in which I hope was an accessible manner and I encourage each of you to think about these strategies and, with your flying instructors’ assistance, put them into practice. So, ordered into a typical flight profile, let's look at some of the major points I discussed throughout the year.

Pre-flight. Readers may have noticed many of the articles concentrate on the pre-flight preparation stage. For student pilots this is often the point which determines the success (or lack of success) for the flight. Preparation to a student pilot must mean being as fully prepared through knowledge of self, aircraft and the environment before each flight as possible, and importantly, recognising that learning is a shared task where the main drive and focus to learn comes not from the instructor, but from the student. I expect a student to have researched what they are about to do. The instructor’s job is to show the student how to fly the sequence. Your preparation must include rote learning, visualisation and most importantly, understanding what it is you are going to do in your flight.

The flight: active preparation on the ground is vitally important if you are to become a proactive pilot instead of a reactive pilot. I discussed the difference between these two types of pilots based around one of the most important acronyms and workcycles in flying: ANCA or Aviate, Navigate, Communicate then administrate. ANCA links into every aspect of flying. For example, under Aviate lies the sub-workcycle of Select-Hold-Trim; the building block of accurate attitude flying. If, as a student, you visualise on the ground, understand the importance of attitude flying techniques and strive to apply these in the air, your flying will improve vastly. I discussed ANCA and trimming further by looking at it as a method to 'create time' for yourself in the cockpit, especially while handling an emergency. Here, if through effective preparation you know the aircraft attitude required during an engine out glide, you can immediately select the correct attitude then spend 30 seconds trimming the aircraft. While not increasing the time available, trimming allows you to devote more time to other tasks, as your brain is not pre-occupied with flying the aeroplane. In this way, not only will your hands and feet skills improve, but your situational awareness and ability to prioritise and process information becomes smoother and more organised. So, ANCA and trimming – two major points to take away from the Aviator training articles in 2008.

Post-flight: This is one area I have yet to discuss. In fact, this article you are reading now is a form of debrief along the type of post flight activity students should try and establish as habit. Remember, every flight presents learning opportunities for pilots, no matter how well you believe the flight went. The post-flight debrief and how to extract the maximum amount of learning points will be the subject of next month’s article.

In conclusion, the training articles over the year attempted to do more than simply tell you how to do something in your aircraft. I deliberately targeted foundational skills such as workcycles, situational awareness and preparation in order to get young pilots thinking beyond the next flight or sequence and get them interested in how to improve their most underlying important flying skills. Next year I aim to get down to the nuts and bolts of how to fly different sequences, beginning with flying different circuits, especially away from your home airfield.