We Gotta Fly

There's more to aircraft instrumentation than speed. There's altitude, heading, vertical speed, coordination and others. This episode covers what instruments we have and how they get the information they indicate. Even the most reliable and accurate instruments have some sort of error associated with them. We need to know when that can happen and how to interpret when corrections need to be applied.

When most people see an airplane, the wings and engine are the most obvious thing they see that makes it fly. What they dont see, are all of the other things that have to work along with that engine, not only to provide the needed thrust for flight, but the electricity for lights and navigation, heat for the cabin and defrost and others. There is also the landing gear, flight controls and other systems that need to be understood to keep your flight safe.

Driving down the road and making a right or left turn is easy. Turn the wheel in the direction you want to go, use the brake to reduce the speed, then the accelerator to speed up. There's a little more to making an airplane turn and keeping everything balanced and controlled. Forces in turns is another aerodynamic concept that has to be understood to be mastered.

Making an airplane fly is easy, keeping it flying when it get too slow is something that we all have to learn to do and avoid. Aerodynamics 2 is an introduction into stalls, stall recovery, spins and left turning tendencies. Understanding these forces makes dealing with them when we have to an easy exercise in mastering the sky as well as building on the knowledge required by the FAA.

You don't need to know how a clock works to tell time, but that rule doesn't apply to airplanes. Before learning how to control all of the forces involved in flight, we need to know what those forces are. Aerodynamics 1 begins describing the basic forces that makes a plane fly, how we use and control them and some of the terms that will be added to your new vocabulary.

Airplanes have come a long way in 100 years. Controlling the way we move through the air involves many different forces and equipment to do it efficiently and safely. There are terms and components that are unique to aviation. Knowing what these are and an overview of how they all work together is important to making sense of the more detailed training that's to come.

Flight schools come in many different forms, from a 1 instructor operation to a college level course with many planes and instructors. This episode explains how schools are formatted; what to look for to find what fits your needs; things to be expected from students and instructors and how pilots are evaluated.

A lot of people would like to learn to fly but not sure where to start. For most people, it's a "Discovery Flight". This episode covers what that is, how to go about arranging one and what may be involved with your first "hands on" flight; what is involved in flight training; how much it can cost and ways to keep those costs under control.

I've been fascinated with flight all my life. I was fortunate to be able to make a career in Army Aviation as a Chinook Flight Engineer. Now I'm able to take my passion and share it in a way to help others to make their dream of flight a reality. 

There are a lot of videos and training aids available online to help with flight training. There's not much that doesn't require visual aids or graphics to help learn or reinforce the required learning to take the FAA written exam. We Gotta Fly is designed not only for people that learn more from hearing material, but also for those that need to prepare for FAA exams while driving or working where watching a video may not be practical. If you're thinking about flight training or you're already on your way, come on along 'cause We Gotta Fly.

Episode 002 Discovery Flight is launching September 13 - everywhere podcasts are found!
Subscribe today!