The goal of flight instruction is to help you gain the knowledge and skills to make flying safe and fun. That's especially the aim of the sport-pilot rules. The exact flight path to this destination will vary depending on the flight instructor, school, your time, and your current skills; especially the skill of learning.
Your sport-pilot training will go something like this:
- Lesson 1: Become familiar with your airplane including the theory of flight and the preflight check
- Lesson 2: Ground operations, normal takeoffs and landings
- Lesson 3: Basic flight maneuvers: climbs, descents, straight-and-level flight, coordinated turns
- Lesson 4: Additional flying maneuvers: slow flight maneuvers, power-on and power-off stalls, and emergency procedures
- Lesson 5: Ground reference maneuvers: rectangular course, S-turns, turns around a point, some more takeoffs and landings
- Lesson 6: Airport operations: airport signs and data, flying the pattern, crosswind correction for takeoff and landing
- Lesson 7: Review of procedures learned thus far, endorsement for solo flight, then your first solo (typically, three takeoffs and landings at your home airport)
- Lesson 8: Advanced takeoffs and landings: short-field takeoffs and landings, soft-field takeoffs and landings
- Lesson 9: Navigation techniques and cross-country trip preparation
- Lesson 10: Solo cross-country trip
- Lesson 11: Review of all flight maneuvers and additional training as needed (could require additional lessons as well as solo practice time)
- Lesson 12: Final preparation for the sport-pilot oral and practice test
Once your instructor feels you are ready, he or she will endorse your logbook confirming that you are ready for the practice test, and help you set an appointment with an FAA examiner. Before this point, hopefully very early in your instruction, you will have studied for and passed the sport-pilot knowledge test by enrolling in a ground school or taking a multimedia ground-school you can study at home.
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