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good day in groundschool
Mar. 29th, 2008 04:49 pmToday was a field trip day in the groundschool I'm teaching to the scout troop. We met up at Grand Prairie airport this morning in the conference room at the city terminal. I handed out some study material on the FAA regs to be on the written, established some ground rules for walking on the ramp and we headed out.
We walked up to Kathy's Traveler and started the point and talk. Letting them see everything we've spent the last 4 weeks with book work in person on a live airplane. Then we moved to the club Skyhawk and went over all the same bits there as well. The inevitable question of which is better came up, and diffused I think by explaining that neither is really 'better' than the other, it's all personal preference. Some like the wing on the bottom, some on the top. Try them both and see which you like best.
Then we split them up and sent half of them to the Traveler and half of them at the Skyhawk and let them climb in. Work the controls (gently! don't bang the stops) and see how the rudder, elevator, ailerons really move when you work the controls. You could tell when they got to the panel, which things we'd covered, which we hadn't. They had the primary instruments down well, but radio nav's, engine analyzer, they had no clue.
We'd just gone over how stray metal and the like can affect the reading on the magnetic compass last week, and they were amazed to see how much my headset would swing it if I sat it next to it. A good practical experiment and experience for them.
After we were done climbing through the planes and most of the questions of the day had been answered we returned to the conference room for a wrap up. I had them guess a number between 1 and 50 and the closest to my prearranged number of 42 got to ride back to the hanger in the Skyhawk and help me put her away. A quick talk on how to steer with your feet and the rudders and the 14 year old soon had a pretty good variation of the drunken sailor taxi going on that we all do. He caught on quicker to it than I did the first time and by the time we got to the other side of the airport he was doing pretty well. I've got a future pilot in him I think. He's eating up all things aviation now.
All in all, a good day in groundschool....
We walked up to Kathy's Traveler and started the point and talk. Letting them see everything we've spent the last 4 weeks with book work in person on a live airplane. Then we moved to the club Skyhawk and went over all the same bits there as well. The inevitable question of which is better came up, and diffused I think by explaining that neither is really 'better' than the other, it's all personal preference. Some like the wing on the bottom, some on the top. Try them both and see which you like best.
Then we split them up and sent half of them to the Traveler and half of them at the Skyhawk and let them climb in. Work the controls (gently! don't bang the stops) and see how the rudder, elevator, ailerons really move when you work the controls. You could tell when they got to the panel, which things we'd covered, which we hadn't. They had the primary instruments down well, but radio nav's, engine analyzer, they had no clue.
We'd just gone over how stray metal and the like can affect the reading on the magnetic compass last week, and they were amazed to see how much my headset would swing it if I sat it next to it. A good practical experiment and experience for them.
After we were done climbing through the planes and most of the questions of the day had been answered we returned to the conference room for a wrap up. I had them guess a number between 1 and 50 and the closest to my prearranged number of 42 got to ride back to the hanger in the Skyhawk and help me put her away. A quick talk on how to steer with your feet and the rudders and the 14 year old soon had a pretty good variation of the drunken sailor taxi going on that we all do. He caught on quicker to it than I did the first time and by the time we got to the other side of the airport he was doing pretty well. I've got a future pilot in him I think. He's eating up all things aviation now.
All in all, a good day in groundschool....