I’ve been reading a lot of other peoples blogs about their training. From what I gather… a lot of circuit practice happens. I keep on reading terms like “downwind leg” and “final approach”, etc.. So I figured I might as well explain them to you as im sure you will need to understand at least in some part what all this means. (Canadians like to use Traffic Circuit, while the Americans call it Traffic Pattern)

The purpose of a traffic circuit is to expedite and seperate airplanes using the same airport.

The …

The aviation industry is littered with acronyms. I am actually struggling right now to increase my internal glossary to be able to parse all of these three and four letter words.

A commercial pilot is not one that fly’s for the big air carriers – those are known as Airline Transport Pilots and they are a totally different class (and license). From what I understand, commercial pilots receive their ATP license after training with the respective air carrier they are going to work with.

A commercial pilot is one that can get …

I got a workbook the other day (the companion workbook to “From The Ground Up”). I started working on it. I know I will probably be doing this again when school actually starts, but I can’t wait.

Answering the questions in the book actually makes what i’ve read sink in. I’ve been able to answer about 50% of the questions without having to go back to the text. The rest though… i’ve had to look up. Not a bad thing, just a reminder of how much I need to learn …

One of the most important items a pilot must carry with him is his pilot logbook. The logbook is used to record all of the flights that the pilot has performed. They record such items as:

Date and Time of Flight

Type of flight (day, night, IFR of VFR flight)

Role of pilot (pilot in command or co-pilot)

Which plane was flown

Hours flown

My logbook just arrived the other day. I had ordered one from VIP Pilot Centre. This particular logbook seems like it will serve me well for the next year or so.

For the past few weeks or so, I’ve been listening to local Air traffic controllers chatting to various aircrafts in and around Toronto. At first it just started off as pure curiosity. However, now, I’m making an effort to spend a few hours a week listening to the chatter in an effort to get a leg up on the “radio communications” portion of aviation training.

I figured this would be a good way to get a feel for the type and flow of information to and from aircraft and their controllers.

I …