As I've posted previously, after years of being an aviation nerd I'm finally in the early part of ground school and flight lessons for my PPL. My goal is to become a safe backcountry pilot.

There is a ton of information. Some I can tell is important, some I can tell I just need to memorize for a short time.

Example of important ground school stuff:
- if you fail to return the gas cap to the right position during pre-flight you can lose all your fuel.
- very common error is a stall/spin on the turn to short final because of slow speed, sharp turn and pilot focused on the runway instead of the turn
- density altitude
- carb ice
- load factors

Example of not-so-important ground school stuff:
- IFR minimums for helicopters
- cabin pressurization
- properties of the atmosphere

My inclination is to push through ground school quickly and focus on the stick and rudder stuff but as I get a bit older I've come to realize my haste has not always served me well. So my question to the experienced backcountry pilots: If you were to go back and start again, are there areas of study where you wish you had paid more attention or has most of your knowledge come from experience?

Find a competent instructor who is familiar with bush flying. After he/she gets to know you, have them advise you on what you need for where you are going. Good way to start in my opinion.

When I instruct, it takes a few weeks to get to know a student and find out what their goals are (at the time). Goals are dynamic because as we learn inevitably our goals can change and may appear different from previous thoughts.

I had great bush instructors. They patiently watched me evolve.

I blew my VOR work on my first check ride attempt because I had the mindset that GPS would be my go-to once I had my license. I had a non-electric airplane at the time, and no radios aside from a hand-held. Got humbled and had to get more dual.

Written test questions are randomly selected by computer with no prejudice toward need to know stuff. Oral questions depend on the Examiner and are more likely to be relevant.

All of it. I think it's a mistake to write off some knowledge as unimportant this early in the game. Don't handicap yourself with that mentality. The Private certificate knowledge exam is full of antiquated navigational systems, but the underlying skills are incredibly useful. Relative bearing of an NDB for instance... it really forces you to practice adding or subtracting heading values, but you will probably never use a NDB.

Properties of the atmosphere? Very important. We should all strive to be students of weather, and the physics of the atmosphere are foundational to that. Carb ice, density altitude, and the properties of the atmosphere and gas/fluid dynamics are all intertwined to some extent.

I understand what you're saying, there is a boat load of stuff to learn, but much of it is there for a reason. Some topics deserve intimate understanding, other just rote memorization of the test questions. Embrace the learning process with a hunger though, engage every topic in sequence.

I haven't given compass turning error a second thought since passing my checkride.

Edit: To expound on what contactflying said, the examiner will, depending on how sadistic they are, quiz you about seemingly obscure stuff during the oral portion. My examiner was big on radar summary charts. I haven't looked at one since.

I agree with Zane. I really wish I had memorized more weather stuff. I need to get back into it. It would be very handy in many more places then just flying, like farming for example. Wish I could read the clouds better.

you need to know it all to do well. I ignored navigation (thinking that I had found Australia when I sailed there) and only scored 65%. I got over 90% in the other three.

I read from the ground up at breakfast for a year, and made card notes.

I'd say weather. Once you understand weather, then the charts, briefings, canyon flying, mountain flying, density calculations, and what you're seeing over the dash and in colors on your moving map will make more sense.

It's all important.

Guess it depends on what you want out of aviation.

Do you just want to be a technician, and push buttons on a glass panel and let the electronics do the work for you? It's pretty simple, and unfortunately what some airlines have tried to do with increasingly disastrous results. Button pushers with shallow educations don't do well in the real world of aviation, especially in backcountry flying or in careers that require pilots to be good problem solvers.

Or, do you want to understand weather, understand navigation, understand the physics moving you through the air, and understand the mechanics happening under the skin of your airplane?

If yes, then maybe someday you can call yourself a pilot. As a student pilot you need to be a sponge, soaking it all in, as right now you don't know enough to know what you need to concentrate on.

There's a bunch of old pilots on here with pretty simple flying lifestyles who are also some amazing sticks. Those skills just didn't "happen" and when you take the time to sit and talk with them, you'll find a mind-boggling depth of knowledge as a common thread. Do they need all that knowledge to go play in the boonies? No, but that huge bag of tricks is what got them to their current level of skill, and kept them alive to build their time and experience.

Don't mean to be an old curmudgeon, but that's what I am. Your job, as a student pilot, is to be enthusiastic. Enthusiastic about every minute of your flying, and enthusiastic about learning everything you can about all things aviation.

There's plenty of time to weed out the unimportant BS as you move up the ranks.

Gump

To get your pilots license, I agree with the"learn all of it" approach. Get past the tests and get your ticket, then keep learning. An old cliche is "the private pilot license is just a license to allow you to learn".

I'm going to say weather needs special emphasis, too. It's obvious, but your aircraft's habitat is the atmosphere. As Z say's, atmospheric properties are the foundation of weather; weather is the biggest pilot killer - learn to stay alive. We need to understand it very well, especially in the mountains.

Focus on getting your PPL, preferably from someone with backcountry experience. Once that's behind you, then jump into backcountry flying with BC instruction. The aviation universe is large and we should never stop learning.

You might find this informative and is required knowledge for safe BC ops:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1880568179/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1880568179&linkCode=as2&tag=backcountrypi-20

Above all, have fun! The adventure is just beginning!

I got my private a couple years ago, instrument this year and with both ratings I've been very surprised how much I have used information and skills I was convinced were irrelevant during my study.

That said, you won't be doing any backcountry flying if you don't get your private, so my advice is play the game, learn the book stuff and focus only on what you need to know to pass the written and perform to PTS standards. Fly at least 2x a week, do an online study course, make flash cards. Cruise this website for inspiration, but realize a lot of the backcountry stuff you see here is very advanced flying ... I wouldn't worry about (nor consider yourself ready for) BC stuff until you've mastered the basics.

What everyone one above has mentioned.

And one thing to consider is and this was told to me at the end of my check ride by Dick Miller is that.......... "The day you stop learning to fly, is the day you stop flying!"

albravo wrote:...My goal is to become a safe backcountry pilot...If you were to go back and start again, are there areas of study where you wish you had paid more attention or has most of your knowledge come from experience?

As others have said, treat everything of equal importance at this point. You don't know what you don't know and quite frankly even once you have your private ticket you still won't know what you don't know. You have to build a solid, strong foundation and ground school is where that begins. Trying to rush through any phase of your training will come back and bite you in the ass.

Weather is what I wish learned more about. I'm sure you've noticed weather forecasters on TV provide mostly useless information, their agenda is to not piss off weekend Bar-B-Que'rs. As pilots we have to do our own forecasting, especially in mountain and backcountry flying, and that doesn't mean just preflight weather forecasting, but more importantly forecasting weather while in flight.

Be the best student your instructor has ever seen. Absorb info like a sponge. Ask a million questions. Study hard. Learn to fly in a taildragger if you can, you'll be a better pilot for it. And it should be Rudder & Stick, not Stick & Rudder, the Rudder will save your life flying the mountains and the backcountry (that's a not so subtle hint to learn to use, AND USE, the rudder in all aspects of flight).

HAVE FUN!

For backcountry stuff, weather and systems would be extra important.

If you're out in BFE chances are you ain't going to have a METAR,TAF, or AP handy, you need to know what both your airplane and the weather are doing and are likley to do, allowing you to make a safe decision.

The better score you get on the written, the fewer "deficiencies" the examiner will have to question you on. The test is not that hard, you will do fine.

Good luck and keep plugging away. Only advice I have is don't even take a week's break from it, just jump in and knock it out. Find out ahead of time what your examiner is like. Look for one that is a teacher, not a ball buster. I learned a lot on all my check rides.

I'll echo the weather. When I a freshly minted pilot I still had a hard time making a go/no-go decision regarding weather. Missed out on some flights that could have been easily made, but I'm sure that is how it is supposed to be as we build skills and hopefully judgement. Make it a point to fly in some near-marginal weather with an instructor so you can get a feel for it.

Also crosswind ops. I fit most of my primary training in very early mornings before work one summer. As a result I didn't have a lot of experience in gusty and crosswind conditions as most every morning was calm and CAVU. If you can learn that while in training, so much the better as you will need to build those skills eventually if you want to go anywhere other than the morning breakfast flights.

Use DUATs.com on your computer and study the weather out your window. When you can figure out from looking out your window and at what is showing on the current Surface Analysis and Wx Depiction and guess with the wx boys what may be right on the Prognosis Charts, you will be well ahead of the game. Weather knowledge is real time and free.

Thanks all, I really appreciate the advice, especially the comments re: weather, rudder and crosswinds.

I'm churning through the ground school materials and am flying 2X week with an instructor.

I am also putting out feelers to pilots I know locally. I'll gladly over-contribute on fuel just for the chance to get more time in the air. I'm not looking for instruction, just exposure. Ironically, that has resulted in a few trips on the jet my wife flies which is as far away from BC flying as you can get. Thankfully, they haven't asked me to chip in on fuel.

Again, thanks all. I'm sure you can appreciate how much fun I'm having to finally get my butt in a plane after years of studying every airplane that has flown by.

Hey Al, if you make it up this way at all this summer let me know. I'll take you up for some 180 time.

A buddy of mine likes to say that he got his license in a 150, then learned how to fly in a Cub. A lot of truth in that. Personally I think there's a lot of stuff in the private pilot curiculum that you will probably never use afterward. But it is required knowledge, and a lot of it even if never used again will provide a founation for knowledge /skills you do use.

While I do urge student pilots to immerse themselves in aviation- hang out at the airport, read aviation magazines, join the local EAA or pilot assn., etc- I would caution you against picking up habits /techniques from pilots other than your CFI who you might go for rides with. They might be good techniques, but maybe not appropriate for passing your checkride which at this point should be your primary concern.

Good luck with it.