Flight Training Home Courses
9 April, 2008 – 12:50 amI’ve been looking for a good home instruction set, to augment my flight training. I’ve found several out there, the main ones appearing to be King Schools, Jeppessen, and Sporty’s. I watched several clips on YouTube from each school. A friend had the King series, and another had the videos from his Jeppessen ground school course some time back. I borrowed the first disc and video from each of them to check them out (before investing a few hundred in each without knowing if it would work for me). Sadly, I was not impressed by either.
The King series (http://www.kingschools.com) is produced by John & Martha King, a husband and wife team out of San Diego. Their website says that they are the only husband/wife team in the US to have every category and class of FAA pilot and instructor certificates. No small achievement, thats for sure, and props to them for it. Their knowledge of airplanes, flying, etc is obvious in the videos, and the information they pass on is great, and of good quality. But to be blunt, I couldn’t stand their presentation of the material. I felt like I was in a hotel conference room hearing about condo timeshares, rather than learning to fly or prepare for the test. It was hard to overlook that feeling, as a presentation is 70% what you see, 20% how it sounds, and 10% what’s being said. That 10% was solid, but the 20% and most of the 70% were lacking. That being said, I’m sure many people have bought their series and loved them (2.5 million videos in distribution, according to their site). The YouTube clips I saw were sort of the ‘best-of’ the series – 2 or 3 minute segments without a whole lot of dialog or presentation by John or Martha. The videos themselves have much more face time, so their presentation is a significant part of the series. My advice is to try and see it before you buy it. Opened DVDs are rarely returnable nowadays.
The Jeppessen series is the pendulum swung in the other direction. It also has excellent material that it tries to impart, but it does so in an exceedingly dry manner. With this series, I felt like I was watching a state-sponsored drivers ed video. Stale video clips and graphics from the early to mid 90s, voice overs by people trying to sound interested in what they’re saying, and the language is very, very technical, borderline encyclopaedic. It’s obvious that Jeppessen didn’t aim this at the learn-it-yourselfer. I got the feeling it was designed to be played during courses where it will be started and stopped frequently for an instructor to fill in holes, explain language, and take questions. In that scenario, I think it would excel. But in your living room in the evening, I didn’t find it very helpful up front.
Well, last weekend I checked out the Sporty’s Recreational Pilot series from my regional library (they don’t have the Private Pilot kit, but I’ve requested it). The Recreational Pilot series is a little less comprehensive than the Private Pilot series. It’s mostly the same material, but the Private Pilot series has more of it, to cover everything for the FAA exams. I’ve been blown away by it though. It’s presented extremely well by a variety of people (who aren’t overly effusive, but who don’t look or sound bored either), it shows great details about what they’re covering, and speaks in easy English, answering the questions that I had as I went along. It was the perfect balance between the know-nothing viewer and the know-it-all. Based on what I’ve seen from the Recreational Pilot series I’m going to be buying the Private Pilot series while I go through flight training, and I’ll probably end up using them for my IFR and multi-engine certs as well. I strongly recommend finding a way to check the Sporty’s series out.
I’d also like to mention that I’m not sponsored by anyone in any way. This writing is my un-purchased opinion, and I don’t get any kick back, compensation, salary, or ‘gifts’ for what I write, monetary, retail, product, or otherwise. Hope it helps in deciding which series to invest in.