Week 2: Principles of Flight

As another long week comes to an end, so too does Principles of Flight, meaning us cadets can breath a momentary sigh of relief!

Having started our second topic last Friday, this week has been solely focused on continuing to squeeze as much information into our heads about Principles of Flight as possible. Starting off the week by learning about drag and its effects on aircraft, stalling (something we want to avoid..), all the way through to learning about flight controls and how they are used to manoeuvre an aircraft around the air.  Interestingly enough, we've also been learning about the basics of supersonic flight and how shockwaves form on an aircraft as it passes through the transonic speed range and becomes supersonic, although it may be quite a while before I ever get the chance to fly an aircraft capable of this!

It's been a mixed bag of both interesting principles, and also enormous numbers of facts and formulae that simply have to be committed to memory for the sake of our exams. Taking it all in whilst learning an abundance of new material everyday AND keeping up to date with M&B has proved to be rather stressful, but still enjoyable.

The ATPL question bank, one of your new friends during ground school. 

Unfortunately there's no time to relax, as tomorrow we plough on with the start of our third (and enormous) topic, General Navigation! Strangely, this is the topic I've been both dreading and really looking forward to, so I'll let you know how it's going at the end of this week!