LESSONS
Learn it by moving it.
Each lesson is built around something you control. Predict what will happen, try it, then read why. Every fact quotes the handbook or rule it comes from.
Circuits and joins
Altimetry and cruising levels
Human factors
Hypoxia and altitude
Why thinner air leaves the brain short of oxygen, the order the effects come in, and when your country's rules require supplemental oxygen.
Climb without oxygen and watch what happens to the body, step by step. Then find when the rule requires oxygen.
Spatial disorientation
How the inner ear senses a turn, why it can stop sensing one, and how that sets up the leans.
Fly a turn, hold it and level out, and watch the fluid inside your inner ear.
See and avoid
Why an aircraft converging with yours can be the hardest one to see, and how to scan for it.
Fly towards another aircraft and watch it from above and from your seat.
Navigation
Performance
Weight and balance
Meteorology
Stability and cloud base
Why lifted air cools, where its cloud base forms, and whether it then keeps rising or sinks back.
Set the surface temperature, dew point and lapse rate, lift a parcel of air, then let it go.
How fog forms and lifts
How a night's cooling brings the air down to its dew point, why sky and wind decide whether fog forms, and why it lifts in the morning.
Run a night at an aerodrome under clear or cloudy skies, change the wind, then turn the wind up on radiation and advection fog side by side.
Thunderstorm life cycle
The three stages a thunderstorm cell lives through in about half an hour, and the hazards that come with each.
Run a thunderstorm cell through its life and watch the updraft, downdraft, rain and gust front change at each stage.
Aerodynamics
Turns and load factor
Why a steep turn loads the aircraft as if it were heavier, and why it stalls at a higher speed.
Bank the aircraft and watch lift, load factor and stall speed climb.
Angle of attack and the stall
Why a wing stalls at its critical angle of attack.
Tilt a wing in moving air, change the airspeed, and watch the flow break away past the critical angle.
Drag and best glide
Why total drag is least at one speed, and why that speed glides furthest.
Change the glide speed, weight and drag, and watch the drag curves and the glide path move.
Why the aircraft yaws with power
The four propeller effects PHAK calls torque, and the controls that keep the aircraft straight.
Set power and airspeed, pitch the nose, and find the rudder that keeps the nose straight.
Aircraft systems
The pitot-static system
How two pressures drive the airspeed indicator, altimeter and VSI, and what each one shows when a port blocks.
Climb, descend and change speed, then block the pitot opening, its drain hole or the static port and watch the instruments go wrong.
Gyroscopic instruments
Rigidity in space and precession, and how they drive the attitude indicator, heading indicator and turn coordinator, and fail when suction drops.
Spin a rotor and push it, then fly on the gyros: bank, let the heading indicator drift, reset it to the compass and fail the vacuum pump.
HANDS-ON TOOLS
Fly it, decode it, calculate it.
Cockpit explorer
Every instrument on a training panel: what it shows, how it works and how it fails.
Circuit trainer
Fly a circuit in your browser and get a debrief on heights, speeds and spacing.
Flight computer
Wind triangle, fuel, density height and loading, with the working shown.
Aircraft explorer
Training types from their data sheets: speeds, weights, engines and panels side by side.
Aviation map
Airspace, navaids, reporting points and terrain over Australia and New Zealand. Tap anywhere to see the airspace above it.