Attending ULA for R44rII still....

[Whirlychika]

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[heliflyknow]

My suggestion is to join a study group, or even better if your school has tutoring be there all the time you can spare. Use the PTS(practical test standards) booklet for every certificate you are training for. Most schools have a POA (plan of action) that is like a study guide for the stage of training you are in, if you can study that and answer any questions you will be golden. Flying is fun, but you have to think of that as a reward for studying. The info you have to know and understand only gets harder as your training progresses so keep at it, dont ever be satisfied with knowing just enough to pass.

[Mikemv]

In my consulting at ULA & LEA, I learned that many Veterans just wanted to use Government funds to fly because it was cool and they really did not apply themselves in getting a rating or education towards a career.

 

Many struggled to attain the Private certificate and then dropped out during Instrument training because it was not fun.

 

Of course there were those that were committed and attained CFII and are working at the schools! Bravo!

[Flying Pig]

So do those people who dropped out have to pay back the Feds? Or they just walked with a free Private?

[A-aron]

So do those people who dropped out have to pay back the Feds? Or they just walked with a free Private?

Free private rating if they get that far

[Flying Pig]

I don't know that bragging about having more hours than most because you aren't grasping the material is really a selling point.

[RagMan]

So let me try to understand this real quick. You failed the Oral portion of the practical test, and they are requiring you, or you are choosing, to retake the ground school portion of the training for Private? That sounds absolutely unnecessary. Did the flight school or the college tell you to retake the ground school?

[Spike]

Welcome…….

You asked for some guidance, so I’ll offer some….. With aviation, terminology is immensely important. No matter where you are; on a test, in the classroom, in the hangar, in the pilot lounge, or at the local water whole, every word which comes out of your mouth provides the listener a means of measuring your attitude, competence, and judgment. This measurement also includes an indication of what you’ve been taught by the school you attended. With that, the “verbal” part of the FAA test is called the oral…..

 

Additionally, you’ll need to explain what you mean by “high pressure” and “high density” testing…….

Edited January 5, 2015 by Spike

[Flying Pig]

So if Im following your post..... you were in helicopters for a couple semesters and are still working on just hovering.... then went to airplanes where you solo'd, and now you are back in helicopters? Why are you jumping around? If things arent coming together for you in helicopters, it would appear that they did for you in airplanes.

Edited January 6, 2015 by Flying Pig

[apiaguy]

I'm a student at ULA cedar city. Utah. I am repeating the beginning class again as I was having a hard time with the verbal part of the FAA test. Can I fly? Yes. It took me the first semester to hover and the second semester I got the flying but didn't pass ..the verbal ..so here I m again starting Monday, lets just say I'm tenacious as hell. I have asked myself is it worth it what do I want to do with my future CFII. I have goals but at this point I just want to fly I looooove it!! Any guidance as I fly through the hi pressure hi density testing. One great thing when I'm done I will have a lot more flying hours than most! Oh yes last semster I soloed in C172s! But rotary wing is so much cooler.

Nice to meet everyone!!!

Let me interpret... it seems everyone wants to understand what you said and keep asking more questions... I'm bored so i'll give it a whirl... for whirly.

She faild the faa oral... she can fly just fine even though it took a whole semester to learn to hover. She is starting to take the initial ground classes again monday and she is extremely determined to pass. After she asked herself "if its worth it...I want to achieve my CFII in the future"

She really loves to fly. She would appreciate guidance as she thinks her course work is high pressure and high intensity testing. She is excited to have more hours than others and doesn't consider this to be a negative thing as everyone needs more hours. She is excited to have been able to solo a 172 although she forgot this is a rotor snob forum and should never reveal she had fun in an airplane.. She even tried to justify this by saying rotorcraft are better and she doesn't want to fly airplanes for a living. She is happy to meet ya'all.

[RagMan]

Best advice would be to first figure out if doing this as a career and living the life style of a pilot is what you desire. It will incorporate a lot of studying, a lot more studying, and paying your dues by instructing to build time so you can venture out into the commercial world of flying.

 

Once you get that figured out and you decide you want to pursue being a helicopter pilot, start studying with other students. You're going to have to want to study every day for a few hours. Flight school will become your life 24/7 until you finish. Either you make it a priority and you get it done, or you push it off to the side and it takes you entirely to long to complete at which point you will give up.

 

Studying is the key. If you can't study on your own, study as a group. Your instructor(s) should be able to help you out with ways to study. Your instructor is your first point of contact when it comes to this sort of stuff. Though the instructor is not your baby sitter. He or she will merely give you the tools, a training outline, and guidance on how to get to the end of the yellow brick road. You have to take it upon yourself to study in the books, take practice exams, and applying yourself if you really want it. This is not something that will be given to you on a silver platter. YOU HAVE TO EARN IT IF YOU WANT IT BAD ENOUGH!

[eagle5]

Repeating a class seems a bit extreme. What topics did you have trouble with, or did you completely bomb the whole thing?

 

All I can suggest is do a few mock oral tests with your CFI until he thinks you can pass.

[Whistler]

So let me try to understand this real quick. You failed the Oral portion of the practical test, and they are requiring you, or you are choosing, to retake the ground school portion of the training for Private? That sounds absolutely unnecessary. Did the flight school or the college tell you to retake the ground school?

its a requirement because its not just 141 training the way the VA handles it. it's a college course. he failed a college course. as such, the VA and college will require him to retake the course, in its entirety, in order to earn the credit needed to attain his degree.

[RagMan]

Repeating the entire course IS a bit extreme. The fact that they have it (the individual ratings) setup as whole entities still is beyond me. I'm sure the program I attended didn't start off picture perfect, but over short periods of time they started learning what was working and what wasn't, and it seemed like every few terms changes were being made to the program (changes for the good of the college as well as the students.)

 

The program I attended in Oregon was designed so that the Private pilot course you enrolled in at the college was broken into two separate parts. The first part entailed getting enrolled into the ground school portion of the private pilot course (which was taught at the college by aviation instructors, but wasn't fully in depth as what you would do with your actual instructor at flight school) and then the student would also enroll into a flight lab (which provided X amount of dollars for flight time and ground instruction at the flight provider.)

 

The ground school portion at the college consisted of an end of term "final" (no surprise there) which initially you had to take the FAA written exam which constituted as the "final" for the course. Some time went by until the (aviation program manager) implemented you either take the FAA written exam as the final, or you take an end of course exam administered by the college. Passing either or would give you a completion grade for the final. At some point or another though, you still had to take and pass the FAA written (so why not just take the damn thing for the end of term final and get it out of the way.) That would close out and give you a completion grade for the Colleges' ground school course (the student would still be conducting ground lessons at the flight provider for 1 on 1 instruction at this point.)

 

The next thing you had to do was complete your flight training and actual 1 on 1 ground instruction at the flight provider. Initially they had the money for this allocated into one "flight lab" that the student enrolled in at the beginning of the term. Again, some time went by before this ended up being separated into two, three, or four flight labs. Each flight lab held a certain amount of money that would be used specifically for flight training and ground instruction. When you used up the money in one flight lab (we'll say this is Lab A) then your advisor would open up a Lab B for you to continue your flight hours and ground instruction until becoming proficient enough and meeting the requirements to take your practical exam with an DPE.

 

The students' flight labs would be closed and completed when either he/she utilized all of the money in the flight lab, or he/she passed the FAA practical exam for the rating being sought. Failure of the FAA practical exam didn't mean you had to go through and redue the course (this would be the most absurd thing on the planet) but rather you would utilize any remaining funds in your flight lab to do recurrent training with your instructor, and then turn right around (if found proficient) to retake the FAA practical exam.

 

The reason why this ended up being a great system (and to me it works very well with how much is demanded by the FAA) is it didn't require completely starting over from scratch if you failed a portion of the system. Being, not passing your check ride didn't require you to retake the entire course of Private Pilot at the college. If you failed the check ride, you did recurrent training with your instructor in the areas of deficiency, turned right around and retook your check ride within a day or two (so long as the DPE was still in the area, or you waited a couple weeks for the next DPE to come into town.) Another reason is that having repeat course takers doesn't look good from a colleges' standpoint.

 

To me, it sounds like just another scheme to defraud the students of even more money with that program there in Utah.

Edited January 10, 2015 by RagMan

[gary-mike]

Ragman, I did my private pilot certification through the "Utah" program, it was through SLCC, not SUU, but my best guess is the program is pretty much the same. My experience was almost exactly as you explained your program to be, only not all the changes. I don't think ULA is trying to defraud anyone, everything has to be approved by the VA before more money is thrown on the table. It does seem odd, to get funding for a class that would have been passed prior to a check ride, perhaps she is doing remedial ground training with her instructor and not the college? Or it could be a tutoring lab which is a one time course for the program similar to what we have up north.

[Spike]

I don't think ULA is trying to defraud anyone, everything has to be approved by the VA before more money is thrown on the table.

Unfortunately, the VA has little to no expertise in the area of the helicopter business. While the particular institution you mention may not intend to defraud, it’s clear the majority of the VA approved schools main motivation is to suck up the VA funds as long as they can…… From that point, the students best interest come 2nd..... Bad system......

Edited January 12, 2015 by Spike