I am going to IFS soon (as snfo) and alot of the gouge that people are telling me is you don't need to study, don't over think it, it's easy, etc. i kinda think of it like any other gouge, take it with a grain of salt, so much changes so fast around here what was good for one individual might not be good for another.
the way i see it is if you wanna be good at your trade, then you'll learn everything you can, it's a chance to develop the study habits etc. i figured you'd need to get through the pipeline, i am actually glad i did'nt come here with a ppl cause it will give me a chance to get prepared. if you have a strong foundation of the basics then you'll probably be sucessful at building on that and understanding later on.
can't speak for everyone but i know a couple of us who are trying and who take it serious. don't give up on all of us.
Having completed IFS about a few weeks ago, I will tell you that is bad gouge. I'm in API right now, and honestly, the first week of ground school is pretty rigorous and pretty comparable to what I'm enduring now as far as academics are concerned. There is A LOT of stuff to know. A lot more than I anticipated and I found myself studying a good 3-5 hours each night during ground school, and about 4-6 over the weekend and right before the actual FAA test. You go through that entire Jeppessen book in ONE week. If you can commit all that material to your brain without having to study then you're obviously the rockstar all us normal students wish to be. I remember taking repeated practice tests over and over again (at least a dozen times) on the sporty's website until it got to the point where I was seeing the same questions over and over. It's not that hard overall, it is pretty much straight up memorization so you do need to devote time to that. Smarts doesn't ensure anything, in our class of five at Mobile, the Electrical Engineer had the lowest FAA score and the music major had the second highest (we all passed with flying colors though, when I said lowest that doesn't mean it was a piss poor low score). But speaking of that, this is what I've learned so far in the training pipeline: when taking exams, scores in the 90-95% are
average. So doing enough to get your 80% and pass is actually piss poor when compared to your peers.
Now, when the actual flying starts, I would be lying if I said I studied 3-5 hours a night for my flights. For me, that would have been overkill. Some flights are really easy, some flights are more challenging. I found myself studying a lot in the beginning, but once I memorized all my procedures, radio calls/frequencies, and figured out how to read weather reports and actually use them, there really wasn't too much else to study. But definitely spend some time chair flying. While knowing the knowledge may be great and all, you still to have to demonstrate the monkey skills. If you're chair flying for a power-on stall and you need to add that right rudder in there to battle the p-factor, physically move your foot as if you were stepping on the right rudder. Looking back now, I probably did not have enough proactive and meaningful chair flying sessions to better myself since I had issues with my rudder control. Chair flying helps with the muscle memory so instead of having to think it out, you just do it.
On check rides, you better know your shit. This includes everything that was covered in ground school and in the actual flight lessons. Depending on who you get for your check ride, some of the oral exams are 20 minutes long, or in the rare case like I had, I had one guy who would spend up to an hour :bigeyes_1. I spent at least 5 hours the night before getting ready for my checkride and would go to the FBO early to study even more. The one thing I've learned about check rides, it's pretty easy to forget stupid stuff if you're not ready or assumed you will easily remember it and don't bother reviewing it. Also, if you mess up a few things, the ball starts to roll down hill and more errors and mistakes compile on top of it.
Oh yeah, after having been to a board, it would really look piss poor and bad on yourself if you went to it for a flying issue and not knowing your knowledge. Yes it may take some longer than others (like myself during Stage 1) to successfully put a plane in the air and back safely onto the deck, but there's no reason why a flight student shouldn't know his or her material.
So short answer, yes you will most likely need to study during IFS. Besides, this is going to be your profession. You should know everything about it.
**One last thing I forgot, just want to emphasize that this is not training, but a flight
SCREENING program. This was definitely brought to my attention at my board. If I couldn't hack it because my stick and rudder skills sucked, then fine, not everybody is meant to be a pilot. But I would have hated to have been attrited out for simply not studying.
