I just finished up Primary in Corpus Christi and thought I'd share my insight on the current landscape and how I prepared for the long slog that is Primary. I am a strong believer that your attitude (being a good, genuine person who is open about their mistakes and welcoming of criticism) and effort (how well you prepare for the factors that you CAN control, i.e. knowledge) are the two greatest keys to success. I never considered myself the best "stick" but I was always open with my instructors and came to every brief as prepared as I could be, and ended up getting grades that I was happy with. I ended up selecting my first choice of Maritime!
To begin with, I would like to give credit to this post: https://www.airwarriors.com/community/threads/crushing-contacts-the-contact-profile-method.48345/
This is what I read when I was in the pool waiting to start contacts and it is spot on. I will go into further detail here about how each aspect helps, but it is worth a read for those of you highly motivated.
STUDENT POOL
Currently the wait to class up here in Corpus is about 3-4 months. I believe I waited about 4 when I classed up. The pool is without a doubt the best time to get ahead. Your time in the pool is invaluable. I can not stress enough how beneficial it is to show up to day one of ground school knowing all your Emergency Procedures (EP's) with the associated Notes/Warnings/Cautions (NWCs), checklists, and possibly even course rules. With this, I'm not saying to spend all your time studying in the pool. I probably spent no more than 1-2 hours a day roughly studying and was able to learn everything I listed above.
Emergency Procedures : At the bare minimum you need to show up to day 1 of ground school knowing all your EP's cold. They are fairly easy to learn but take consistent practice. My recommendation is every day learn 2 EP's. The next day say all the EP's you know then learn another 2. Once you know all of them, say them all every morning.
Checklists: Next on your priority list should be your checklists. These are found on the quadfold, which you can find (along with a TW5 hollywood script) on T6BDriver.com. Look at a T6 cockpit poster and familiarize yourself with where everything is. At some point you should go into the simulator building and hop in a static trainer. Go with a friend and run through the checklist while the other checks you and times you. Your goal should be to get up to the Before TakeOff checklist in about 10-12 minutes.
Notes/Warnings/Cautions: Next on your priority list should be NWC's. These are by far the hardest things to learn. Attached to each EP is a set of NWCs. You need to be able to tell your IP how many Notes, Warnings, and Cautions there are for a given EP then recite each one. It is critical you learn these during the pool. Trying to learn them while you are prepping for sims/flights is an absolute nightmare - I had a friend who came into ground school knowing zero NWC and ended up rolling into flights still not knowing them all. It was a massive grind for him to try to learn them while also preparing discuss items/course rules/NATOPs brief. Not knowing NWC is also an easy way to get an UNSAT, especially on your checkride. My recommendation is learn the all NWC's for one EP every 1-2 days.
Course Rules: These are fairly low on the priority list but are still very beneficial if you have the time. Knowing even just a rough idea of your course rules will be helpful. I would recommend learning how to get to the working blocks and back to KNGP. As a side note, Corpus has very simple course rules compared to Milton. A Milton student may say learning course rules is of a higher priority than I am suggesting.
NATOPs Brief: Very very low on the list should be learning the NATOPs brief. It's a 10 page monster of a document that you need to know verbatim - yes, you read that right, verbatim. You say this first thing before anything in your flight briefs, and being able to say it quickly with confidence lays out a great first impression with your instructor. However, I suggest waiting on this until you start contact ground school then learn one paragraph a day. It will set you up to know the whole thing by the time you start sims. The goal is to say the whole brief in about 10 minutes - it's challenging but can be done.
Contacts was the hardest phase for me. If there were two main factors that contributed to my success in contacts, it would be learning the above listed items early, and investing in an at-home simulator. Shelling out the money for one is hard for most people to swallow, but I also see most of you Ensigns buying brand new cars and starbucks every day, so I don't want to hear it. I spent $200 on a stick/throttle setup and another $100 for the T6B software for Xplane11. I can assure you it is worth every penny. If I had to go back and spend $1000 I would still do it.
Yes there are simulators at the sim bay that you can use for free but the convenience of having one at home that you can boot up anytime, even for a couple minutes to try a maneuver or practice some course rules is unbeatable. I can not stress enough how valuable the sim was to me. There were considerable differences between me and other students who didn't have it.
My biggest recommendation throughout contacts is CHAIRFLY EVERYTHING. Chairfly your ground ops, your course rules, your EP's, your landing pattern, your PEL, your course rules back home, the break - everything. And the best part of having the sim at home is you can "chairfly" on the sim real time.
Ground School: Easy stuff, pass the tests and ask lots of questions. Pay special attention to your EP class because it has very valuable information on how to apply each procedure which will be relevant in the plane and in the briefs.
Simulators: Currently the syllabus is changing and apparently both squadrons are transitioning to the Avenger syllabus and therefore implementing more VR-sled events. With that, I can only speak on the UTD and OFT sim experience. Treat every brief and event as you would any other - show up knowing your discuss items and the profile you're going to fly. My recommendation is being able to talk through every item on your own. Expect your IP to walk in and just say "Okay go." Most instructors are fairly easy going but some are not.
Flights: Your first event will be your FAM-0 where you will meet your onwing - The IP who will essentially be your big brother/sister during contacts. It is important to show up to this event well prepared, as your onwing will likely become your closest mentor in the squadron. This event is where your onwing will show you how to preflight and go over relevant information on how to prepare for briefs and flights.
Following FAM-0 will be 3 mandatory and 1 optional non-weighted flights, meaning they do not affect your NSS. These are typically done with your onwing. It is important to, again, show up to these flights as prepared as possible because it is a practice run of what you're going to do on your graded flights. Make mistakes and ask questions. I HIGHLY recommend requesting to take the optional fourth flight for more practice, as again these flights are non-weighted.
Going into your graded flights, the capstone is obviously your solo. Therefore the contact syllabus is geared toward preparing you to fly the T6 on your own. With that, you'll be doing a lot of stalls, spins, and Precautionary Emergency Landings (PELs). Get damn good at recognizing an emergency and flying the profile along with the appropriate comms (both over ICS and over radio). Chairfly the hell out of your simulated EP's and PELs - your IP will typically give you an EP such as "simulated loss of power" and you need to go from there to diagnose what's going on and taking appropriate action. Again, if you have an at-home simulator, you can activate EP's in the software and fly them.
Lastly and most importantly, be a genuine person. There have been many times I'd be struggling with something and would speak up to my IP about how I need to focus on this and improve. Many times I've noticed IP's appreciating a student being honest in the brief about what they need help on. Along with this also means being humble about what you want to fly - I get it, most people want to fly jets. That doesn't mean you should be disrespectful toward other communities. It's okay to tell an IP what you want to fly, but I've always prefaced it with "but I'd be happy with anything" - because you should be.
Instruments is where the at-home simulator really shines. In XPlane, all the frequencies work along with the ILS diamonds, VOR needle and CDI. The only thing that doesn't work is the FMS but that is not necessarily needed when you're starting out. I would fly my entire profile before each sim and get used to the pace at which I need to do the procedures. When your fresh out of ground school and have no idea what's going on, the sim gives you the reps and sets that you really need. On weekends I would fly profiles over and over again until I was comfortable.
It's incredible how well the XPlane software works. I can not emphasize enough how beneficial the sim is.
Ground School: Ground school is fairly hit or miss depending on your instructor. If you get stuck with a shitty instructor, you're not going to learn much. I left each class more confused than when I came in. I attribute most of my learning to reading the pubs and asking friends for help. If you have a good instructor, you'll probably still barely learn anything because of the way the syllabus is structured. Ground school touches on everything quickly without much context or application. The tests are easy but they do not at all set you up for sims/flights. I would highly recommend getting with someone ahead of you and watching them fly an approach or profile on a UTD/OFT to get an idea of how instruments is supposed to look.
Simulators: Same deal. Show up prepared. Use your sim to chairfly approaches and when to switch frequencies. Learn how to do a jetlog and be prepared to show your IP how you got the numbers. If you can perform well in the sim you will perform well in the plane - so get as many sets and reps in while you're still in the sim and ask a lot of questions.
Flights: The biggest difference between the sim and the plane is the comms. Comms in the sim are standard and simple. Comms in the real world are constantly changing depending on traffic/weather/closures. It is important you prepare yourself for what and when you should expect to hear something. The first instrument flight will usually be fairly rough because of the lack of knowledge on comms, but as you progress, it will get much easier. Get with a friend who's ahead of you and have him run you through what your first profile should look and sound like.
For the flights, I would highly recommend trying your best to get on TAP - not sure what it stands for but it implies you are proficient enough to skip events. TAP allows you to skip nearly half the flights in the instrument block which is beneficial to your sanity as the pace of flights & sims in instruments is 2 events per day, every day. It was very hard for me to keep my sanity during this pace but TAP helped shorten it. (I also believe TAP is a Corpus only program).
Overall instruments is a grind but if you prepare well, it is very easy. The opportunity to fly a cross country was also my favorite part of Primary and was the nail in the coffin to why I decided to plop P8's as my number 1 choice.
As a side note, I did forms first before I started instruments. I definitely think doing forms first helped with instruments, but I also think doing instruments first will help with forms. Forms in general is awesome. Insanely fun and rewarding. Forms is a very quick syllabus. Ground school is one day. I recommend reading the FTI if you have the time prior to attending the class, but is not completely necessary. There is a single simulator event which I believe is an absolute soul crusher - the sim relies entirely on your ability to recognize relative motion, which you haven't developed yet because you haven't flown forms. You will most likely suck in the sim, but the plane is much much easier because you can actually feel yourself moving.
The flights themselves are some of the most fun you will have in Primary. I felt that the vibe was much more focused on teaching rather than evaluating, which added to the enjoyment. The briefing items are repetitive and simple, which also frees up a lot of your prep/study time.
The hardest part of forms is the forms NATOPs brief, which is even longer than the contacts brief. I would highly recommend beginning to study the brief a day or two after you solo-complete. The brief is an absolute monster and the IP's still expect you to know it well by your second flight. Besides that, once you have your flight partner, I highly recommend you get together every day and chairfly all of the ground ops, hand-signals, and course rules. Pull out a metronome and do all your hand signals to the metronome - once you're confident doing it up to speed, turn off the metronome and run through everything as if you were in separate cockpits.
I hope this can be helpful to those waiting to start Primary. I will admit that luck will play a role in your selection, but your efforts put in to perform well will reduce the effect of luck on you. With that said, I highly recommend investing in a sim at home, studying a few hours a day in the pool, and arriving to your briefs honest and prepared. Good luck to all you future texan drivers.
To begin with, I would like to give credit to this post: https://www.airwarriors.com/community/threads/crushing-contacts-the-contact-profile-method.48345/
This is what I read when I was in the pool waiting to start contacts and it is spot on. I will go into further detail here about how each aspect helps, but it is worth a read for those of you highly motivated.
STUDENT POOL
Currently the wait to class up here in Corpus is about 3-4 months. I believe I waited about 4 when I classed up. The pool is without a doubt the best time to get ahead. Your time in the pool is invaluable. I can not stress enough how beneficial it is to show up to day one of ground school knowing all your Emergency Procedures (EP's) with the associated Notes/Warnings/Cautions (NWCs), checklists, and possibly even course rules. With this, I'm not saying to spend all your time studying in the pool. I probably spent no more than 1-2 hours a day roughly studying and was able to learn everything I listed above.
Emergency Procedures : At the bare minimum you need to show up to day 1 of ground school knowing all your EP's cold. They are fairly easy to learn but take consistent practice. My recommendation is every day learn 2 EP's. The next day say all the EP's you know then learn another 2. Once you know all of them, say them all every morning.
Checklists: Next on your priority list should be your checklists. These are found on the quadfold, which you can find (along with a TW5 hollywood script) on T6BDriver.com. Look at a T6 cockpit poster and familiarize yourself with where everything is. At some point you should go into the simulator building and hop in a static trainer. Go with a friend and run through the checklist while the other checks you and times you. Your goal should be to get up to the Before TakeOff checklist in about 10-12 minutes.
Notes/Warnings/Cautions: Next on your priority list should be NWC's. These are by far the hardest things to learn. Attached to each EP is a set of NWCs. You need to be able to tell your IP how many Notes, Warnings, and Cautions there are for a given EP then recite each one. It is critical you learn these during the pool. Trying to learn them while you are prepping for sims/flights is an absolute nightmare - I had a friend who came into ground school knowing zero NWC and ended up rolling into flights still not knowing them all. It was a massive grind for him to try to learn them while also preparing discuss items/course rules/NATOPs brief. Not knowing NWC is also an easy way to get an UNSAT, especially on your checkride. My recommendation is learn the all NWC's for one EP every 1-2 days.
Course Rules: These are fairly low on the priority list but are still very beneficial if you have the time. Knowing even just a rough idea of your course rules will be helpful. I would recommend learning how to get to the working blocks and back to KNGP. As a side note, Corpus has very simple course rules compared to Milton. A Milton student may say learning course rules is of a higher priority than I am suggesting.
NATOPs Brief: Very very low on the list should be learning the NATOPs brief. It's a 10 page monster of a document that you need to know verbatim - yes, you read that right, verbatim. You say this first thing before anything in your flight briefs, and being able to say it quickly with confidence lays out a great first impression with your instructor. However, I suggest waiting on this until you start contact ground school then learn one paragraph a day. It will set you up to know the whole thing by the time you start sims. The goal is to say the whole brief in about 10 minutes - it's challenging but can be done.
CONTACTS
Contacts was the hardest phase for me. If there were two main factors that contributed to my success in contacts, it would be learning the above listed items early, and investing in an at-home simulator. Shelling out the money for one is hard for most people to swallow, but I also see most of you Ensigns buying brand new cars and starbucks every day, so I don't want to hear it. I spent $200 on a stick/throttle setup and another $100 for the T6B software for Xplane11. I can assure you it is worth every penny. If I had to go back and spend $1000 I would still do it.
Yes there are simulators at the sim bay that you can use for free but the convenience of having one at home that you can boot up anytime, even for a couple minutes to try a maneuver or practice some course rules is unbeatable. I can not stress enough how valuable the sim was to me. There were considerable differences between me and other students who didn't have it.
My biggest recommendation throughout contacts is CHAIRFLY EVERYTHING. Chairfly your ground ops, your course rules, your EP's, your landing pattern, your PEL, your course rules back home, the break - everything. And the best part of having the sim at home is you can "chairfly" on the sim real time.
Ground School: Easy stuff, pass the tests and ask lots of questions. Pay special attention to your EP class because it has very valuable information on how to apply each procedure which will be relevant in the plane and in the briefs.
Simulators: Currently the syllabus is changing and apparently both squadrons are transitioning to the Avenger syllabus and therefore implementing more VR-sled events. With that, I can only speak on the UTD and OFT sim experience. Treat every brief and event as you would any other - show up knowing your discuss items and the profile you're going to fly. My recommendation is being able to talk through every item on your own. Expect your IP to walk in and just say "Okay go." Most instructors are fairly easy going but some are not.
Flights: Your first event will be your FAM-0 where you will meet your onwing - The IP who will essentially be your big brother/sister during contacts. It is important to show up to this event well prepared, as your onwing will likely become your closest mentor in the squadron. This event is where your onwing will show you how to preflight and go over relevant information on how to prepare for briefs and flights.
Following FAM-0 will be 3 mandatory and 1 optional non-weighted flights, meaning they do not affect your NSS. These are typically done with your onwing. It is important to, again, show up to these flights as prepared as possible because it is a practice run of what you're going to do on your graded flights. Make mistakes and ask questions. I HIGHLY recommend requesting to take the optional fourth flight for more practice, as again these flights are non-weighted.
Going into your graded flights, the capstone is obviously your solo. Therefore the contact syllabus is geared toward preparing you to fly the T6 on your own. With that, you'll be doing a lot of stalls, spins, and Precautionary Emergency Landings (PELs). Get damn good at recognizing an emergency and flying the profile along with the appropriate comms (both over ICS and over radio). Chairfly the hell out of your simulated EP's and PELs - your IP will typically give you an EP such as "simulated loss of power" and you need to go from there to diagnose what's going on and taking appropriate action. Again, if you have an at-home simulator, you can activate EP's in the software and fly them.
Lastly and most importantly, be a genuine person. There have been many times I'd be struggling with something and would speak up to my IP about how I need to focus on this and improve. Many times I've noticed IP's appreciating a student being honest in the brief about what they need help on. Along with this also means being humble about what you want to fly - I get it, most people want to fly jets. That doesn't mean you should be disrespectful toward other communities. It's okay to tell an IP what you want to fly, but I've always prefaced it with "but I'd be happy with anything" - because you should be.
INSTRUMENTS
Instruments is where the at-home simulator really shines. In XPlane, all the frequencies work along with the ILS diamonds, VOR needle and CDI. The only thing that doesn't work is the FMS but that is not necessarily needed when you're starting out. I would fly my entire profile before each sim and get used to the pace at which I need to do the procedures. When your fresh out of ground school and have no idea what's going on, the sim gives you the reps and sets that you really need. On weekends I would fly profiles over and over again until I was comfortable.
It's incredible how well the XPlane software works. I can not emphasize enough how beneficial the sim is.
Ground School: Ground school is fairly hit or miss depending on your instructor. If you get stuck with a shitty instructor, you're not going to learn much. I left each class more confused than when I came in. I attribute most of my learning to reading the pubs and asking friends for help. If you have a good instructor, you'll probably still barely learn anything because of the way the syllabus is structured. Ground school touches on everything quickly without much context or application. The tests are easy but they do not at all set you up for sims/flights. I would highly recommend getting with someone ahead of you and watching them fly an approach or profile on a UTD/OFT to get an idea of how instruments is supposed to look.
Simulators: Same deal. Show up prepared. Use your sim to chairfly approaches and when to switch frequencies. Learn how to do a jetlog and be prepared to show your IP how you got the numbers. If you can perform well in the sim you will perform well in the plane - so get as many sets and reps in while you're still in the sim and ask a lot of questions.
Flights: The biggest difference between the sim and the plane is the comms. Comms in the sim are standard and simple. Comms in the real world are constantly changing depending on traffic/weather/closures. It is important you prepare yourself for what and when you should expect to hear something. The first instrument flight will usually be fairly rough because of the lack of knowledge on comms, but as you progress, it will get much easier. Get with a friend who's ahead of you and have him run you through what your first profile should look and sound like.
For the flights, I would highly recommend trying your best to get on TAP - not sure what it stands for but it implies you are proficient enough to skip events. TAP allows you to skip nearly half the flights in the instrument block which is beneficial to your sanity as the pace of flights & sims in instruments is 2 events per day, every day. It was very hard for me to keep my sanity during this pace but TAP helped shorten it. (I also believe TAP is a Corpus only program).
Overall instruments is a grind but if you prepare well, it is very easy. The opportunity to fly a cross country was also my favorite part of Primary and was the nail in the coffin to why I decided to plop P8's as my number 1 choice.
FORMS
As a side note, I did forms first before I started instruments. I definitely think doing forms first helped with instruments, but I also think doing instruments first will help with forms. Forms in general is awesome. Insanely fun and rewarding. Forms is a very quick syllabus. Ground school is one day. I recommend reading the FTI if you have the time prior to attending the class, but is not completely necessary. There is a single simulator event which I believe is an absolute soul crusher - the sim relies entirely on your ability to recognize relative motion, which you haven't developed yet because you haven't flown forms. You will most likely suck in the sim, but the plane is much much easier because you can actually feel yourself moving.
The flights themselves are some of the most fun you will have in Primary. I felt that the vibe was much more focused on teaching rather than evaluating, which added to the enjoyment. The briefing items are repetitive and simple, which also frees up a lot of your prep/study time.
The hardest part of forms is the forms NATOPs brief, which is even longer than the contacts brief. I would highly recommend beginning to study the brief a day or two after you solo-complete. The brief is an absolute monster and the IP's still expect you to know it well by your second flight. Besides that, once you have your flight partner, I highly recommend you get together every day and chairfly all of the ground ops, hand-signals, and course rules. Pull out a metronome and do all your hand signals to the metronome - once you're confident doing it up to speed, turn off the metronome and run through everything as if you were in separate cockpits.
I hope this can be helpful to those waiting to start Primary. I will admit that luck will play a role in your selection, but your efforts put in to perform well will reduce the effect of luck on you. With that said, I highly recommend investing in a sim at home, studying a few hours a day in the pool, and arriving to your briefs honest and prepared. Good luck to all you future texan drivers.