Hi all!

After months of planning, getting .net approval, and a late night push with @Ben Carpenter, we are extremely proud to announce our revised and streamlined P1 PPL(A) syllabus. These changes are the first step in a wider effort my Pilot Training to improve training efficiency, modernize our syllabus, and encourage more self-study for students.

Syllabus Changes

Note: changes are effective immediately.

The overall changes can be summarized as follows:

• Removal of the following lessons:
  • Lesson 6: Stalling and Spinning
  • Lesson 9: Dual Circuits with Flapless and Glide Approaches
  • Lesson 12: Emergencies & Practise Forced Landings (PFLs) *
  • Lesson 13: Emergencies & EFATO
  • Lesson 20: Navigation 5 - VFR with MATZ crossing
  • Lesson 22: Navigation 7 - VFR with Diversion
    (* replaced with textual reference to CAP1535 radio failure guidance)
• Concatenation of the following lessons:
  • Lesson 21: Navigation 6 – Basic Instrument Flight
  • Lesson 23: Navigation 8 – Practise License Skills Test
    (replace the navigation section of L23 with L21)
• Moving navigation briefing lessons to a three-part video series

With these changes, we remove a lot of the "extra" content that went above and beyond the MCS. While this may seem like a step back, these "unnecessary" lessons added competencies for student progression that were never required for their P1 Skills Test. As such, it was purely a time waste for some (especially in circuits)! I don't plan to remove the content entirely, and I will continue to encourage our mentors to go "above and beyond" to enrich our students' knowledge. Instead, we are just removing the requirement for these competencies from our course. With time (ie, when we have the bandwidth), these lessons will be replaced with videos for students to watch in their own time.

The effect of this change is substantial:

• Total lessons: 23 -> 16
• Lessons requiring a mentor: 17 -> 11

Going forward, we plan to add more self-study content for students in the form of briefing videos, pre-lesson quizzes, and recap exercises. We are also working on completely revamping the checklists for the three training aircraft.

Moodle Changes

We have completely revamped the P1 PPL(A) Moodle (https://moodle.vatsim.uk/course/view.php?id=51).

The main change was migrating to a tile-based interface for easier navigation.

Mentors' Moodle

We have released a Mentors' Moodle, which contains all the resources mentors need to teach the P1 and P2 courses. This course is not available to general members, which is unfortunate as most members will not see the tens of hours that went into the relatively small amount of content already on there.

Acknowledgements

A massive thank you to @Ben Carpenter and @Benjamin Arrowsmith for their enormous contributions to this revamp.

Join the team

We are always looking for new mentors across our training courses: P1, P2, and TFP. Irrespective of your experience, if you are interested in contributing to the division and passionate about flying then please reach out!

Helpdesk: https://helpdesk.vatsim.uk/ (select “Pilot Training” as the department)