CFI's & PPL students - What do/did you like for Ground School & Written prep?

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missin44

Filing Flight Plan
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missin44
There's a lot out there, King, Sporty's, Jeppesen, Gleim, and a host of others. Are there any significant differences? Any that you particularly liked or disliked?
 
Before you choose, make sure an online or self-paced approach works for you. There are different learning styles and one style doesn’t work for everyone. You could just download all the PDFs from the FAA site, study them then take the exam. Hence classroom, online, self-paced, self-study or working with your CFI.
 
Hated Gleim PPL course with a passion.

AOL era web and graphics feel.

Absolutely no 'helpful hints' or assistance in technical areas a student pilot might struggle with, like using a VOR.

If you want to be frustrated and disappointed, Gleim all the way.

Gleim practice tests were significantly more difficult than the PPL written.
 
Current crop of students are using @write-stuff ’s Gold Seal system (www.onlinegroundschool.com) and are doing well.

But, any of the digital ground school solutions are best done with guidance, support, and interaction with the flight instructor to aid in making the lessons stick in your brain that much better. And to make sequential sense.

Do look at the training course outline material to see what order for reading of FAA material and which videos to watch.
 
Sporty's PPL ground course is solid, IMHO.
It's reasonably priced. Has a modern interface and works on pretty much any device. The videos are newer (unlike old King videos) are broken down into bite-size, easy to digest pieces. The practice test functionality is pretty solid, too. I felt fully prepared after using that and did very well on my written.

The downsides:
- I felt it would be less painful to stick a fork in my eye than re-watch those PPL weather videos (the guy who narrates them specializes in putting people to sleep)
- Some videos just feel like a sales pitch (like when they do some extended lessons on Garmin G1000 or GFC 500). Can pretty much skip those.
- I just completed the IFR training course w/Sportys and I felt that it missed a ton of material. There's a large number of questions (I'd guess >40%) that aren't addressed at all in the training. Some areas they gloss over with only the most tangential reference to an important piece of information for the test. Their PPL ground course didn't suffer from that issue.
 
Don’t assume any of the online material covers everything at the level you need for the exam….remember to download the free FAA material and use that along with the online stuff. The FAA uses the FAA manuals as the basis for the exams. You can also get the supplement - the book with graphics and picutres used on the exams - on the FAA website.

No, I don’t work for the FAA nor do I get a kickback.
 
I used Pilot Institute's PPL course and am currently working through their instrument course. Very happy with both.
 
Clip4 said:
Some products are written test preps and some are ground schools.
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Absolutely true. For written test prep, it's mostly about drill and recognition. The only thing which probably matters most is which one you can stand to work with,

It matters more when it's being used as the ground component of a flight training course, complete with syllabus.
 
Serious question. Are you trying to pass the written or learn the material? If the former than Sheppard Air. If the latter I like Sporty’s nowadays. I think you will find many use both methods.

Of course grab a copy of the pilots handbook from the FAA. It really is good and makes a great reference later on.
 
Initial Fix said:
Serious question. Are you trying to pass the written or learn the material? If the former than Sheppard Air. If the latter I like Sporty’s nowadays. I think you will find many use both methods.

Of course grab a copy of the pilots handbook from the FAA. It really is good and makes a great reference later on.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately Sheppard Air doesn't do PPL
 
That’s too bad. Gleim would be my next choice for passing the written
 
"ground school" I read the FAA books, the airplane manual, and some random stuff on the Internet.
"test prep" I used the Dauntless app for Android. Worked great.

Checkride prep I did a couple of mock checkrides with the CFI, and for the ground portion I had another CFI go over my weak spots. My personal weakness was the oral was weather, so I read all the FAA stuff I could find, plus some NOAA stuff, and a book or two on it. Only because the way I think I need to know the "why" behind things, and the weather part was more difficult than either the rules or regular physics/flight things.
 
King here.

Did Gleim and self study for PPL.

Jeppesen for IR, but also had friends who let me borrow King & Sporty which I watched in their entirety, then did Shep for prep...I had a lot of free time during Covid & a long maintenance issue and lots of winter non-flying.

I went solely King for CPL. I think it’s a nice combo of learning and test prep.
 
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AggieMike88 said:
Current crop of students are using @write-stuff ’s Gold Seal system (www.onlinegroundschool.com) and are doing well.

But, any of the digital ground school solutions are best done with guidance, support, and interaction with the flight instructor to aid in making the lessons stick in your brain that much better. And to make sequential sense.

Do look at the training course outline material to see what order for reading of FAA material and which videos to watch.
Click to expand...
Gold seal's web site is: groundschool dot com. Just private for now; instrument "Late Fall 2022".
 
I did the weekend Aviation Seminars course for private, instrument, and commercial.
Gleim test prep for CFI and CFII.
 
I’ve been using Gleim for the past few renewals and happy with them
 
missin44 said:
There's a lot out there, King, Sporty's, Jeppesen, Gleim, and a host of others. Are there any significant differences? Any that you particularly liked or disliked?
Click to expand...
I went with Gold Seal, I think I got a lot for my money.

It's a pain not being able to ask direct questions and get immediate feedback but you can replay the lessons over and over and if you still have questions there are endless online sources and articles to refer to.
 
Depends on your learning style.

For my PPL, I used Gleim because it is more hard copy book based. I like reading, highlighting, taking notes, etc.

I used King for Instrument to try something different. Old video format, I found myself having to fill a notebook during each lesson to make it organized / sink in. Videos are old. I supplemented that with Gold Seal for IFR practice test taking.

I went back to Gleim for commercial test prep (haven't taken it yet).
 
Tom Wells said:
I felt it would be less painful to stick a fork in my eye than re-watch those PPL weather videos (the guy who narrates them specializes in putting people to sleep)
Click to expand...

Regarding Sportys... I used them for the Ground School, and overall, I agree that it's solid, not over-priced, and did well for me. However.. Yes! This quote is so true!
 
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