On 6/17/04 5:38 AM, Thomas Wimmer wrote the following:


What kind of training material would you recommend?


I took my written about 15 months ago and was very pleased and lucky to
have scored 100. Here are comments on what I used:

1) www.faatest.com for drilling on the questions. I have used Adrian's
software for my Private, Instrument, and Commercial written tests and
the lowest score I got was 94 on the Commercial. (I have excuses for
missing so many, but I will keep them to myself!)

2) Peter Dogan's Instrument Flight Training Manual. Easily the best
"first" book -- his narratives of flights give you a real-world feel
that is just a great introduction to the subject.

3) Richard Taylor's Instrument Flying and Bob Buck's Weather Flying. I
will own these books for the rest of my life, along with the
Langeweische book Stick and Rudder.

4) The FAA book. Essential for memorizing the primary/secondary
instrument matrix that you will need for the test and probably will
never think explicitly about again, and pretty good overall.

------------you can stop here and have plenty----------------

5) ASA Written Test Prep. Not necessary but if you want to sit in a
chair and read a test prep book, this is as good as any. More
importantly, you get a copy of the computer test supplement which is
almost mandatory for use with the faatest.com software. (The software
renders the supplement pages on your screen but they are pretty hard to
work with.) General note: I have found that taking the supplement books
apart at the binding and getting the pages spiral wire bound at
OfficeBizMaxMart makes them _much_ easier to work with.

6) Bob Gardner's Advanced Pilot, Trevor Thom's Instrument Flying, and
Ralph Butcher's Instrument Pilot are all on my shelf and I have used all
as reference materials from time to time. None of the three is
particularly compelling to me. All have useful insights but if you're
on a budget you could get by without any of them.

7) Rod Machado's Instrument Survival (first edition; there is now a new
one) I felt was very weak. But then I am in the 1% of pilots
(apparently) who find his humor very tiresome. His Private book was
good enough that I endured the cuteness and all the exclamation points,
but the instrument book was not. IMHO, anyway.

(Anybody wants to buy a book on my #4, #6, & #7 list drop me a line.
50% of amazon.com price plus $3 book rate USPS shipping.)

HTH,
Geo. Anderson