[Music] welcome back aviators it's another great day to learn how to fly I'm Holly Bolino your host of the aviators guide novice to Pilot it's a pleasure to have you listening today so thank you so much for joining me on today's episode to all my fellow Americans out there happy belated National Aviation day which was on Monday yes we have a day just for us Aviation NS thanks to President Roosevelt who in 1939 according to nps.gov created it quote as a celebration of early Aviation development President Roosevelt chose Orville wri's birthday to Mark the date in history and it was codified allowing future presidents to issue a proclamation each year end quote one of my favorite things that Aviation has done for us is make our world a little bit smaller allowing us the ability to travel to diverse cultures and experience the world in ways we never could have before and I am beyond grateful for it so what's the reason why you love Aviation email your response to your aviators guide gmail.com or make a comment on the video version of this episode on my YouTube the link to which is in the show notes if you missed National Aviation Day this year mark your calendars for August 19th 2025 so you can celebrate whether it's posting a great memory quoting one of your favorite aviators or taking flight to get one of those $100 hamburgers and while I would love to briefly discuss why hamburgers are called hamburgers we have important matters to discuss today but you should Google it because it's kind of interesting so on episode two last week I covered the very first things you need to think about before deciding to LEAP into the stupendous world of Aviation including researching flight schools knowing how many hours are required to go to the Airlines and your fun for Flight Training if you missed it go ahead and follow And subscribe to the aviators guide that way you'll be notified of all future episodes on how to Traverse the process of becoming the best pilot you can be and don't forget to be a good friend by sharing this podcast with yours I'm here to help all aspiring and current pilots and today I will be doing just that as I go over the details of each license and rating that you will need to begin I need to mention something that I forgot to go over in the previous episode in regards to your Discovery flight and that's to remember to bring your logbook because that flight goes towards your total hours your Discovery flight will most likely be the very first entry in your logbook how exciting so be sure to have the instructor taking you up on your flight sign your logbook afterwards it will probably just be about one hour of flight time but hey every hour counts you can get a log book on Amazon or mypilot store.com which has just about everything you would need to start your pilot Journey the price differential between Amazon and my pilot store is next to nothing so it's just whichever you prefer when it comes to choosing your logbook I like the glime logbook or the jeon logbook the jeon log book has significantly more pages than the other log books so whichever you prefer I will go over these log books and how to fill them out in another episode so stay tuned for that for now let's get started on these licenses and ratings details the first item you will get is your student pilot certificate this is the easiest license to get as it's really just paperwork you only need two task completed to get this license your medical which if all goes well you will get it right after your medical exam and your iacra signed off by you and your instructor I know you don't know what iacra is yet but you will in fact you will soon become quite familiar with the acro website as that's where you're going to go to officially submit each application for every license and every rating you're going to work towards at first iura is a little tricky to navigate and will make you grind your teeth and pull your hair but you get used to to it and your instructor should be more than willing to help walk you through the seemingly Labyrinth of a website it will take you over a month to get your official student pilot license in the mail so if you happen to need it before then there should be a temporary license available on the aakra website about a week after you submit your application just be sure to print and sign the temporary license and keep it with you at all times while flying just like you will your official license you may be wondering why do you need this license at all what does it allow you to do well in order to get to step two your private pilot license you will have to fly solo a few times for a student pilot to legally fly solo you must have four items in your possession during the flight your valid governmen issued photo ID your medical which I discussed in episode two your log book with assigned endorsement by your instructor for the solo flight and you got it your student pilot certificate signed by you the second item you will train for is your Private Pilot certificate AKA your private pilot license AKA your PPL AKA your I'm a real pilot license more specifically it is your PPL as or airplane single engine land the bare minimum requirements to get your PPL are one be 17 years young two be able to read speak write and understand English and three have your student pilot license then from there we get into the hard work involved such as your required training instructor endorsements practical test aka the check ride and written exam yes I'm sorry guys in addition to the check rides you have to do there are written exams for five of the six licenses and ratings I'm going to cover today these written exams aren't really too bad and your instructor will be doing what we call Ground lessons along with your flight lessons to help you prepare for these exams in fact for each license and rating there are required topics your instructor must cover on the ground before you can take your check ride so don't expect to be doing only flying Ground School is requ required for every single license and rating you want to complete the amount of hours to finish your private pilot license will be at least 35 flight hours and that includes requirements such as solo time CrossCountry time and night flying in addition to those flight requirements you will also have to do some Maneuvers such as steep turns short field takeoffs and landings and stalls to name a few in my experience the aspects that are most difficult for new pilots to grasp are learning how to land and the comms AKA radios but be patient with yourself it may sound like a lot but you can do it one day it will just click and you'll know what you're doing I still remember when someone told me that as a student pilot and I just remember thinking I sure hope you're right and they were so you'll be working towards this PPL while you have your student pilot's license and yes you must meet all the government requirements before you can take your check ride however your instructor will not sign you off for the check ride if she does not believe you are proficient enough as a pilot and by proficient I mean are you a safe pilot can you handle the aircraft can you handle emergency situations these types of things and more are what your examiners will expect you to be able to do for each check ride now the third item you're going to get will either be your instrument rating or your commercial license it doesn't really matter which one you do first but many flight schools will have you do the instrument rating first as the training for that can be a little bit more difficult than the training for your commercial license so they just want to make sure you can handle it let's go with getting your instrument rating first since it is more common notice how this is a rating and not a license a rating is added to a license that you already have ratings basically allow you to do extra things and some Pilots like to collect them if you will some examples of ratings are C plane and tail wheel AKA tail Drager AKA airplane with conventional landing gear tail wheel literally means there's a wheel at the back of the plane by the tail instead of at the front of the the plane which is more common and also known as tricycle landing gear once you do the appropriate training in a c plane or a tail wheel you'll get that added to your private pilot license this is what the process will be like to add your instrument rating which is one of the most beneficial ratings a pilot can get because not only does the training towards the instrument rating make you a more proficient pilot a safer pilot but having this rating allows you more flexibility in terms of when you can fly there are some awesome benefits to having an instrument rating including being allowed to fly higher and be allowed to fly with little to no visibility which may sound a little freaky if you're new to Flying but it's actually pretty sweet and super helpful now the training required to get your instrument rating is an additional 35 hours of flight time at least along with that required ground instruction I mentioned earlier some items included in your instrument training will be learning unusual attitudes and how to shoot instrument approaches into airports with low visibility during this flight training you will get very used to wearing a view limiting device to prevent you from from looking outside and force you to look at your instruments in front of you this rating is very intense and very procedural and a whole different world from your PPL training but personally I love instrument flying it's just so much fun and kind of like playing a video game which you'll understand that when you start it and I really appreciate how procedural it is now what about that commercial license in short this license allows you to get paid to fly pretty cool right but it is the biggest beast in that you will need at least an additional 120 hours of flight time but not all of that has to be with an instructor now try and stay with me as I explain this unless you plan to fly only single engine airplanes your whole life you will need single engine and multi-engine ratings on your commercial license you have to pick one to start with single engine or multi-engine and that one you choose will be your initial commercial license the second one you choose will be your commercial license add-on for example I have my commercial license single engine land with multi-engine add-on no matter which one you start with there are perks and disadvantages if you choose to get your initial commercial license in a single engine airplane like I did it will be significantly less expensive as a multi-engine airplane does cost more per hour and since a commercial add-on has no flight requirement it's much faster to complete than the initial license you still with me okay good however when doing the multi- engine add-on you generally don't get a lot of flight hours usually around 10 and that's that's because what I just mentioned how there is no required flight time for the add-on and this is important to know for your multi-engine add-on because if you want to go to the airlines they do expect you to have a minimum of 25 hours of multi-engine time seeing as my flight school was only doing a 12-h hour multi-engine add-on I was slightly concerned about hitting that 25 hours as at the time I was hoping to go straight to the airlines so to help myself out a little bit I just kept telling the school I wasn't ready to to check ride until I got to 25.2 hours and not every school gives you this next option but if you do want to do your initial commercial license in a multi- engine airplane you will absolutely have the required Airline flight time and then some but it will cost you more money either way you go the commercial add-on only requires a check ride and not a written exam yay now let's say you go to part 61 school that doesn't even have a multi-engine airplane what do you do it will require a little bit more work on your part but you can find schools out there that will get you your mold tangent add-on in just a couple of days the price for these can be around $5,000 so just see what you can find as an example I included a link in the show notes to a flight school in the Dallas Fort Worth area that does these multi-engine add-ons I haven't been to them personally but I've heard good things the last two items I'm going to cover are the certified flight instructor license aka the CFI and the certified flight instructor instrument add-on rating aka the CF you don't really have to get these to go to the airlines but it's the fastest way to do so and it's the most common way to build your 1500 hours quickly I personally enjoy being a flight instructor because it makes me a better pilot and I'm consistently learning a lot also I absolutely loved the flight school where I instructed the CFI and CFI do just what they sound like they do the CFI allows you to train new pilots for their PPL and Commercial airplane single engine land and the CFI allows you to instruct pilots who are getting their airplane single engine land instrument rating you can become an instructor in multi-engine airplanes also called an Mei but you usually would get this after you get your first flight instructor job and the flight school you're working for will pay for it so that's nice and not everybody gets to do it plus becoming an Mei will ensure that you hit that 25 hours of flight time the airlines want for your CFI license you will need up to an additional 25 hours of Flight Training as well as your ground training this training is different from any other training you've done up to this point because now you are the one instructing the flight instructor and you make the switch from the left seat to the right seat it feels super weird at first but you get used to it after a few flights and the best part about CFI is doing your spin training which may sound terrifying if you're not an adrenaline junkie but it's super fun and you only do it in aircraft that are rated for spins I did my spin training in assessa 172 which is a very stable aircraft it basically just comes out of the spin for you remember how you don't have to take a written exam for your commercial add-on well it makes up for it here in CFI where you have to do not one but two written exams that's right guys you have to take your FIA flight instructor airplane and your foi fundamentals of instructing lastly to get that CFI rating added on to your flight instructor license you will need up to around 15 hours of flight time as well as the required ground training well there you have it guys the private pilot license the instrument rating the commercial single engine land with the multi-engine land add-on your CFI and CF I are all the licenses and ratings you can expect in flight school as I was talking through those licenses and ratings you may have noticed how I use the words at least quite a few times and that's because the amount of hours it will take you to finish each one depends on five main factors your funding aircraft maintenance Mother Nature your own personal commitment to training how often you fly and study and lastly if you're doing part 141 or part 61 training part 141 requires less flight hours but a specific number of hours that have to be done for ground training whereas part 61 requires more flight hours and has no specific amount of ground training that has to be done I'll talk more about the differences between 141 and 61 in another episode and asking a flight school if their part 61 or part 141 is just one of the many questions you should be asking when you're researching where to go to flight school if you would like more help on what questions you should ask see episode 2 should you be a pilot for your benefit I have added links for each license and rating requirements in the show notes so if you're feeling semi masochistic or still just curious and want to start reading the regulations have at it now let's say you're doing this just for funsies and you want to just fly around as a hobby well if you are not going to be a career pilot you really only need your private pilot license and preferably your instrument rating to make you a safer pilot but for you career Pilots out there strap in and get ready to go Full Throttle I know this may seem a little overwhelming but just take it one license and one rating at a time and when you think about obstacles you have to overcome as a pilot just think about what Orville Wright said if we worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true really is true then there would be little hope for Advance you can and you will advance all you need is patience and perseverance cheers to another completed episode of the aviators guide if you're listening via podcast and you enjoyed this episode please follow R and review my show and if you're watching this on YouTube please subscribe to my channel and like this video and remember to send any questions or comments you may have to your aviators guu gmail.com y'all keep Aiming High and stay awesome see you later aviators [Music] a