RA-Aus BAK common mistakes
RA-Aus BAK · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Mixing up the four forces so that thrust is described as opposing weight, or lift as opposing drag, instead of pairing lift with weight and thrust with drag.
The words are learned as a list rather than as two opposing pairs, and in steady level flight the pairs are equal, so candidates who memorise the list without the pairing guess at which force balances which.
What to do instead
Draw a free-body diagram of an aircraft in steady level flight every time you revise: lift arrow up, weight arrow down, thrust forward, drag back. State out loud that lift balances weight and thrust balances drag, and that in a climb thrust must also overcome a component of weight. Test yourself by covering one arrow and naming the force that must balance it.
Confusing angle of attack with pitch attitude or with climb angle, for example claiming a nose-high attitude always means a high angle of attack or that angle of attack is fixed by the flight path.
Pitch attitude is what the pilot sees on the attitude indicator and is easy to observe, whereas angle of attack is the angle between the wing chord line and the relative airflow and is not directly visible, so the visible quantity gets substituted for the invisible one.
What to do instead
Practise describing the same manoeuvre twice: once in terms of pitch attitude and once in terms of angle of attack. Work through the case of a level turn at increasing bank, where angle of attack must rise while altitude is held, and the case of a descending turn where attitude and angle of attack move differently. Learn the definition as chord line to relative airflow and apply it to each example before answering.
Treating the stall as a speed rather than an angle of attack, and therefore believing a stall is impossible at high speed, in a descent, or in a steep turn at low bank.
Light aircraft stall near a familiar indicated airspeed in straight flight, so the number becomes the mental definition. The effect of load factor, weight, and configuration on the stall speed is then forgotten, and the underlying angle-of-attack cause is never used to reason about unusual cases.
What to do instead
Anchor the definition to the critical angle of attack and then work the consequences: increasing load factor in a turn raises stall speed, increasing weight raises stall speed, flaps lower it, and a stalled wing can occur at any attitude or airspeed. Practise explaining why an aircraft can stall during a high-speed pull-up and why an accelerated stall happens in a steep turn, using angle of attack in every sentence.
Reciting the pre-takeoff and pre-landing checks as a memorised chant without being able to say what each item is verifying or what the correct response is if an item is not satisfied.
Checklists are learned by repetition in the aircraft and under time pressure, so the sequence is stored as sound rather than as meaning. Written questions that ask why an item is checked, or what to do when a reading is out of limits, then defeat a candidate who only knows the order.
What to do instead
Rewrite each checklist item as a question and an action: for example, 'Are the controls free and correct in direction?' and 'If not, do not proceed.' For each item, state the failure it is designed to catch. Rehearse the checks aloud with the meanings attached, and practise deciding what to do when a single item fails, because the answer is almost always to stop and resolve it before continuing.
Describing the effects of controls in isolation, so that the secondary effect of aileron (adverse yaw) and the secondary effect of rudder (roll and yaw coupling) are omitted, and the elevator is said to control speed.
Primary effects are taught first and are visually obvious, while secondary effects require understanding of how the surfaces interact. Candidates also confuse attitude control with speed control, because in practice pitch and power are used together to manage both.
What to do instead
Build a table with three columns: control surface, primary effect about which axis, and secondary effect. Fill in elevator about the lateral axis for pitch, ailerons about the longitudinal axis for roll with adverse yaw as the secondary effect, and rudder about the normal axis for yaw with roll as the secondary effect. Then state the power-and-attitude relationship for climb, descent, and level flight so that pitch is described as controlling attitude and power as controlling speed.
Underestimating the effect of wind on the practical handling of the aircraft, for example assuming that a headwind on one leg cancels a tailwind on the return leg, or that indicated airspeed changes with a headwind in level flight.
Wind is treated as an arithmetic add-on to navigation rather than as a factor affecting ground speed, drift, and the time and fuel for each leg. Candidates also conflate indicated airspeed with groundspeed because both are called speed in everyday speech.
What to do instead
Work numerical examples: a 60 nautical mile outbound leg into a 30 knot headwind and the return leg with a 30 knot tailwind, calculating the time for each and comparing with the still-air time. Show that the total time is longer than in still air. Separately state that in steady level flight a headwind changes groundspeed and the journey time but not the indicated airspeed at which the aircraft flies.
Reporting an occurrence with conclusions and blame rather than facts, for example writing that the pilot was careless or that the engine failed because it was badly maintained, and omitting the time, location, and sequence of events.
After an event the reporter is emotionally involved and wants to explain and justify, so interpretation crowds out observation. Candidates also assume the report is a narrative for the record rather than an input to safety analysis.
What to do instead
Write practice reports using a fixed skeleton: who, what, when, where, and the sequence of events in time order, with no adjectives about people. Separate the factual section from any opinion section and label the opinion clearly. Before submitting, check that every sentence could be verified by another witness or by the aircraft documents.
Failing to distinguish a reportable occurrence from one that need not be reported, or believing that a report is only required when there is damage or injury.
The reporting categories are a list of defined event types and are not intuitive, so candidates rely on common sense, which suggests that near misses and minor occurrences do not matter. The purpose of reporting, which is to identify hazards before they cause harm, is not connected to the categories.
What to do instead
Learn the reporting scheme by purpose first: occurrences are reported so that hazards can be identified and addressed, which is why serious incidents and near misses are included alongside accidents. Then list the categories you are expected to know and, for each, invent a one-line example. Practise classifying examples as reportable or not, and justify each decision by naming the category or the absence of one.
Treating maintenance as someone else's responsibility, so that the pre-flight inspection is described as a formality and the pilot in command is not seen as responsible for deciding whether the aircraft is airworthy before flight.
Maintenance is associated with licensed engineers and paperwork, and the daily inspection is performed so often that it becomes a ritual. The legal and practical link between the pilot's inspection and the airworthiness decision is not made explicit during training.
What to do instead
Learn the pre-flight inspection as a decision process: each check is evidence about airworthiness, and any doubt is a reason to seek advice or not fly. Study the difference between maintenance that must be certified by a licensed person and the inspections and checks the pilot performs, and practise describing what you would do if you found a defect that was not obviously serious.
Mixing up the aircraft's documented limitations, quoting a figure from memory without knowing whether it comes from the flight manual, the maintenance documentation, or the registration and airworthiness documents.
Numbers such as speeds and masses are encountered in several places and are remembered as isolated values, so the source and the conditions attached to each value are lost. Candidates then apply a maximum speed or mass outside the conditions under which it is valid.
What to do instead
Keep a one-page summary with three columns: the value, its exact source document, and the conditions attached to it. For each limit, state what it protects against and what happens if it is exceeded. When answering, name the source document in your reasoning before giving the number, so that the figure is retrieved with its context rather than on its own.