Private pilot ground school · personal study notes

Flying study kit

Interactive tools and notes for private pilot knowledge—density altitude, lift theory, performance, and drill quizzes—anchored to MIT OCW 16.687 and the FAA Pilot’s Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge.

Interactive

Aircraft Performance Lab

Density altitude, humidity, weight, wind, and runway factors. Molecule box, altitude tape, mission theater, guided story, and self-check.

Open lab → Interactive · aero

Lift Theory Lab

Bernoulli & venturi, airfoil pressure, Newton/downwash, circulation & Kutta–Joukowski, myths vs complete stack—pilot layer through graduate equations.

Open lab → Interactive · Ch. 5

AOA & Load Factor Lab

Angle of attack vs pitch, CL curve and stall, bank load factor, stall speed √n, steep-turn and accelerated-stall scenarios.

Open lab → Interactive · Ch. 5

Drag Polar Lab

Parasite vs induced drag, U-curve, max L/D, clean vs dirty configuration.

Open lab → Interactive · Ch. 10

Weight & Balance Lab

Load stations, moment table, CG, toy envelope, fuel burn — educational only.

Open lab → Practice

Knowledge quiz

Browser quiz aligned to ground-school topics. Practice only—not an official FAA test bank.

Start quiz → Notes

Study notes

Short write-ups (density altitude, altitude math, Bernoulli) you can read before using the labs.

Read notes → Course

MIT 16.687 (OCW)

Official course page: lectures, syllabus, and instructor materials (CC BY-NC-SA).

Open OCW →

FAA handbooks (official)

Free U.S. government publications. Prefer the current edition on faa.gov. Large PDFs are not hosted on this Pages site (GitHub size limits); download from the FAA or clone the repo and run the download script.

How to use this site

  1. Work the notes under Atmosphere and Lift & aerodynamics (see notes index).
  2. Open the Performance, Lift Theory, AOA, and Drag Polar labs.
  3. Drill with the quiz.
  4. Cross-check claims in the PHAK chapters above.

Repository

Source, scripts, and optional offline OCW dump live in the GitHub repo. Local clone can also hold handbook PDFs via python3 scripts/download_faa_handbooks.py.