Tonight's ground school lesson is where I really wish the whole thing could begin.

Unfortunately, they do not fall in love with aerodynamics. They are not ready to understand what makes it fly ... they want to skip ahead thinking the subtleties are unimportant, or more likely that they will learn about them along the way ... when it matters. Systems ... a little more interesting, but still somewhat irrelevant ... aren't all our airplanes in top notch shape? What could go wrong? Whatever it is won't happen to them ... most of them think the CFI is there to handle that, whatever that is. No one has soloed when we cover those foundationa lectures. Later ... the weather theory lectures and weather products ... they learn to read the METARS ... experience comes with experiencing. They haven't experienced much yet. They haven't felt the wonder and raw beauty of it yet. I am getting some amazing pictures ready for them to look at to help capture their imaginations. The regs ... delivered as a lecture ... I am continuously working on weaving the regs in as appropriate ... spoon fed doesn't go down well. I love the lectures on performance and weights/balances. I was away for the performance part, the W/B lectures were lively and well received. Tonight we began talking about planning cross countries. They are beginning to see where all their work this semester comes together. They are just beginning to see themselves ... alone ... navigating. They don't naturally take to the notion of pilotage and dead reckonning ... they are all about the GPS. These guys, like my own children, were still sitting in booster chairs when they started button pushing their first game boy. I love to fly little two hour rectangular flights challenging myself to be over each of the points when I projected I would be. Nerdy, I know. I told them there is a time for following the pink line ... setting the auto pilot ... sure. I encouraged them not to cheat themselves out of the joy of planning and executing a flight well.