Best test preparation books for children according to redditors

I'm just starting down the PPL journey myself, and here are a few links that have helped me out along the way...


MZeroA Flight Training Jason does a really great job dissecting everything into it's component parts.

Our very own Schteevie may be better known to you as FlightChops and puts together some really great videos about his flight experiences. He's Canadian, and thus super critical of himself, but we won't hold that against him. ;) Seriously though, the amount of humility this guy shows in his videos is awesome and really "grounds" the series. (no pun intended.)

ShareAviation.com is yet-another-resource that a few of the aforementioned pilots are a part of. It's more like a gathering of people, but you can use this as a spring-board to find a wealth of valuable information.

A few books that have also helped me along the way:

FAA Airplane Flying Handbook is a little light on the technical details, but details flight maneuvers you should work on and whatnot. Link goes to Amazon.

FAA's Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge is a lot more dense, but dives into a lot more of the mechanical concepts (and math!) of flying. Link goes to Amazon.

Every pilot needs to own the Pilots Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge and The Airplane Flying Handbook.

This may be beyond the scope what you're looking for, but the best aviation book I have ever seen is Everything Explained for the Professional Pilot. I highly recommend it.

You might be interested in this book

If you're starting the training process, the first thing you should start doing is preparing for the knowledge exam, and the PPL test prep book (2020) is the best place to start. These are effectively the questions you'll see on the exam, if not THE questions. Most CFIs/pilots treat this as an SAT score, get >90% and you'll get taken more seriously. You'll need a FAR/AIM, which at first seems daunting but quickly becomes a bedside book. Jeppessen Private Pilot Manual is a good resource which consolidates a lot of the information nicely, and provides nice plots for things that otherwise feel a bit disjointed (e.g. medical certificate requirements, airspace).

Books that are helpful in terms of learning helicopter dynamics, my favorite by far is Principles of Helicopter Flight, as well as Cyclic and Collective. Many people like the Helicopter Flying Handbook, but as someone who knows better (I'm a PhD trained physicist), I found it to be garbage. The authors try to simplify things down to make it accessible to a lay person, but get a lot of things flat out wrong or are just plain sloppy with their descriptions. PoHF on the other hand isn't overly complicated, but provides a very clean and correct description of helicopter dynamcics. Don't be dazzled by the bright colors and pictures in HFH. Learning to Fly Helicopters is one I found to be a fun read, which lightly touches on flight details, but provides a lot of tangential tidbits around real world situations.

Study the Pilot Operating Handbook's for your training helicopter(s)! If you got some spare money, I'd recommend buying them (Robinson's can be found at their website, either free PDF or for purchase for ~$60). As you get closer to your check ride, you'll want to become more familiar with the Practical Test Standards which is the rubric the examiner will test you on, and there's several oral exam guide (general, helicopter) which are quite helpful.

I'd also recommend recording your rides and re-watching them. I did this and it was very helpful to go back and see what was happening, much like a quarterback watching film on Monday morning. You can find my PPL training videos on my YouTube channel, which includes my full check ride!

I also bought other books / resources, but these are effectively the only ones I used for my PPL, and I got 100% on the knowledge exam and also crushed the check ride. Best of luck in your journey!

Judging from your spelling, you’re in the UK (or possibly Australia or the like). Not sure I can offer advice relevant in that context.

In the US it’s quite straightforward (and common) to study both physics and math for the first two years of school and not decide which to get a degree in until later.

Note that with any of these subjects it’s possible to find extremely difficult problems, or trivial problems. If something is hard for you it’s probably hard for other people too. Hard problems sometimes need an hour, or 5 hours, or a few days, or a month (or more) to figure out a solution to. Don’t give up if an answer isn’t immediately obvious; that doesn’t mean you’re stupid.

P.S. You might enjoy this book I just bought a copy of, Professor Povey's Perplexing Problems – Even just the autobiographical sketch at the beginning is very amusing (one unfortunate thing: the solutions are written directly after the problem statements, so you have to spend some effort to not spoil yourself).

Or if you want some more physics problems to work, here are some Russian books,
https://archive.org/details/SelectedProblemsInPhysics-ShaskolskayaAndEltsin
https://archive.org/details/IrodovProblemsInGeneralPhysics
https://archive.org/details/ZubovShalnovProblemsInPhysicsMir

ACT Prep Black Book, Ultimate Guide to the Math ACT and Top 50 ACT Math Skills for a Top Score are used by lots of students and tutors. I won't recommend you reading the whole book though. Smart prep is all about finding your weak knowledge points first through practice and work on those specific skills through targeted and focused practice or reading related materials to fill the content gaps.

you definitely want some way to get explanations for questions. I would recommend the Official ACT book (the red book) and the black book.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Real-Edition-Prep-Guide/dp/0768934400?ie=UTF8&keywords=act&qid=1459302080&ref_=sr_1_2&sr=8-2

http://www.amazon.com/ACT-Prep-Black-Book-Strategies/dp/0692027912?ie=UTF8&keywords=act&qid=1459302080&ref_=sr_1_4&sr=8-4

Black Book (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0692027912/) which should be paired with the 2015 ACT official prep book.(https://www.amazon.com/Real-ACT-3rd-Prep-Guide/dp/076893432X/).

https://www.amazon.com/Aerodynamics-Naval-Aviators-NAVWEPS-00-8OT-80/dp/1616084391

Professor Povey's perplexing problems is a great book with all these fun physics or math questions, its mostly physics so I didn't find much use out of it if my friend wasn't with me, but the problems are great.