Training Between Flights
Between flights, review your notes, sequence cards and recordings. Discuss the next practice session with your instructor so the ground preparation supports your training plan.
Chair flying
Sit in a chair with the sequence card, close your eyes and fly the programme in real time, moving your hands as though on the stick and throttle, saying the figures aloud. Real time matters: rushing it teaches you a sequence you cannot fly. Done properly this is tiring, which tells you it is doing something.
Walking the sequence
Standing, hand out as the aeroplane, physically turning your body through each figure. It recruits motor memory in a way that reading the card does not, and it exposes the transitions you have not thought about, usually the ones where you were relying on the aeroplane to tell you what happens next.
Video review
Onboard footage from your own flights, watched with the card in your hand. You are looking for the gap between what you remember flying and what you flew, and it is always larger than expected. Ground video shot by somebody else is more useful still, because it shows the shape a judge would see.
Physical preparation
Discuss physical preparation with your instructor and seek individual medical advice where needed. Ground exercise and hydration do not establish fitness for aerobatics or replace instruction on handling load.
Reading
The Aresti catalogue, your own notebook and the judging criteria. Reading how figures are scored changes how you fly them, because it makes explicit the geometry that judges are measuring: line lengths, roll centring, heading accuracy. Most pilots discover they had been optimising for how a figure felt.
What does not transfer
Load, and everything downstream of it. No amount of ground practice prepares your circulation for +6G, and a simulator cannot produce the physiological or startle effects. See aerobatics vs simulator for the longer version. Ground work makes your flying time more productive; it does not replace any of it.
Currency
A rating that never gets used decays fast, and the decay is not in the figures. It is in judgement: entry speeds, energy management, how early you notice something developing wrongly. A few flights spread across a season keep that alive far better than one intensive week. Renting the Extra 300L with an instructor and fuel costs 4,920 PLN including VAT (4,000 PLN net) per flight hour. Five-hour credits cost 24,600 PLN including VAT and ten-hour credits 49,200 PLN including VAT, at the same hourly rate.
Frequently asked questions
What is chair flying?
Sitting with the sequence card, eyes closed, flying the programme in real time while moving your hands as though on the controls and saying the figures aloud. Doing it at real speed is what makes it work.
Does gym training help aerobatic flying?
Core strength for the anti-G straining manoeuvre, neck strength for holding your head under load and cardiovascular fitness for recovery all transfer. Hydration matters more than any of them.
Can ground practice replace flying hours?
No. It makes flying time more productive by removing the need to remember what comes next, but load and the physiological response to it cannot be practised on the ground.
How often should I fly to stay current?
A few flights spread across the season maintain judgement better than one intensive week. What decays first is not the figures but entry speeds, energy management and how early you notice a developing problem.
Fly it yourself
Aerobatic flights in the Extra 300L SP-EKS from Radom-Piastów (EPRP), 100 km from Warsaw. From 2,222 PLN, no licence or experience required. Gift vouchers are issued as a PDF after payment confirmation and stay valid for 12 months.