At AirVenture 2026 I sat down with Adriana, founder of FlyORKA, expecting an app demo. I walked away with a line I haven't been able to shake: logging is not learning.
Adriana spent her career as a flight test engineer, learning to fly airplanes nobody had flown before. That path led her into gliders, tailwheel, and aerobatics, a pile of soaring records, and years of ab initio instruction. Her whole training philosophy comes down to one idea: we don't learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.
We talk about what flight test can teach a student pilot about every lesson: observe with curiosity, record without judging, then share what you found. Adriana tells the story of waiting through all of her primary training for honest feedback, and what she finally heard when it came. And we break down ORKA (Observe, Record, Know yourself, Assess and adjust), a structure for debriefing every flight and making your progress visible to your instructor, your peers, and the people cheering you on from the ground.
Not a sponsorship, but Adriana offered listeners 15% off FlyORKA for 12 months with code STUDENTPILOTCAST. She made 50 codes, so it's first come, first served.
Fair warning: we lost some audio and video during the recording, so the conversation jumps in a few places. That one's on me.
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Legal Notice: Remember, any instruction that you hear in this podcast was meant for the student and only for the situation that they happened to be in at the time. Please do not try to apply anything you see or hear in this episode or any other episode to your own flying. If you have questions about any aspect of your flying, please consult a qualified CFI.
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