Release · August 2026

Tower Drill 2.0: from lesson app to personal radio coach

Published August 2026 · 6 min read

Version 1 of Tower Drill answered one question: can you practice spoken radio calls against a controller that talks back, at your real home field, without renting an airplane? Version 2.0 answers the harder follow-up: once you are practicing, how do you know what to practice next? The new release keeps every drill you already know and wraps it in the feedback loop a good instructor provides: hear what you actually said, see exactly what you missed, and get a short session built from precisely those misses.

Tape Review: listen to yourself, next to the ideal call

Every scored call now saves its transcript, the controller's instruction, the ideal readback, and the specific items you missed, all on your device. For recent calls, Tape Review also keeps the audio of your own transmission, so you can hear the difference between what you think you said and what the microphone heard. Anyone who has listened to themselves on a real tape knows this is where the learning happens: the dropped callsign, the "uhh" before the runway number, the readback that trailed off. Open it from the Progress tab after any scored session.

Practice My Misses: your weakest calls, in one short session

Tower Drill has always scored readbacks item by item. 2.0 finally puts that data to work: one tap builds a short session from the calls that need another pass, pulled from your recent history. Miss hold-short readbacks twice this week? They will be waiting for you. The session is rebuilt every time from your latest attempts, so it keeps up as your weak spots move from taxi calls to pattern calls to handoffs.

Taxi Trainer: route order and hold-short discipline, interactively

Runway incursions start on the ground, and most of them start with a readback. The new Taxi Trainer reads you a taxi clearance, then has you assemble the readback in order from tiles: runway assignment, route, hold-short restriction, callsign. Getting it right means keeping the route in sequence and understanding that "hold short" is never permission to cross. The FAA airport diagram for your field sits one tap away, so you practice finding the runway and the restriction on the same chart you would brief from. It is a training route, not a current taxi instruction; your actual clearance always controls.

Listen & Shadow: learn the rhythm before the microphone

New students told us the same thing in different words: "I am not ready to be scored yet." Listen & Shadow is for exactly that stage. Listen mode plays both sides of a normal departure, first call to handoff, so you can hear how short and predictable each exchange really is. Shadow mode plays the controller and lets you answer out loud with no score, no microphone permission, and no pressure, then shows the example readback for comparison. It is the gentlest on-ramp in the app, and it is free.

Flight Day: one rehearsal shaped like your actual flight (Pro)

Flight Day used to be a briefing checklist with practice attached. In 2.0 it becomes a true mission rehearsal: pick a local flight, pattern work, or cross-country, acknowledge the official-source checks (weather, NOTAMs, frequencies, the airport diagram), set your expected runway and today's ATIS code, and optionally capture the current METAR. The full rehearsal then plays your calls in order, first contact through the last handoff, with the runway, weather, and ATIS held consistent all the way through. Real calm winds are read as "wind calm," just like the real ATIS. The rehearsal remains a training input, not an operational assignment, and the app never makes a go/no-go call: that decision belongs to you and your instructor. The full mission rehearsal is part of Tower Drill Pro; the briefing checklist, weather capture, and free stage lessons stay free.

ACS Readiness and the Radio Checkride (checkride is Pro)

The new ACS Readiness view maps your practice history onto the radio skills behind common Private Pilot ACS tasks: initial contact, readbacks, hold-shorts, frequencies, phraseology, and more. A short knowledge check covers the ground facts (light-gun signals, 7600, 121.5), and the eight-call Radio Checkride runs you through a full flight's worth of calls with Solo scoring and no hints. To be clear about what it is not: it is a practice estimate, not an FAA result, an endorsement, or a checkride prediction. The readiness view and knowledge check are free; the eight-call checkride is part of Pro.

Smaller things you will notice

The app now lives in three tabs: Train, Practice, and Progress, so course work, free-form drills, and results each have a home. Full light and dark themes (we call them Day VFR and Night Flight) run across every screen. Audio is more resilient: route changes no longer block the interface, and controller transmissions fall back to plain speech when the radio effect cannot run. The airport database moved to the current FAA cycle with 577 towered fields, each with its real runways, frequencies, and on-demand FAA airport diagram (diagrams are Pro). And Tower Drill still has no subscription: the first five lessons are free, and Pro is $8.99 once.

Where 2.0 points

The theme of this release is closing the loop: practice, hear yourself, see the miss, drill the miss, rehearse the whole flight. That is the loop a great CFI runs with a student on the ground, and it is the loop that turns a nervous first call into a boring one. If you are an instructor, the companion piece to this release is the flight school radio program guide; if you are a student, update the app and open Tape Review after your next session. Your own voice is the best teacher in the building.