Approaching 10 hours, where were you?

[Kaman]

Hello,
Don't sweat the hours thing. Everyone learns at their own pace and style. A shrewd flight instructor will cater his own instructional style to match your way of learning and you'll be successful. Just remember from astronauts on down, pilots aren't born they are trained.

Regards,

ex-Navy Rotorhead

 

[2yrs2go]

Students worry too much about not soloing by X amount of hours. You'll solo when you're ready.

A lot depends on your training schedule. I've had students solo at about twelve hours after a week of training every day. I've had others who soloed after twenty hours primarily because of interrupted training and need for remedial. I had one student at MAPD who, despite regular training, soloed at about twenty hours. His problem was his attitude. Then, I knew an instructor who claimed that he soloed at five hours. The guy also had a fat ego, so believe what you want.

It only matters that you solo. When you solo is far less important.

Good luck with your training.

And worry too much about how many hours that they have when they take their check ride.



I took nearly 90 hours to get my private due to the aforementioned "interrupted training and need for remedial." I was ready at about 50 hours, but with a long string of really bad weather on my days off, my work schedule, my instructor’s schedule and a host of other things, it was pushed back. Believe it or not, I was standing outside the FBO grabbing a smoke, with the examiner and my CFI, chatting and this guy walks up. The only thing I could say nice about how he looked was that he still had most of his teeth. He went on for a good five minutes about how he soloed at ten hours and got his private at 45. He then went on to tell all three of us that he could not imagine how it could take anybody 90 hours.



Everybody does it at their own pace. You will find yours.

 

[DirtyBeech]

these guys are right. solo when you're ready, not when your ego is. i had students who soloed at 10 hours, and students who soloed at 25 hours. generally, if my students weren't quite ready at the end of the pre-solo training syllabus we'd move on and start their cross country dual training. it gave them more time to master the aircraft, and helped them develop an eye for a traffic pattern where they hadn't memorized where to turn base and final ( i never taught that, but students inevitably did it as a crutch early on). then when they were ready we'd maybe do 2 review flights on pre-solo stuff and i'd sign them off. their cross country sign off followed shortly thereafter. it only added 1 to 2 hours to the training syllabus, and everyone felt a lot better about the solo.

as for your altitude loss in turns you might try this. increase wherever your nose is in reference to the horizon to maintain level flight by roughly half. that position will vary based on aircraft, your height, and seat placement, but it worked well for my students. for example, in the old 172, level flight generally placed the nose about two inches below the horizon. i had my students raise it to one inch below the horizon for starters, and then play with it to get it right. that really helps you to learn to look outside the aircraft to control it's performance while backing up your desired outcome with the instruments in the plane.