Losing Interest. Help!!!

[pilotpat]

LOL you guys.....cruel indeed - but pretty darn funny! On a serious note, if you're on a 141 silly-bus you have to go by it. That being said, you still have plenty of solo flights that no one is watching you chandelle your tail off. On those lessons, I usually opted to go my 50 miles and practice landings - I have yet to do a chandelle or lazy 8 in my Falcon.........of course I practiced one or two maneuvers on the way to those airports just to make sure I was proficient.

 

[Jedi_Cheese]

Wait until your CFI. Another mind numbing 15 hours of the same old... And the bonus part is that you have a significant chance of failing and getting to do another 3 hours of SSDD.

Why is it that when you are most likely to be bored out of your mind and are about to give up, you have almost gotten the signoff?

 

[Junkflyer]

You should probably get out now if you already feel this way. You're in for a lifetime of training and checkrides in this business.

 

[SmellsLikeAvGas]

Ryan,
What part of the country are you in?

 

[wildfreightess]

find some inspiration

Burnout happens. It may help to find some solo time and do ANYTHING but chandelles. Try hanging out at a different airport, just watching bigger airplanes take off and land. Read a book with an aviation theme (textbooks don't count). Try to remember why you wanted to learn to fly. Don't spend so much time wishing for that job commanding the shiny jet that you forget to enjoy the ride along the way. Good luck to you.

 

[Hogan]

Burn out is another form of those learning plateaus. We all get them. I vote for the "other instructor" suggestion. I got milked at a school during my Commercial and beginning of my CFI ticket. The timebuilder I was flying with kept canceling me in order to do charter flights. Then the guy that replaced him made me repeat the entire Commercial procedures. I got to the point where I hated flying but KNEW it was a plateau and it WOULD resolve itself if I only held on and tried different techniques. Unfortunately, my "instructor" didn't see it that way. After I expressed my frustration at my performance, saying I knew I could do better he gave me a big speech about spending money to do something I didn't enjoy. He was very insulting.He had poor communication skills. I would ask a question and he would not answer, just stare at me. He made spoke badly of his students to other students. Management at the school did not care, as long as he brought in money. I realized what was burning me out was the attitude at that school so I went some place else. Passed the ride and three more since. I'm am happy to report he no longer teaches.

 

[Medicryan]

I am in Florida Smelly.

Well now that I have gotten all of these responses let me elaborate a little bit. I think that the phrase "burned out" was a little bit premature. I think that frustrated is a more proper term. Yes, you are all right, chandelle's are the manuever that I cannot seem to get. Heck, it used to be the 180 power off approach until I went up to a non-towered airport one day and did literally about 50 of them for about 4 hours and finally I can nail them everytime. It is not the flying that I am getting burned out with it is the damn manuevers.
I love to fly. This my sound a little lame but my flying fantasy it to do an ILS into JFK on a snowy night on Christmas Eve in my shiny 757 and lay down in my room at that Plaza for the evening. Believe me, this is what I want to do for a living. There is nothing going to stop me. And I know fully of what I am getting myself into. I have friends in the business that let me know what it is like all of the time. And even from the horror stories they tell me, it is still exactly what I want to do. Even with the crap pay and crew scheduling. It will all pay off in the end. That is the way I have to look at it.

Back to manuevers, I am only getting about 40% if the chandelles right. I am about 70% on the lazy eights and every other manuever is a piece of cake that I get everytime. I am just venting more than anything else. I am just not getting the feel of it yet. Once I do, I know I will be fine.

Thanks for all your responses

 

[Hogan]

Back to manuevers, I am only getting about 40% if the chandelles right. I am about 70% on the lazy eights and every other manuever is a piece of cake that I get everytime.

Try breaking down the chandelle into its basic parts. First the 180° turn. Then the climb. Then the climb with the turn. Focus on smoothness. I learned them in my private training because my CFI would "reward" me at the end of a good lesson by showing me a commercial manuever. He said the mark of a good pilot was a guy who could do a chandelle so smoothly you could do a bris in the back of the airplane without complications. Yeow!

 

[RJPilott]

A good idea might be to switch instructors just for the Chandelle. Not saying your current CFI cant teach it, but sometimes just a switch of a face and hearing a different voice helps. Try it for one lesson. Even though it is the same manuever and the fundamentals are the taught the same, every CFI has a bit of a different angle teaching it. The other CFI might be able say that one little thing you can relate to and bingo, you perform a flawless Chandelle consistently.


The same thing actually happened to me for solo. I just couldnt get the flare down. Got real sick of doing T&G's. Then my CFI went on vacation and i took a different CFI for a lesson. My first landing for that lesson was flawless. I did three more and he cut me loose.

Once i became a CFI and had a student start to get overly frustrated, although rare, I would recommend the same thing. There was no use going up together and performing that same maneuver over and over saying the same things. First i would tell them to take a week off and blow off steam. Party it up. Then come back for a lesson on the manuever with someone else. 99.9% of them got it the first time. Other CFI's would also send students to me for the same thing. Remember, taking lessons are all about the student learning, not for CFI's to build time. Good luck...

 

[ubpilot]

Please try to enjoy your flight training as much as you can, because what you are doing right now is somthing I miss very much. Once you get into Part 135 or Part 121 flying, there will be no more VFR maneuvers for you ever again. Right now when I sit behind the control of a CRJ, I feel more like a machine operator than a real pilot.

 

[smellthejeta]

OP:

Go take a fun flying trip somewhere, do something you haven't done before, put some excitement back into your training. My private training took a few extra hours because I did some things outside of the syllabus... because I wanted to do them. I remember that even my first solo wasn't all that exciting, but my first solo x-c was a BLAST! I learned to fly so I could go places, not hang out in the pattern all day. I remember getting to overfly DCA in a 172. That was cool for lots of reasons. Dang it, can't do that anymore, so it really is a fond memory.

That said, when you come back after a few days hiatus, take the advice of switching instructors, at least for the manuever.

 

[Almerick07]

I did my training 141 got my commercial ticket right at 190hours with that said, I practiced chandelles and lazy eights maybe a total of 10 hours. Overall I probably spent 20 hours actually getting the commercial maneuvers down cold. We followed the Jepp. syllabus and did mostly X-C's with a chandelle or lazy eight somewhere in the middle....went to many different places and ate many different foods. Talk to your instructor and see if he will "add" some x-c practice to your commercial training. on the other hand if youre really having that much trouble with the performance maneuvers maybe you should just suck it up and keep practicing. As a CFI I do a million of these things a day and they are way more fun than turns around a point IMO. Keep your head up, this is probably one of the easiest checkrides you will have.

 

[soonerpilot625]

Spins

That is exactly what I was going to suggest... spin training is something EVERYONE needs and doesn't get enough of. Plus it is hella fun. It will also help get those butterflys out of your stomach about those kinds of manuevers. Further aerobatics is great as well. On top of being a blast it teaches you how to really fly the plane and will make you a much better pilot.

 

[Almerick07]

climb to atleast 3000' AGL set the airplane up in a medium power setting (about 19-20" in a 172RG) get it trimmed out for hands off straight and level flight. Once youve done this pull up to induce a stall, once the stall has fully developed dont recover. DO NOT touch the controls, sit on your hands if you have to. After a couple of minutes I guarantee that airplane will be flying straight and level at the same altitude and course you were in straight and level flight at. this is an awesome demonstration of airplane stability and is a wild fun ride. warn your instructor before you do it....it usually scares the shiznit out of my students first time.