New Student Feeling Discouraged

[Vector4fun]

Doug,

Relax, you're not experiencing anything that a lot of students haven't felt.

Third Lesson I ended up with a different instructor due to scheduling conflicts. This was a really bad lesson for me. We started to explore slow flight and stalls, and things went really bad. I felt like I had 0 control of the plane, and my brain was completely frozen. I also felt like the instructor had 0 confidence in me and was flying the plane completely. I was also nervous and a bit frightened for the first time.

After the third lesson I tried to shake things off, and attribute it to the fact that I did not mesh with the instructors style, and then things would be ok on todays lesson.

Sounds like you weren't real comfortable with this instructor. Didn't know what to expect and had some new things thrown at you. It's OK, tell your regular instructor you'd like to stick with just him for now if possible.

Well I had todays lesson with my normal instructor and am not feeling good, in fact I am feeling worse. I told him that I had problems my last lesson, and that I really needed to revisit all the slow flight manuevers. He understood. Today was much windier than I am used to, and flying in wind in a small C-152 I was a bit thrown off, and actually felt slightly quesy(sp?) at times.

Again, normal. You were up-tight about your last performance, and then caught a windy day in a C-152. Well, a C-152 feels like a barely controllable kite in the wind sometimes. It's a very light airplane. Your instructor probably made it seem "easy" to control, but that's the result of lots of practice.

When you learn to ski, the more practiced folks make it look easy to put your knees and ankles together and slalom down the hill. It isn't easy. (unless you're about 4' 65lbs, and athletically gifted that is.. )

Once we started slow flight, I found myself looking at instruments way too much and not doing well at all. At one point my instructor covered the instruments with the checklist and told me to pick a point(a cloud) and stay on it. This helped, but I still never felt confident. A major problem I am having is using the wrong rudder. In the beginning you are told to "step on the ball". Ball moves right, you use right rudder to push the ball back to the middle, and so on. Well often times when the plane is yawing to the right, I find myself using right rudder, to "push" the nose left...which of course is totally wrong and really screws me up.

Practice visualising your last lesson. Move the controls in your mind. If you want the nose to go left, you push left rudder, push right rudder to make the nose go right. Fly the airplane by watching the horizon, feeling the aircraft's movements, hearing the pitch of the engine and the slipstream change. At this point in your training, think of the instruments as "backups" to your senses. Of course, if you're flying in busier airspace, it's going to be more critical to be at the correct altitude an on the correct heading at times. Flying by reference to instruments is a much more refined skill that will take hours of practice. You'll get to that stage much later.

Slow flight overall seems to be a total hang up for me. I just feel like there is too much to keep track of. Altitude, airspeed, Angle of attack, etc...
Add on the fact that it was very bumpy around 2500' and I was downright terrified at times(he did put us at 3000' for a lot of it, but wanted me to experience slow flight in turbulance too). Terrified not so much in a "crash and burn" sense, but more in a "I must be the worst pilot in the world, I am never going to get this" sense.

I doubt you're anything like the worst. I've been in turbulence where the aircraft climbed 1500' in less than a minute with the power nearly at idle. I couldn't stop it without bending something. Turbulence is something you learn to deal with, not something you "master", even at 2000 or 20,000 hours. Basically, you felt as though you weren't in control of the aircraft any more, right? Well, you can't always control a very light aircraft precisely in turbulence. But you can keep the wings approximately level most of the time, keep the nose pointed in the general direction you want to go, and keep the airspeed within 10-20 kts of a target. Some days, that's *all* you can do. It's just a matter of degree as you get more practiced and more comfortable.

 

[Goose Egg]

Does that sound like a decent plan, or should I keep plodding ahead with slow flight?

Sounds like a great plan to me.

Sheesh, no wonder you are having hard times with flying with all that stuff going on in your life! Yeah, let things calm down a bit before you head back to flying. Take a week off (or four) and when life trends back to copacetic, then hit the flying hard.

And it always helps to have some ground school under your belt before you really start flying. Most of my students come to me with zero ground school, and it can make things fairly challenging... for me as well as them.

-Goose

 

[Goose Egg]

When you learn to ski, the more practiced folks make it look easy to put your knees and ankles together and slalom down the hill. It isn't easy. (unless you're about 4' 65lbs, and athletically gifted that is..

Hey, that's pretty good description of me when I started skiing... 16 years ago!

-Goose

 

[PaulThomas]

Looking at my logbook. I was introduced to stalls just before 10h and got them down somewhere between 10- 16h.
Checkride included, I got my PPL in less than 50h, and could have done it a quite a bit less (I wasn't happy until I figured out how to get a greaser everytime... My CFI and I spend (wasted) quite a bit of time in the pattern.

 

[Ravengirl]

Right now here is my plan of action:

Take a step back, make sure I have my "ground school" stuff in order. Schedule a lesson for next week...probably on the weekend. Ask to have one lesson of just flying in normal flight, and doing things I know how to do and am comfortable doing in order to get my confidence back...like practicing coordinated turns. Then I will take the next lesson and really try to dive into slow flight, and stick with that till I feel comfortable with it.

Does that sound like a decent plan, or should I keep plodding ahead with slow flight?

Got to keep on keepin' on... Sorry, I had a Steve Miller Band kind of moment right there.

You're just beginning...this is totally normal! Remember, even pilots with thousands of hours - EVEN YOUR CFI *gasp*- are going to have "off" days now and then. You're already learning from this episode, and that's great, so take it for what it's worth and move on.

Not all of your training will be a cakewalk, so be patient when you hit these little roadblocks. Take the time you need to master coordinated turns, then slow flight, because having a thorough understanding of them is key to other things you'll be learning. I guarantee that in a couple of months you're going to look back and say "WHY was that such a big deal?!"

And just so you know, I got hung up on the same thing when I was training...I lived! You will too.

Stephanie

 

[JetMonkey]

Your best learning days come from your worst ones....Don't give up!

 

[philo beddoe]

Make sure that you are getting a thorough briefing before each flight so that you know exactly wht is expected of you in the air.
If you are not spending at least 20 or 30 minutes talking through each maneuever, get another instructor, or get yours to brief you properly.

 

[mmmdonut]

DOUG PACK IT UP NOW

YOU ARE NOT MEANT TO BE A PILOT! SAVE YOUR MONEY AND TAKE UP GOLF

 

[Doug]

mmmdonut

haha, golf...I actually don't know which one of the two is more frustrating...I can certainly tell you I have thrown more objects when golfing.

Also, I got a whole "ground school" kit that is an interactive multimedia thingy on the computer with all sorts of video's. For each lesson there is a learning portion(basically the same as the chapter in the book, but I do both...view the lessons and read the book so it sinks in) and then there is a video where you basically go along in the plane for the entire lesson to get a feel of what is going to happen.

Also as far as before the lesson we do go over a few things, but I think I will request a little more discussion before go up. I think they basically follow with the training material, but I think at this point I am a little inbetween lesson 3 and 4, and need a little more specialized training.

Taking everyone advice I think I am going to be a more assertive for my next lesson, detailing exactly what I think I need by way of instruction to really get a good understanding of the things I am having problems with.

 

[mmmdonut]

Well if it's any consolation I've had a student pilot cry on me on more than one occasion.

So if you haven't cried yet... maybe you'll make it.