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April, If I may ask, why did it take 80 hours to solo? Not a judgement; We have a student pilot in our flying club who came to us from a flight school and she was in a similar situation. Other than some self-confidence issues, she was perfectly capable of solo flight and has done well with...

When's the last time you went flying with someone else as PIC, just for the sheer enjoyment of enjoying flight? or a few $100 burgers? When I finally got to solo (wx was terrible for almost a month), I was pre-flighting and almost ready to drag the plane out of the hangar when one of my CFI's...

THIS! These things aren't found in handbooks nor are they often taught in primary training. The longer cross-country trips are good times to explore the aircraft's systems and avionics as well. I read up and played with a Garmin 430 simulator, but exploring it on long cross countries is where...

Remember folks, the FAA requirements are the bare minimum requirements. As an aviator, you should be striving for better than just a passing grade. When the fecal matter hits the rotary ventilation device, you'll be glad you went above and beyond. I realize Avgas ain't cheap these days, but...

Dumb question: Is there a cheat sheet to how obstructions are marked/lit? At night I see some towers which have solid red lights, some have slowly blinking red lights, some have white strobes. Is there some actual meaning to this? I'm not finding it in my training manuals.

SkyDog58 appears to think you need a DG and AI to fly a pattern... he got rather nasty about me continuing the fly the pattern with those gauges slowly failing. I've always put the ILS in as a habit, more of a security blanket from my first few flights where I had trouble figuring out...

Actually, I do carry the POHs, MELs, full Maintenance Manuals (both airframe & powerplant) for the aircraft I fly on my tablets (tablets plural, for redundancy). I’ve actually read them as well. The POH doesn't mention that the attitude indicator's gyro will run for 15 minutes after losing...

Absolutely. I could have legally flown a full cross-country with the aircraft in that condition. 91.205's requirments for VFR flight: (1) Airspeed indicator. (2) Altimeter. (3) Magnetic direction indicator. (4) Tachometer for each engine. (5) Oil pressure gauge for each engine using...

My biggest regret with aviation is that I didn't get my PPL sooner.

I fly with a few guys from the local ATC and they go out of their way to encourage people to use FF. Not for traffic counts either -- they're working on overload this time of year. They're interested in who you are and what your intentions are. For better or worse, the ILS/GPS approaches for...

This has been my experience in Florida as well. Multiple Class Ds, always granted flight following. In fact the local ATIS specifically says anyone requesting Flight Following should do so before taxi.

Have you flown with someone else completely at the controls, with you just as an observer? No pressure to fly at all? My CFI was pushing for me to solo at 8 hrs. I wasn't having any of it. I kept fearing that I was going to plow the plane into the runway or fearing that I'd stall the plane a...

That would be correct. I'm not too worried about hard drives being readable after an encounter with one of these. @GaryM : I've tried playing with magnetic tape and floppy disks and MRI machines and it's surprising how resilient magnetic media is. I always made it a habit of erasing my...

If you're buying a new computer and it comes with Windows 11, then run Win11. If you have older peripherals, Win10. Basically, whatever the system shipped with is probably good enough. Still chugging along with Win7 here and quite happy with it. "Not Supported by Microsoft" doesn't bother...

Any basic DVD player can play CDs. If you're a true audiophile this won't do, but you'll be well-versed on CD transport drives and external DACs. I also like the idea of ripping the CD collection to a computer. MUCH easier to work with. Be careful about which encoder you use as there...

Go big or go home... In all seriousness, drives at my current office usually get taken out to the gun range over an extended lunch. If that's not convenient, I open the drive case, pour fine-grain beach sand into the drive and plug it in and let the sand do its work on the platters.

I think you need to approach this a bit differently -- How should you respond to it? Do you tell your students which hours you're awake or prefer to be contacted? When I first engaged my (independent) CFI, I asked him how he preferred I contact him and which hours he preferred. As a rule, I...

...but are your actual maneuvers really sloppy? In my initial days I was very unsure about myself, especially with regard to landings. I was always afraid I was going to bend the plane. I never actually had a hard landing, but in my mind they all were. An hour before my first solo flight...

I don't mind some vegan food. The vegans themselves are a completely different matter...

Systems training was covered in my pre-solo stuff, along with some simulated outage questions. Good thing it was -- I lost the vacuum system (both pumps) on the downwind leg of my first solo. It was a complete non-event for me. More of an annoyance than anything else. A quick think about...