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Not everything is that clear to me, especially when it comes to landings. For example, how perfectly do you have to be aligned with and over the runway centerline on touchdown to be considered ready for solo or a checkride? The standards just say "aligned with" and "over." What if you touch down...

100 hours isn't unusual in my area. I certainly agree that you should be told which areas are deficient if they're telling you that you're not ready for your solo/checkride yet.

From what I understand it's almost worse for your instructors if you fail your checkride or if something bad happens when you solo than it is for you. So just because you happened to pass doesn't mean that they were cheating you by recommending a little more practice first. Better to err on the...

I think relatively few rental planes get 500 hours a year, and many of the costs aren't proportional to the number of hours flown. Not having to pay for a loan certainly helps, but then you have to consider the amount you could have earned if you had invested the $55K in the stock market or...

All the CFIs I've worked with get paid completely independently of the club (they send bills to me directly). Here in the Bay Area the rate is typically $90-100 per hour. The clubs charge around $185 for a C172 with G1000, and if you train in something like an SR20 then you're talking about $250...

It's also a good idea to make sure that you choose the school and the type of aircraft such that there's more than one available to train in. Either that or accept the risk that your training schedule may be interrupted if that plane is out of service for whatever reason.

Here are a bunch of things in my PP syllabus that come after solo which you could still work on even if you're not able to solo yet. I think these could keep most people busy for more than a few weeks on the typical training schedule: short-field takeoffs and landings soft-field takeoffs and...

Some of the things mentioned in the video might not be ideal, but I wouldn't blame the club for deliberately trying to scam you in all those cases. If the weather forecast isn't looking that great, for example, I think it's reasonable to expect you to show up and only allow you to cancel without...

You can still be flying and work on most of your PP stuff (cross countries, etc.) while waiting on an SI. It will just sort of mix up the normal order of things. If you go for SP and then PP you'll need to do two practical exams with a DPE, two written tests, etc. I'm working on my PP and I...

To me the knobology/buttonology is the main thing you'd want to practice (I prefer knobology since the buttons are fairly intuitive and the knobs are the tricky part. Knobology also sounds funnier :) ). It's best to practice on something with real knobs and buttons so you can get them into your...

Don't forget in the US there's also a pre-solo written exam your CFI is required to administer (FAR 61.87(b)). It's less formal than the FAA knowledge test, however, and can be a "take home" type of test. My CFI canceled our flight this Saturday and turned it into a ground lesson to go over the...

I'm sure you're right, but I didn't get the impression that the question was about that advanced level of usage. For learning the "knobology" and how to get around in the G1000 (read the PFD, tune the radios, setup flight plans, configure various display options, monitor engine parameters, etc.)...

From what I've read on various pilot forums, progressive lenses can be bad for flying because there are significant distortions in your peripheral vision which can make it more difficult to judge the flare (among other things). I also found this at...

If you have an iPad (or ideally 2 iPads and a simulator) you can use Simionic's G1000 PFD and MFD apps which are just $10 each. They even sell a hardware bezel and an audio panel with the real knobs and buttons, but that gets much more expensive. PFD App...

The online schools (I can speak for King Schools and Sporty's at least) will generate an endorsement for taking the written exam once you've passed some practice tests.

Good luck! I just took mine the other day and only missed one question. I was relieved that there was almost nothing they threw at me that I hadn't seen in the practice questions. I was especially worried about the regulations stuff (the question I missed did in fact fall in that area). I used...

I wonder if there's a significant difference between Saturday/Sunday lessons versus e.g. Sunday/Wednesday, or a single lesson with 3 hours of hobbs time versus two lessons with 1.5 hours each. Obviously with the shorter lessons you spend a lot of extra time repeating things like preflight...

Switching CFIs mid-school might be common, but not necessarily to get a "different perspective." More likely because one CFI got a job with an airline or maybe because you were dissatisfied with the first CFI or you wanted to train in a different type of plane that another CFI was better...

I'm going by what one of my former CFIs says. He gave a presentation on night flying every year at Oshkosh for a long time, and he recently revisited the topic on his Aviation News Talk podcast. Here's a short quote from his article "Night Flying Safey-- What Your CFI DIdn't Teach You!" article...

I love night flying too! It's so peaceful, the air is usually smoother, there's less traffic (and it's easier to spot because of the nav lights), and in many cases it can be easier to navigate using references like freeway traffic, lighted obstacles (e.g. radio towers), airport beacons, etc...