<100hr Pilot- A rant

Jaybird180

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Jaybird180
YES I am a new pilot! I'm proud of it!

I've read all the statistics about the 100 hour kill zone and I know what the insurance companies say, but I'm getting a bit ticked off by the arrogance of higher time pilots who've forgotten that they were once new(and who've NEVER flown with me) judging me by my logbook.

Yes, I know that's the reality of it and that I have to humble myself, but I believe in the quality of my primary training. I believe that I am a safe and prudent pilot and that I have the personal maturity to know when I am outside of my personal envelope. I am well-over 21!!! I accept constructive criticism well and believe that my personal standards are higher than many CFIs.

I am resolved to not be the statistic. I resolve to fly the banner for other <100hr pilots and earn my credibility as an aviator a tenth of an hour at a time.

Thank you for reading these few words.
 
What was that dangerous attitude? Over confidence? :D
 
I don't know what triggered this, but I think there are a couple of "bumps" in the accident rate statistics between 0 and 1000 hours. They correspond (in my mind) to folks who are inexperienced in the sub-200 zone, and then another one , maybe around 400-600, where folks seem to get complacent, and do things like not checking fuel levels or weight and balance or other things that they were taught to do.

However, like all statistics, they're meaningless when applied to predict something for an individual. I know pilots who have been detail-oriented and safety-focused for their entire flying life. The folks who show up at my safety briefings generally are accident/incident free.

We pilots shouldn't be condescending or rude to other pilots regardless of their experience level. All that counts is whether they put ketchup on a Hot Dog.
 
Have you heard the term: "License to learn" ??

That's really what the PPC is. Sure you can manipulate the controls and somewhat reliably navigate from point to point (or at least follow the MLD).

What you don't know is what you don't know. Leave yourself a note to look back on your post at the 500 hr mark. Maybe your tune will change a little bit.

Of course you're correct that arrogance is undesirable behavior.

And if someone wants ketchup on their dog then that's their business. Don't ask, don't tell, don't look.:D
 
Get over it Rookie.














:D
 
Rebuttal to <100hr Pilot- A rant

YES I am a new pilot! I'm proud of it!
Congratulations on your accomplishment. I am serious in saying that. Check your attitude.

I've read all the statistics about the 100 hour kill zone and I know what the insurance companies say,...
It's a good thing you strive to stay informed. Your efforts are indicative of a desire to keep your head in the game. Now having informed yourself of what the ins co says, do you know WHY they say that?

... but I'm getting a bit ticked off by the arrogance of higher time pilots who've forgotten that they were once new(and who've NEVER flown with me) judging me by my logbook.
Who says they've forgotten? YOU say it. Pushing back puts you in the same preposterous position as they except you and they come at it from opposite ends. Check attitude. BTW: at <100 hr, 99.9999% of all pilots are higher time than you. Basically you are ranting at all of us, it's just that some are more vocal. Myself, I prefer to be less personal and use the blanket statement that all pilots are trying to kill me. It works for me, would that work for you?

A few more things, could it be they base their "arrogance" on more than presupposition, on more than insurance actuarial tables, that it could be
their personal experiences talking? Upon what do you base your pushing back? I mean other than a bruised ego....

Yes, I know that's the reality of it and that I have to humble myself, but I believe in the quality of my primary training.
Quality training applied in a stupid way still makes a boneheaded pilot. Therefore quality of training actually is secondary and somewhat not relevent.

I believe that I am a safe and prudent pilot...
You'll likely continue to beleive that right up until you reflect upon the absolutely boneheaded I-can't-believe-I-did-that moment. I imagine we all have experienced that phenomena where our perception of being safe and prudent runs headlong into reality. Welcome to the real world sonny boy.

Better is to hold the perception that I can be a bad pilot and then takes steps to actively avoid it rather than continue to think Oh, I could never do that (be less than a safe and prudent pilot). Our thoughts shape our behavior. Check attitude.

...and that I have the personal maturity to know when I am outside of my personal envelope. I am well-over 21!!! I accept constructive criticism well and believe that my personal standards are higher than many CFIs.
Bully for you! So, tell me, if you are this mature, why do you make this out to be an attack on your person? It is not an attack upon your person, it is a caution against your attitude and the lack of your piloting skills.

I am resolved to not be the statistic.
That's great! That resolve is never ending, you up for it? Your determination will be tested multiple times. It is not open book and the testing will come in many different forms and without prior notice. In fact, if there were any notice given, it would be when the chips are down and that is when you could expect a multilayered testing of your resolve.
I doubt more than the very few suicidal pilots have held any less resolve than you promise to uphold. I imagine the NTSB reports all feature other pilots with that same resolve.
I resolve to fly the banner for other <100hr pilots and earn my credibility as an aviator a tenth of an hour at a time.
You'll also have your altruism tested and by those very same pilots for whom you fly that banner.

Thank you for reading these few words.
Thank you for heeding mine.
 
To the OP:

Get yourself a motorcycle. It's very liberating. Complete strangers, people who have never seen you ride and know nothing about riding themselves, will think you are a suicidal moron who needs to be talked down from the cliff of motorcycle ownership and it's their duty to help you. Coworkers will try to explain the risks to you, and question your intelligence and sanity for not selling the bike instanter. The only people who will understand are fellow riders, who (this is statistically guaranteed by the way) will still think you are a moron based on the type of bike you ride. You just can't win ... except by riding, and enjoying the ride, for your own reasons.

A few years of that and the people you are ranting about in this thread will seem downright deferential.

:lol:
 
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I tend to give a 4:30 as opposed to a six.
 
I tend to give a 4:30 as opposed to a six.
Moron.

AOPA ASF data indicates 80 percentile of mid airs occur when one overtakes another from 6 position.

Wait, stop the innerwebz...Ed is correct. His plane is so out of rig that 4:30 IS 6.

Never mind.
 
To the OP:

Get yourself a motorcycle. It's very liberating. Complete strangers, people who have never seen you ride and know nothing about riding themselves, will think you are a suicidal moron who needs to be talked down from the cliff of motorcycle ownership and it's their duty to help you. Coworkers will try to explain the risks to you, and question your intelligence and sanity for not selling the bike instanter. The only people who will understand are fellow riders, who (this is statistically guaranteed by the way) will still think you are a moron based on the type of bike you ride. You just can't win ... except by riding, and enjoying the ride, for your own reasons.

A few years of that and the people you are ranting about in this thread will seem downright deferential.

:lol:
To paraphrase Robt Stack in our most favorite of favorite movies: "That man behind the controls of that motorcycle is a danger to everything on the road. Yes, the squirrels too."
 
YES I am a new pilot! I'm proud of it!

I've read all the statistics about the 100 hour kill zone and I know what the insurance companies say, but I'm getting a bit ticked off by the arrogance of higher time pilots who've forgotten that they were once new(and who've NEVER flown with me) judging me by my logbook.

Yes, I know that's the reality of it and that I have to humble myself, but I believe in the quality of my primary training. I believe that I am a safe and prudent pilot and that I have the personal maturity to know when I am outside of my personal envelope. I am well-over 21!!! I accept constructive criticism well and believe that my personal standards are higher than many CFIs.

I am resolved to not be the statistic. I resolve to fly the banner for other <100hr pilots and earn my credibility as an aviator a tenth of an hour at a time.

Thank you for reading these few words.


I don't mean any disrespect by this, but come back to this post after a few hundred (or better, perhaps a few thousand) hours.

You are a "sixteen yr old" (figuratively, not in maturity) who has just finished driver's ed, taken a driving test and now has a license. You have a lot to learn. We all did. It's not an insult. It's a fact. It's been experienced by tens of thousands of pilots before you and will be experienced by more after. Some pilots may be inherently safer (or better) than others due to individual characteristics, but you are still lacking the experience that you only gain by having your butt in the seat flying.

Now go enjoy the experience.. :)
 
YES I am a new pilot! I'm proud of it!

I've read all the statistics about the 100 hour kill zone and I know what the insurance companies say, but I'm getting a bit ticked off by the arrogance of higher time pilots who've forgotten that they were once new(and who've NEVER flown with me) judging me by my logbook.

Yes, I know that's the reality of it and that I have to humble myself, but I believe in the quality of my primary training. I believe that I am a safe and prudent pilot and that I have the personal maturity to know when I am outside of my personal envelope. I am well-over 21!!! I accept constructive criticism well and believe that my personal standards are higher than many CFIs.

I am resolved to not be the statistic. I resolve to fly the banner for other <100hr pilots and earn my credibility as an aviator a tenth of an hour at a time.

Thank you for reading these few words.

More experienced pilots get in accidents too.

Your personal safety practices are MUCH more important in determining your risk level than the statistics for your experience group, IMO.

A hopeful piece of information that I discovered early on, through reading accident reports, is that a surprisingly high percentage of general aviation accidents happen because of pilots doing dumb stuff, i.e., ignoring basic safety rules. So if you resolve not to do anything dumb, and follow through on that in your actions, it should be possible to lower your personal risk level quite a lot.

Of course, many of us believe we're safer than the average pilot, but we can't all be above average. The trick is to actually do it.
 
Moron.

AOPA ASF data indicates 80 percentile of mid airs occur when one overtakes another from 6 position.

Wait, stop the innerwebz...Ed is correct. His plane is so out of rig that 4:30 IS 6.

Never mind.

:rofl:
 
I'm getting a bit ticked off by the arrogance of higher time pilots who've forgotten that they were once new judging me by my logbook.

Get over it, most of us will judge you by your actions and never know your name.

OBTW, I can't remember when I didn't have 20k hours and I don't give a sh-- what's in your log.
 
FWIW - if I didn't see the persons logbook - I can rarely tell the difference between the average 5,000 hour pilot or a 200 hour pilot during a flight review or IPC. Generally whichever one is more "current" seems less likely to prang an airplane.
 
FWIW - if I didn't see the persons logbook - I can rarely tell the difference between the average 5,000 hour pilot or a 200 hour pilot during a flight review or IPC. Generally whichever one is more "current" seems less likely to prang an airplane.

Agreed. The differences are typically subtle, and frequently the lower time pilots are better on procedures because it's fresh in their heads.

My current instrument student hand flies a partial panel ILS better than several rated people I've seen fly a normal one.
 
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ya, ya, ya -- 50 hour pilots are just as safe as 10k....

Sure, in most cases you can get through 50, 100, 200, 500 hour mark incident free with care and caution.

Still, hours = experience which provides exposure to hazards you simply don't know about yet, no matter what you scored on the PP written.

FWIW, I didn't know that either at 50, 100, 250 hours, but as my hour total increased, my appreciation for experience increased as well.
 
We were all 100 hours once.

You're probably safer in your plane than if one of those multi-thousand hour airline pilots tried to fly your plane straight off the Boeing flight deck. Heck, if I got into a 172 right now, it would take a few hours to learn to fly it all over again.

Make a resolution to fly regularly, participate in Wings, and do recurrent with a CFI periodically. When you can, do your IR.
 
Still, hours = experience which provides exposure to hazards you simply don't know about yet, no matter what you scored on the PP written.

Yes, but there are multiple aspects to that. Pilots with lots of experience frequently are overly dependent on autopilots, whereas fresh students may have the advantage of a lot of recent training. So while an experienced pilot certainly has advantages, the inexperienced pilot may have advantages as well.

FWIW, I didn't know that either at 50, 100, 250 hours, but as my hour total increased, my appreciation for experience increased as well.

I have found this has been more a factor of age than anything, as my appreciation for experience has increased with age. But, it's not an absolute.

I understand the sentiment. As a student and a low-hour pilot, I was frequently frustrated by this forum by the responses I got in a lot of cases. It is frustrating to be in the position of having little experience and being judged based on that alone.
 
Easy fix. Go fly more. ;)

Easier fix: I don't have a copy of your logbook so unless you tell me you only have 100 hours, I won't care.

I've learned stuff from "grizzled" veterans and newbies alike in all of the facets of my life.

Those who judge you by your hour number in your logbook often have some kind of vested interest in maintaining their superiority or alternatively, really do out-fly your ass.

The former can be easily ignored and spotted. The latter are just the folks we all need in our lives to keep from becoming an accident statistic.

It's all in the presentation.

"Hey, don't do that. The stove's hot."

Vs.

"Hey don't do that you youngster with no experience!"

And some still touch the hot stove anyway...

I'll take either of the above and think about it. Grumpy old vet or newbie saying it.

At the end of the day, I'm still PIC and will be judged or not -- on whether the airplane is intact and everyone's alive. Doesn't matter what my logbook says.

Remember, technically you don't even need to keep a log of flights not required for a rating, currency, or other FAR-required or insurance company required things. Buy an ultralight and fly it every day for ten years without logging it and you'll know more about local wind and weather than the 10,000 hour airline Captain who flies all over the globe.

I'm curious who ticked you off, but really that's between you and them. Man up and tell 'em they crossed your personal line and get the rest of the story.

I had a CFI once who hated that I keep night-current in a single. After I got to know him I found out he had a night engine failure that almost killed him that changed his view permanently of night single-engine aviation. I saw the accident photos, heard his personal stories of recovering from the injuries, and understand his opinion better than I did at the beginning, but I still make it a point to stay night-current.

His "judging" me gives me zero heartburn and plenty to think about.
 
I actually think there's a relevant point to a 50 hr pilot is as safe as a 5000 or 50,000hr pilot. "Safe" is more about attitude than ability. It does not take much ability to be safe and attitude is usually attitude before they ever sit in a cockpit.

There is also the fatalistic view or random chaos view that both pretty much make anything we do a non issue just waiting for the odds or whatever to catch up.
 
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I'm guessing that somebody basically treated the OP like some sort of wannabee because he had a lot more hours than the OP.

No way of knowing without more context. We've probably all known or been new pilots that may have seemed arrogant to our peers. The way we react to someone with less experience than us says more about us than it does about them.

It's sort of like being a parent or teacher - folks who are new are SUPPOSED to make bad assumptions or say something "that's so stupid it actually causes pain". The trick is to address it in a way that doesn't throw up barriers to learning/growth, like a defensive attitude.
 
Yes, I know that's the reality of it and that I have to humble myself, but I believe in the quality of my primary training. I believe that I am a safe and prudent pilot and that I have the personal maturity to know when I am outside of my personal envelope. I am well-over 21!!! I accept constructive criticism well and believe that my personal standards are higher than many CFIs.

Hey now, what are you trying to say? I am not "well over 21" and I'm a safe and proficient pilot! (I'm 22 and a CFI) ;)
 
I think the only thing experience does for you is that it allows you to correlate something that is happening now to something that has happened to you before. Whether you learned something helpful or not from your previous experience is another question. For example, I think many buzzing and scud running accidents don't happen the first time someone tries it. It's that they have tried it, succeeded, and thought they could push it further and further. That doesn't mean you always need to take the most conservative route. If that was the case you would stay on the ground. The way you get better at anything is to push the envelope a little but you need to know when to stop. I would say for most people that's a gut feeling unless you are coming up against a legal limit, but I'm not certain how much experience has to do with it as much as personality.

As far as hours go, unless you post them for everyone to see I have no idea how many people have.

I'll also add that experience gives you a lot of muscle memory but that it is not necessarily transferable between airplanes. It can sometimes act as a detriment.
 
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Hours don't necessarily mean proficiency or useful experience. One hour of experience 1,000 times? Stretch your mind and your skills, stay current, practice risk management and ADM and you are a great pilot. Do the same basic stuff the same way, find out which CFI does "easy" biennials and sooner or later you become a statistic.

And ignore the know-it-alls. :)
 
Regardless of hours, I've found two constants in safe pilots:

1. They know their limitations.
2. They demand and accept perfection -- or as close as they can come to perfection -- in their aircraft.

Beyond that is luck.
 
Regardless of hours, I've found two constants in safe pilots:

1. They know their limitations.
2. They demand and accept perfection -- or as close as they can come to perfection -- in their aircraft.

Beyond that is luck.
Quite right! Allow me to enter one caveat; a CONSTANT adherence to those two principals is required.

About luck, I came within 200 agl at 140 kts from making a smoking hole and the headlines. Night arrival in unlimited VMC at a very familiar airport. Feeling cocky as all get out, the tower closed for the night, I made up a back course of the ILS. About 10 nm out I began the chant, "This is a BC, this is a BC...". To no avail as I followed the needle. Eyes outside revealed my stupidity. Just in time. I was around 600 TT and IFR 'current' at the time.
 
I am resolved to not be the statistic. I resolve to fly the banner for other <100hr pilots and earn my credibility as an aviator a tenth of an hour at a time.

Thank you for reading these few words.

If you survive, you are also a "statistic".

You are always a statistic, it just depends on which column you are in.
For retractable aircraft, there are three kinds of pilots. (1) those that will, (2) those that have, and (3) those that will again. All are statistics, but try your best to stay in group 1.
 
So how come it took you 100 hours to finish? You should have done it in 45.
 
If you survive, you are also a "statistic".

You are always a statistic, it just depends on which column you are in.
For retractable aircraft, there are three kinds of pilots. (1) those that will, (2) those that have, and (3) those that will again. All are statistics, but try your best to stay in group 1.

Really, Bill? You honestly believe that load of crap? On the previously discussed question of attitude you can count yourself in as fatalistic. Sorry, count me out. Thank you.
 
I prefer "There are those who have, and there are those who might." Helps me keep my guard up.
 
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Go buzz something. :yesnod:
YES I am a new pilot! I'm proud of it!

I've read all the statistics about the 100 hour kill zone and I know what the insurance companies say, but I'm getting a bit ticked off by the arrogance of higher time pilots who've forgotten that they were once new(and who've NEVER flown with me) judging me by my logbook.

Yes, I know that's the reality of it and that I have to humble myself, but I believe in the quality of my primary training. I believe that I am a safe and prudent pilot and that I have the personal maturity to know when I am outside of my personal envelope. I am well-over 21!!! I accept constructive criticism well and believe that my personal standards are higher than many CFIs.

I am resolved to not be the statistic. I resolve to fly the banner for other <100hr pilots and earn my credibility as an aviator a tenth of an hour at a time.

Thank you for reading these few words.
 
Mike, really?:dunno:
According to whom?

It depends on your intentions with aviation. If you are training in aviation for occupational reasons, you should be done in 40. If you fly 4 times a week and dedicate another 30 hrs a week to study, you can get it done in 10 weeks* and 40 hrs and the minimum $$$ and move on to the next rating.... until you start making some money.

If it's a hobby, it's still the cheapest most efficient way to do it. Fly twice a week and pick up 10 more hours before you're done. Fly 2-3 times a month and you're at 70hr for PP. Once a month you see the over 100 and 40hrs to solo.
 
It depends on your intentions with aviation. If you are training in aviation for occupational reasons, you should be done in 40. If you fly 4 times a week and dedicate another 30 hrs a week to study, you can get it done in 10 weeks* and 40 hrs and the minimum $$$ and move on to the next rating.... until you start making some money.

If it's a hobby, it's still the cheapest most efficient way to do it. Fly twice a week and pick up 10 more hours before you're done. Fly 2-3 times a month and you're at 70hr for PP. Once a month you see the over 100 and 40hrs to solo.

But that's the difference between "can" and "should". Mike said "should", which I disagree with.
 
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