Advice on Starting Again

[shermola1]

Hello All! I started on my PPL at KSNA (Orange County, CA) in 2007, moved to St. Louis and flew some more at 1H0 (Creve Coeur, MO), then stopped flying. In total, I have over 42 hours of flight time - all pre-solo - including 6 hours of tailwheel time. I currently reside in Austin, TX.

I'm finally in a position where I can financially and chronologically afford to finish my training and I have some questions about the best way to go about it. My previous training was all once-per-week without ground school. Those 42 hours took 17 months. My big hangup was the inability to consistently land the plane well, which led to me never being ready to solo.

In December of 2021 I finished online ground school and had a consultation with an AME who advised me that there were no red flags to keep me from getting either a 3rd class medical or BasicMed. I am still studying for the written exam, but I'm confident I will take that in the next 30 days.

What I'd like to do is take 1-2 weeks off of work and just fly as many days as possible, weather permitting. I think that if I can just fly frequently and repeatedly, that I'll get the hang of landing and get over that hump and be able to finish up in a relatively short time. I'm completely fine traveling to a better location (Florida/Arizona/etc.) in order to do so.

I'll be moving from Austin back to a more expensive place for flying lessons (Los Angeles) sometime between the end of April and sometime in August, 2022. Final piece of relevant info: I've called and/or emailed several local and Dallas-based flight schools to see if they would be able to accommodate me and was not thrilled with most of their responses - only one asked for log book details.

So, my questions are:

1) Does the plan to fly for as many days in a 5-14 day period in order to get over the "landing hump" make sense based on the little information I've given.

2) Should I just wait until I'm back in L.A. and try to find a CFI or school that can accommodate daily flying?

3) Does going to AZ/FL/etc. to a school that can accommodate daily flying make sense -either now or after I've moved back to L.A.?

4) Should I just assume it is going to take me 40+ hours to complete because it has been so long (I remembered a TON of stuff when I was doing ground school)?

5) Is there a better way to do it and/or something I'm not thinking of?

Sorry for the wall of text. I've been overwhelmed researching and emailing/calling for a while now and thought I should just ask people that have already been through something similar. Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[socalguy999]

I am an independent CFI with thousands of hours of dual instruction currently residing near KSNA although I've mainly instructed in LA (KVNY, KWHP, KLGB).

When you spread your flying out over that many months, it's no surprise that you didn't develop any consistency with regards to landings. Repetition and frequency of training are vital to learning any new skill whether it be flying or playing the guitar. Consistency during the pre-solo stage is especially important. Sometimes TOO much training can cause a student to regress if they are overwhelmed. Ideally, 2-3x a week is ideal in my opinion. That being said, I've also trained private pilots in less than a month and many career focused students from zero to multi/comm/instrument in less than six months.

To answer your questions:

1) Without seeing you fly it's hard to say or determine exactly your "hump". If I looked at your logbook and took you up, your air work and maneuvers need to be spot on which demonstrates good control. If they are are not and your CFI just had you spending hours in the pattern that could be your issue. This is of course just my very humble opinion combined with a wild ass guess.

2) Wherever you go, interview your flight instructor since that is who you will be spending time with and not the school itself. Go wherever you feel most comfortable and can accommodate you. You are the customer. Don't give anyone large sums of cash upfront (a block of 10 hours is OK). You have to contend with the marine layer in coastal LA during May/June unless you go inland a bit or the valley / desert. The flying here due to the airspace / traffic makes for a steeper learning curve, but I think you will come out of it as a more confident and proficient pilot in the end.

3) See my answer #2.

4) I don't see why it would take another 40 hours. When I've inherited students from other instructors in the past, it sometimes takes hours to "un-teach" bad habits they might have picked up, been taught, or never corrected. I much more prefer a "blank canvas" but that's just me.

But I've also seen a private pilot take hundreds of hours to finish and other ones who never did. I'm not saying that is you, but flying is an aptitude. Yes, there is some book knowledge involved, but at the private level it's all about stick and rudder. Some of my "smartest" students in the real world were not so great in the plane. And while old dogs can learn new tricks, the youngest bucks pick it up the quickest. It's just a fact of life.

5) You're asking the right questions. Knock the written test out first and get your medical. Wherever you end up, find a DPE and a schedule the check ride date. Once you solo, it's all downhill from there. You should be able to knock out all your cross countries including night within a week (weather permitting). Spend the next week practicing your maneuvers and landings / check ride prep.

Best of luck to you!

 

[AggieMike88]

@texasclouds …. Who around your part of Austin can accommodate this “boot camp” request?

@shermola1 … I am an independent instructor teaching at an airport located near Texas Motor Speedway. I have a bit of capacity available for a new student, but am unable to provide training every day. I have a commercial pilot gig that needs me every other day. I’m still happy to help if we can work around that. Schedule can be seen at this link: https://bit.ly/farlow-cfi

 

[texasclouds]

Pilots Choice in Georgetown is a quality school. You may want to see if you can consult with the owner Beth Jenkins. She’s been teaching a long time.

I personally believe that any chance to fly can help. Yes, you’ll take a few steps back when you move to CA again, but you will have made some steps forward as well.

Before an instructor will feel comfortable to solo you, he probably will want to see your basic flight maneuvers, slow flight, stalls, steep turns, ground reference maneuvers, unusual attitude recovery, etc. That may take a few flights depending on your proficiency. Then on to pattern work. Then when you move to CA, the new instructor will want to see those same maneuvers himself. But again, any flight time is valuable. You will learn something and hopefully have fun doing it.

 

[rhkennerly]

You’re removing all the hurdles first: med, written, & time. I think you’re on the right track. I’d get the med & written exam in the bag this winter before getting back into the cockpit.

Only thought about traveling is you applying unnecessary pressure to yourself with an artificial time limit (as well as the frustration of running into a patch of bad weather).

Let us know what you decide & how it goes. good luck.

 

[mandm]

A lot of people worry about the hours, take your time and work at your pace. Aim higher to get an instrument rating and/or commercial rating. All of your experience counts towards getting these future ratings as well. Get the written exam done if possible, it’s very difficult in my opinion to fly a lot and study at the same time.

 

[brcase]

I am also an instructor with around 5000 hours of instruction provided over 23 years.
I have had students solo at 10 hours and others solo at 45 hours. Interestingly almost none of them go over 80 hrs total for the PP certificate. Most take their checkride between 65-70 hrs, hours to solo has almost zero effect on the total time to get a PP Certificate.

I explain the reason as, if you are struggling with landings, I will move you on to other topics like operations at other kinds airports (towered/non-towered as appropriate), Basic navigation, night flying, ref to instruments, You will continue to perfect and improve you landings while we work on these other topics, and sometimes not making landing the main focus of the lessons helps some students.

To address one of the OP’s original question, I would recommend flying no more than about 1 to 1.5 hrs per day prior to solo. You can fly everyday, but you need some time between lessons to process what are doing and have learned on each lesson. As SoCalGuy indicated flying much more than that, like multiple lessons per day, can build hours but it might actually take more flight hours to solo than if you just flew once per day.

Listen to your instructor. If they start saying things like “learning to fly may be challenging for you” or similar kinds of things it may be time to get a second opinion from another instructor, or re-evaluate how much effort you are willing commit to making this happen. I rarely if ever tell people they can’t learn, but I will try to let them know if I think it is going to be harder or take longer than most for them. Many decided to proceed with another instructor or another hobby. Others often continue and get their ratings.


Brian
CFIIG/ASEL

 

[bbchien]

Socalguy999 is dead on.
CFIA-I-MEI
ATP

 

[Clip4]

Everyone’s big hang up is not consistently landing the plane well. You mention training you received 15 years ago. For the most part you have forgotten the procedures taught and starting over.

I tell people flying is like shooting free throws. If you are only at the foul line practicing 2 days a month you are not going to be very good at it and the progress is very slow. Set you schedule up to try to fly 5 days a week until you get the landings perfected.

IF you can find a good ground school, I recommend attending one. Unfortunately there aren’t many good ground schools left because of online learning.

 

[Chrisgoesflying]

I tried what you're trying just south of you near San Antonio a few years back. The main reason I couldn't fly as often as I'd wanted to was due to weather. February can be tough in Texas due to low ceilings and wind - at least it was the case for me a few years back. It ended up taking me six months to get my license although there was a nearly two month break in between due to travel and other commitments. Having said that, I know an independent CFI in the area who might have the capacity to fly with you daily, weather permitting. He did have the capacity for me back then. Happy to share his details if you PM me. I don't want to post his name or email address publicly obviously as he doesn't have a website or advertising going on. All his flight students are WOM students.

 

[AggieMike88]

February can be tough in Texas due to low ceilings and wind

Lately it's more like Texas cannot decide what season it is.

Today around DFW it reached shorts and T-shirt temps and nice VFR skies. Wednesday/Thursday, deep freeze and potential snow.

 

[shermola1]

I am an independent CFI with thousands of hours of dual instruction currently residing near KSNA although I've mainly instructed in LA (KVNY, KWHP, KLGB).

When you spread your flying out over that many months, it's no surprise that you didn't develop any consistency with regards to landings. Repetition and frequency of training are vital to learning any new skill whether it be flying or playing the guitar. Consistency during the pre-solo stage is especially important. Sometimes TOO much training can cause a student to regress if they are overwhelmed. Ideally, 2-3x a week is ideal in my opinion. That being said, I've also trained private pilots in less than a month and many career focused students from zero to multi/comm/instrument in less than six months.

To answer your questions:

1) Without seeing you fly it's hard to say or determine exactly your "hump". If I looked at your logbook and took you up, your air work and maneuvers need to be spot on which demonstrates good control. If they are are not and your CFI just had you spending hours in the pattern that could be your issue. This is of course just my very humble opinion combined with a wild ass guess.

2) Wherever you go, interview your flight instructor since that is who you will be spending time with and not the school itself. Go wherever you feel most comfortable and can accommodate you. You are the customer. Don't give anyone large sums of cash upfront (a block of 10 hours is OK). You have to contend with the marine layer in coastal LA during May/June unless you go inland a bit or the valley / desert. The flying here due to the airspace / traffic makes for a steeper learning curve, but I think you will come out of it as a more confident and proficient pilot in the end.

3) See my answer #2.

4) I don't see why it would take another 40 hours. When I've inherited students from other instructors in the past, it sometimes takes hours to "un-teach" bad habits they might have picked up, been taught, or never corrected. I much more prefer a "blank canvas" but that's just me.

But I've also seen a private pilot take hundreds of hours to finish and other ones who never did. I'm not saying that is you, but flying is an aptitude. Yes, there is some book knowledge involved, but at the private level it's all about stick and rudder. Some of my "smartest" students in the real world were not so great in the plane. And while old dogs can learn new tricks, the youngest bucks pick it up the quickest. It's just a fact of life.

5) You're asking the right questions. Knock the written test out first and get your medical. Wherever you end up, find a DPE and a schedule the check ride date. Once you solo, it's all downhill from there. You should be able to knock out all your cross countries including night within a week (weather permitting). Spend the next week practicing your maneuvers and landings / check ride prep.

Best of luck to you!

"When you spread your flying out over that many months, it's no surprise that you didn't develop any consistency with regards to landings"
^^^ This is exactly why I want to fy more frequently, but not too often.

1) This is pretty much the answer I was hoping for from the flight schools I contacted. None of them suggested spending a flight or two reviewing my current abilities.

2) Great advice, thank you!

4) Makes perfect sense. I don't want to become one of the ones that never finish.

Thanks for the great advice and for taking the time to type that all out!

@texasclouds …. Who around your part of Austin can accommodate this “boot camp” request?

@shermola1 … I am an independent instructor teaching at an airport located near Texas Motor Speedway. I have a bit of capacity available for a new student, but am unable to provide training every day. I have a commercial pilot gig that needs me every other day. I’m still happy to help if we can work around that. Schedule can be seen at this link: https://bit.ly/farlow-cfi

Thank you for the offer, that's very generous!

Pilots Choice in Georgetown is a quality school. You may want to see if you can consult with the owner Beth Jenkins. She’s been teaching a long time.

I personally believe that any chance to fly can help. Yes, you’ll take a few steps back when you move to CA again, but you will have made some steps forward as well.

Before an instructor will feel comfortable to solo you, he probably will want to see your basic flight maneuvers, slow flight, stalls, steep turns, ground reference maneuvers, unusual attitude recovery, etc. That may take a few flights depending on your proficiency. Then on to pattern work. Then when you move to CA, the new instructor will want to see those same maneuvers himself. But again, any flight time is valuable. You will learn something and hopefully have fun doing it.

Pilot's Choice was the first Austin-area school I contacted and based on the information I gave them, they estimated "four to six months at minimum." My guess is that they're tempering expectations on my part so that I don't get mad when it takes me that long, but to be honest, it kind of freaked me out. Maybe talking to Beth and scheduling some time in the air will lead to a more accurate estimate (even if it's longer). Thank you for the recommendations and advice!

You’re removing all the hurdles first: med, written, & time. I think you’re on the right track. I’d get the med & written exam in the bag this winter before getting back into the cockpit.

Only thought about traveling is you applying unnecessary pressure to yourself with an artificial time limit (as well as the frustration of running into a patch of bad weather).

Let us know what you decide & how it goes. good luck.

I like the idea of just focusing on the ground school and medical first, then worrying about actually flying again. That's a good point about traveling and worrying about weather. Thank you for the advice!

A lot of people worry about the hours, take your time and work at your pace. Aim higher to get an instrument rating and/or commercial rating. All of your experience counts towards getting these future ratings as well. Get the written exam done if possible, it’s very difficult in my opinion to fly a lot and study at the same time.

I'd really like to get my Instrument Rating at some point. I never thought about the hours applying towards the minimum requirements. Thank you for pointing that out! I'm not particularly worried about the hours except for three things: 1) Having another life event happen and resetting me again for another 15 years, 2) Ending up in the once-a-week pattern again and never finishing because I just wasn't getting enough yoke time, and 3) Getting milked for hours rather than taught to fly.
Obviously I'd rather not spend a ton of money getting it done, but if that's what it takes to get it through my thick head, then so be it. Thank you for the advice and information!

I am also an instructor with around 5000 hours of instruction provided over 23 years.
I have had students solo at 10 hours and others solo at 45 hours. Interestingly almost none of them go over 80 hrs total for the PP certificate. Most take their checkride between 65-70 hrs, hours to solo has almost zero effect on the total time to get a PP Certificate.

I explain the reason as, if you are struggling with landings, I will move you on to other topics like operations at other kinds airports (towered/non-towered as appropriate), Basic navigation, night flying, ref to instruments, You will continue to perfect and improve you landings while we work on these other topics, and sometimes not making landing the main focus of the lessons helps some students.

To address one of the OP’s original question, I would recommend flying no more than about 1 to 1.5 hrs per day prior to solo. You can fly everyday, but you need some time between lessons to process what are doing and have learned on each lesson. As SoCalGuy indicated flying much more than that, like multiple lessons per day, can build hours but it might actually take more flight hours to solo than if you just flew once per day.

Listen to your instructor. If they start saying things like “learning to fly may be challenging for you” or similar kinds of things it may be time to get a second opinion from another instructor, or re-evaluate how much effort you are willing commit to making this happen. I rarely if ever tell people they can’t learn, but I will try to let them know if I think it is going to be harder or take longer than most for them. Many decided to proceed with another instructor or another hobby. Others often continue and get their ratings.

Brian
CFIIG/ASEL

That's interesting about the 1 to 1.5 hours of flying per day and it makes some sense. I wouldn't have a problem with that, especially if I was flying daily or close to it.

So far none of my instructors have tried to have a conversation with me like that, but I will keep an ear out for it in the future. Good advice, thank you!

 

[shermola1]

Everyone’s big hang up is not consistently landing the plane well. You mention training you received 15 years ago. For the most part you have forgotten the procedures taught and starting over.

I tell people flying is like shooting free throws. If you are only at the foul line practicing 2 days a month you are not going to be very good at it and the progress is very slow. Set you schedule up to try to fly 5 days a week until you get the landings perfected.

IF you can find a good ground school, I recommend attending one. Unfortunately there aren’t many good ground schools left because of online learning.

I like that analogy. It seems to me that there is a lot of muscle memory in flying and with the infrequency that I was flying, I was not able to build up that muscle memory. That's why I want to stand at the free throw line for several days in a row - or at least multiple days in a week.

That's a good suggestion about the ground school. I believe there are a few options in Austin to do that. I'll look into it. Thank you!

Everyone's responses have been fantastic so far. I really appreciate the time and thought everyone put into them - you've given me a lot to think about and act on. I really do appreciate it!

 

[shermola1]

I tried what you're trying just south of you near San Antonio a few years back. The main reason I couldn't fly as often as I'd wanted to was due to weather. February can be tough in Texas due to low ceilings and wind - at least it was the case for me a few years back. It ended up taking me six months to get my license although there was a nearly two month break in between due to travel and other commitments. Having said that, I know an independent CFI in the area who might have the capacity to fly with you daily, weather permitting. He did have the capacity for me back then. Happy to share his details if you PM me. I don't want to post his name or email address publicly obviously as he doesn't have a website or advertising going on. All his flight students are WOM students.

This, combined with mandm's advice to "Get the written exam done if possible" makes me think I should pull back a bit, get the medical & written out of the way, then worry about getting over the hump. I'll probably still reach out to Beth at Pilot's Choice to see if I can turn a Discovery flight into a what's-your-best-guess-for-getting-through-training flight.

Thanks for the info and the advice. I may take you up on your referral offer. Did you use that CFI or did you do your training through a school?

 

[shermola1]

Lately it's more like Texas cannot decide what season it is.

Today around DFW it reached shorts and T-shirt temps and nice VFR skies. Wednesday/Thursday, deep freeze and potential snow.

Yesterday was beautiful - warm and sunny with a nice breeze. This morning the house was shaking from the thunderstorm that was dropping a ton of rain in Austin.

 

[Albany Tom]

The free throw analogy is good. When you're just starting out, though, that mental hurdle of not being confident in landing can be incredibly annoying. I know, I had that. Took me a long time to get landings down. After you get it, which absolutely requires closed spaced practice, you'll know you can do it, and you can mentally move on. Until that time, there is probably going to be a voice in the back of your head that asks "will I be able to sort this out?"

I just bring that up because someone can tell you not to be concerned about something like that, but I don't think it's possible not to be, a bit, until you get past it. For landings, this will sound obvious, but getting that approach speed nailed will go a long way to helping it. Coming in too fast, and trying to bleed off speed at the last minute, will not make the process easier.

 

[texasclouds]

Austin area has been low ifr for a while now. 3-4 months to wrap up rating accounts for days like today. Then there’s that blue calm day, perfect for your first solo… aaaaannnnd the last student the night before left the master switch on. Or the tire is flat. Or the instructor had a bad burrito.

 

[Gary Ward]

Hello All! I started on my PPL at KSNA (Orange County, CA) in 2007, moved to St. Louis and flew some more at 1H0 (Creve Coeur, MO), then stopped flying. In total, I have over 42 hours of flight time - all pre-solo - including 6 hours of tailwheel time. I currently reside in Austin, TX.

I'm finally in a position where I can financially and chronologically afford to finish my training and I have some questions about the best way to go about it. My previous training was all once-per-week without ground school. Those 42 hours took 17 months. My big hangup was the inability to consistently land the plane well, which led to me never being ready to solo.

In December of 2021 I finished online ground school and had a consultation with an AME who advised me that there were no red flags to keep me from getting either a 3rd class medical or BasicMed. I am still studying for the written exam, but I'm confident I will take that in the next 30 days.

What I'd like to do is take 1-2 weeks off of work and just fly as many days as possible, weather permitting. I think that if I can just fly frequently and repeatedly, that I'll get the hang of landing and get over that hump and be able to finish up in a relatively short time. I'm completely fine traveling to a better location (Florida/Arizona/etc.) in order to do so.

I'll be moving from Austin back to a more expensive place for flying lessons (Los Angeles) sometime between the end of April and sometime in August, 2022. Final piece of relevant info: I've called and/or emailed several local and Dallas-based flight schools to see if they would be able to accommodate me and was not thrilled with most of their responses - only one asked for log book details.

So, my questions are:

1) Does the plan to fly for as many days in a 5-14 day period in order to get over the "landing hump" make sense based on the little information I've given.

2) Should I just wait until I'm back in L.A. and try to find a CFI or school that can accommodate daily flying?

3) Does going to AZ/FL/etc. to a school that can accommodate daily flying make sense -either now or after I've moved back to L.A.?

4) Should I just assume it is going to take me 40+ hours to complete because it has been so long (I remembered a TON of stuff when I was doing ground school)?

5) Is there a better way to do it and/or something I'm not thinking of?

Sorry for the wall of text. I've been overwhelmed researching and emailing/calling for a while now and thought I should just ask people that have already been through something similar. Thanks in advance for your help!

I spent a fortune learning how to land!!
My last instructor( i had 4 of them before my last and best) was a saint and older and very experienced. He had to have had a ton of patience with me for as much time he spent with me in the pattern before I soloed.
I was older 55 when I learned to fly, I could tell it was going to take longer than if I was 20.

Like said above my instructor mixed it up for me but many days we did nothing but T&Gs for 90 minutes. I flew 2-3 days a week. After I soloed I still spent a lot time in the pattern by myself. Landed 309 times before my checkride.

OT a little. It took me 16 months to do it because there was some vacations planned when I missed a week or so here and there and weather. So I had a lot of appointments and never missed one or was late for a lesson. Always early. My instructor took notice to that. He helped me by always getting me on the schedule that worked for me. I noted some other students weren't so good at keeping apointments.
Good luck to you.

 

[shermola1]

I spent a fortune learning how to land!!
My last instructor( i had 4 of them before my last and best) was a saint and older and very experienced. He had to have had a ton of patience with me for as much time he spent with me in the pattern before I soloed.
I was older 55 when I learned to fly, I could tell it was going to take longer than if I was 20.

Like said above my instructor mixed it up for me but many days we did nothing but T&Gs for 90 minutes. I flew 2-3 days a week. After I soloed I still spent a lot time in the pattern by myself. Landed 309 times before my checkride.

OT a little. It took me 16 months to do it because there was some vacations planned when I missed a week or so here and there and weather. So I had a lot of appointments and never missed one or was late for a lesson. Always early. My instructor took notice to that. He helped me by always getting me on the schedule that worked for me. I noted some other students weren't so good at keeping apointments.
Good luck to you.

I'm actually excited to try landings again. I never really made the connection to approach speed = better landings (as @Albany Tom mentioned above) until doing ground school and watching several Youtube videos. Then I understood the science behind it and now it makes sense. Hopefully I can apply the theoretical to the actual execution.

Thanks for wishing me luck. I'll take all I can get!

 

[MarkH]

If you can’t find anything in Texas, there are good options in LA.

For example, Sling Pilot Academy in Torrance does training in LSAs for $140/hr wet, cheaper than most 172s I have rented. And they have a program that can make you a commercial pilot in 6 months.

In addition you generally don’t have to worry about weather cancellations in LA. This time of year Some parts of Texas can make planning VFR flights difficult.

 

[Bradley Bell]

Sometimes the airplane makes all the difference. I was doing my initial flight training in a 182P and struggled with consistent landings even with stabilized approaches. Long story short, another instructor i was using (J3) suggested i try the ol' straight tail 182 ('56-'59), sure enough my landing problems went away. I spent quite a number of hours in the pattern with this old bird, always consistent and well handling in the round out and flare, never a bounce. Tried going back to the 182N, and the consistency problems returned. I gave up on the 182P at that flight school and moved on (it was the only 182 they had).