Distracted and under pressure

WannFly

WannFly

Final Approach
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Nov 28, 2016
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Priyo
So I went to the flight school today and asked my CFI to rate me on every maneuver we did so far on a scale of 1-10. I already rated myself before hand but didn't share it with him. My idea was he would rate me on the progress I had made so far, but I never spelled that out for him, so he took it in a way that let's do all the maneuvers and I will rate you.

My goal is to solo when I have 9 or 10 in every maneuver there is to land my behind safely. Pretty stringent, but that's my goal, and if I can nail those in a 9 or 10, u would be under private pilot standards for the check ride.

Today was a good day to fly, 5kts wind and I thought will do mostly pattern work, but during pre flight he told me to go to the practice area and we will do all the stuff that I want him to rate me on.... didn't see that coming and immediately the pressure of exam took over me.

Pre flight and run up went fine, rt after take off, the nose went far left and he had to take controls to save my fat behind. The rest went pretty fine, he actually rated me more than I rated myself in all the stuff apart from the take off, which I royaly screwed up. Power on stall needs a poop load of work, so does landing.

While driving back, I kept thinking what went wrong, and this is I think what happened. When I applied full power, I put in rt rudder, more than what was needed, so I put left rudder in and that's was about the same time as I rotated and waited 3 seconds before putting the right rudder and pretty much didn't do anything when the nose went far far left. Took about 3 seconds to realize what the hell Is going on and CFI was there to safe the day.

Lesson learned....
I have a long way to go

I kept thinking about impressing him during take off, which clearly distracted me

I was overconfident that I got the take off part cleared off long time back.

Back to ground, hanging my head in shame and sitting in the head

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I know a guy who had his wife non-rev with him on a flight his g/f flight attendant was working. Now talk about flying with a distraction! :D
 
Rex Kramer said:
I know a guy who had his wife non-rev with him on a flight his g/f flight attendant was working. Now talk about flying with a distraction! :D
Click to expand...
Holy cra $$$

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One more thing that I was over confident on, ATC communication. Though I have nailed it and I usually do pretty good. Today after handover to departure , reported my altitude, 200 ft less than where I was and after reading back the instructions here is my call....

Fly heading 320 for 4000, expect higher in 3, thanks ground...er....tower...sorry...I meant approach..no damn it.. departure

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WannFly - I would suggest you stop trying to impress your CFI, and start taking command of the airplane. Not to be harsh, but you ARE Pilot In Command, so you are responsible for all phases of flight. That said, I'd suggest the following:

1. Rudder - you should be dancing on these pedals, especially if you're in a LSA. There's no delaying action. If the ball is uncoordinated, get on those pedals and step on that bug! Right pedal to counteract the P-factor is correct, but you need to balance the pedal action with some left pedal application. In other words, put equal pressure on the pedals (both of them). When applying full throttle, balance the rudders with both feet (with the right foot applying a bit more pressure). This way, you're able to immediately apply pressure to the rudder pedals without any delay.

2. If you were distracted, you should not have taken off. You need to be comfortable and fully in command. If you were already accelerating and felt distracted, just reject the takeoff, call the tower and taxi back.

3. Don't beat yourself up. You need to get out there and practice. Then practice some more. You'll have your instructor distract you purposely as you train, especially as you attempt a landing and he tells you something's on the field and you have go do a go-around. Your CFI's job is to purposely distract and test you to ensure that you can fly the plane first, worry about distractions after.

Use this event as a learning experience, but don't beat yourself up. All that will do is haunt you and you'll likely repeat the mistake. Instead, go out there like it's a fun event (which it is) and you'll do fine!
 
WannFly said:
Fly heading 320 for 4000, expect higher in 3, thanks ground...er....tower...sorry...I meant approach..no damn it.. departure
Click to expand...

Did you really curse on radio? I'd probably have just followed that up with, "Student pilot - sorry." and left it at that. The "Student Pilot" thing is like the "magic hand" in traffic. You get a "pass" when you say that! :p
 
rtk11 said:
Did you really curse on radio? I'd probably have just followed that up with, "Student pilot - sorry." and left it at that. The "Student Pilot" thing is like the "magic hand" in traffic. You get a "pass" when you say that! :p
Click to expand...
Think they already figured that part out, I could hear them chuckle at the background , so was CFI and then he said, take a breadth and relax, I did, and the rest of the flight was pretty good. I actually did lot better in the maneuvers I think I sucked... medium bank turns, steep turns, go around, simulated engine failure...though I must admit that whenever I have to bring the power to idle, my heart rate goes up .

Thanks for chiming in, yeah it was a valuable experience today. About the rudder, I tried the both feet on rudder a few times, didn't work, I was cancelling out the left pressure with rt. Will try consciously again

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It's not a bad idea to get your CFI's take on how close you are getting to PTS standards, especially once you get close to the checkride, but before solo, your goal is to show him/her that you are in COMMAND of the airplane, and can control whatever happens during that time. They aren't going to let you loose on your own until they are certain you aren't going to get over your head with unexpected challenges.

Everyone wants to get to solo, but nobody wants to see someone get out there solo and have the unexpected issue (and yes, they happen!) that causes someone to get distracted and have an accident or incident. I'd say if you want, feel free to ask your instructor to include some unexpected 'issues' (your CFI will love to do this, BTW), and it'll help you get comfortable flying the plane with confidence plus dealing with the 'anything can happen' scenario. Your DPE is probably going to pull something like this on your checkride anyway.

It sounds like you're well on your way, and we look forward to hearing about a solo soon enough!
 
WannFly said:
...
My goal is to solo when I have 9 or 10 in every maneuver there is to land my behind safely. Pretty stringent, but that's my goal, and if I can nail those in a 9 or 10, u would be under private pilot standards for the check ride.
...
Click to expand...

Nope, you solo when your CFI thinks you're ready, you really don't have enough experience to judge these things or really know what makes a good check ride, you never even had a check ride ;)

I'd say quit over analyzing things, quit running your noodle on the hamster wheel thinking about how you would rate, just focus on flying the plane and you'll solo when you're ready.

Your type of thinking is going to slow you down and actually make you less safe as a student pilot.

As far as your right rudder, don't just add right rudder when you add power, look all the way down the runway at the infinity point and do whatever you have to do to keep the plane heading towards that point.
 
I'm going to agree completely with @MAKG1. You are overthinking it and have no real basis for a numerical self-assessment.

I'm not sure how many hours you have in, but early pre-solo flight training is all about distractions. The progression is such that, every time go think you got something down, we simply add something to it. That's difficult and, yes, distracting, because you are learning individual steps. Later, it will be internalized to a cohesive whole, the relationship of the maneuvers to each other and to everyday flying becomes clearer, and the tasks become simpler.
 
midlifeflyer said:
I'm going to agree completely with @MAKG1. You are overthinking it and have no real basis for a numerical self-assessment.

I'm not sure how many hours you have in, but early pre-solo flight training is all about distractions. The progression is such that, every time go think you got something down, we simply add something to it. That's difficult and, yes, distracting, because you are learning individual steps. Later, it will be internalized to a cohesive whole, the relationship of the maneuvers to each other and to everyday flying becomes clearer, and the tasks become simpler.
Click to expand...
While I agree he's overthinking, that was James.
 
Rule number one. Fly the airplane. Give not damn one about anything else. If you care about somebody else's opinion, give it to them after the airplane is tied down.
 
(( I'm humming my version of the chorus of "Under Pressure" by Queen/David Bowie as I type ))

It's the terror of knowing what flying is about
Watching some good instructors screaming
'Let me out'​

I agree with others that it's too soon to get into "rate me numerically". As you confessed, you sorta knotted up your own rope, slipped it around your neck and through the other end over the tree limb. Hopefully your instructor is providing appropriate critique of your activities and progress during the debriefings.
 
AggieMike88 said:
(( I'm humming my version of the chorus of "Under Pressure" by Queen/David Bowie as I type ))

It's the terror of knowing what flying is about
Watching some good instructors screaming
'Let me out'​

I agree with others that it's too soon to get into "rate me numerically". As you confessed, you sorta knotted up your own rope, slipped it around your neck and through the other end over the tree limb. Hopefully your instructor is providing appropriate critique of your activities and progress during the debriefings.
Click to expand...
He is, he is a great instructor and I am lucky to have a instructor like that. He was on board with my rating game, but I have a sneaky suspicion that he went along with my plan to .... teach me a lesson. As I am going thru the whole flight in my head now, I realize that the only 2 things I messed up are the things I thought I am good at. Time to get humble and get back to basics

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Hi Wannfly.

I understand your desire for feedback from your CFI on how you are doing. However, I think asking him to rate your performance on various maneuvers was a mistake on your part. That automatically puts him/her in the position of being critical instead of teaching. Better to just practice with him/her as they tell you. As you get more experience, you will know how you are doing.
 
Some of the things that most affect your solo are not "rateable." Like, are you in command of the aircraft or along for the ride? How is your decision making?

When flying an airplane, there are a billion details. Some of them are extremely important, and some of them are utterly irrelevant. Sometimes, it's a moving target. It's critical to know the difference.

Example: On Sunday, I tried to take my son on a night flight at his request. Right after engine start, he complained my voice was cutting out. A brief look at the intercom panel showed the squelch knob had broken. Not fixable, nor critical. Ignore, and just speak up a bit. Then, later, at the end of the runway, the run-up produced a mag check with no RPM drop on the right mag and a normal drop (just under 100 RPM on a 172S) on the left. That's more important.

Now, lack of an RPM drop by itself is not a sign of engine problems, unless it's for both mags. It's almost certainly the ignition switch. But it means the right mag and spark plugs are in unknown condition, and there is a small class of potential emergencies I can't deal with ('cause I can't turn the right mag off). That's where ADM comes into play. It also means I'm not moving the prop, period, 'cause that mag may be hot.
 
MAKG1 said:
Some of the things that most affect your solo are not "rateable." Like, are you in command of the aircraft or along for the ride? How is your decision making?

When flying an airplane, there are a billion details. Some of them are extremely important, and some of them are utterly irrelevant. Sometimes, it's a moving target. It's critical to know the difference.

Example: On Sunday, I tried to take my son on a night flight at his request. Right after engine start, he complained my voice was cutting out. A brief look at the intercom panel showed the squelch knob had broken. Not fixable, nor critical. Ignore, and just speak up a bit. Then, later, at the end of the runway, the run-up produced a mag check with no RPM drop on the right mag and a normal drop (just under 100 RPM on a 172S) on the left. That's more important.

Now, lack of an RPM drop by itself is not a sign of engine problems, unless it's for both mags. It's almost certainly the ignition switch. But it means the right mag and spark plugs are in unknown condition, and there is a small class of potential emergencies I can't deal with ('cause I can't turn the right mag off). That's where ADM comes into play. It also means I'm not moving the prop, period, 'cause that mag may be hot.
Click to expand...
Could that be a foul spark plug? I had a similar situation a few days back, but there was a little shudder at the engine as well. We ran the engine hot to burn some lead off the spark plugs and the mag check went fine.

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WannFly said:
Could that be a foul spark plug? I had a similar situation a few days back, but there was a little shudder at the engine as well. We ran the engine hot to burn some lead off the spark plugs and the mag check went fine.

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Click to expand...
You got LACK of an RPM drop accompanied by an engine shudder? Usually, you get excessive RPM drop with a shudder. Sometimes the engine even quits on the affected mag.

A shudder is not normal and indicates a problem, possibly with fouled spark plugs.

You might get no drop if you try a run up aggressively leaned, but any mixture problem will affect both mags equally.
 
MAKG1 said:
You got LACK of an RPM drop accompanied by an engine shudder? Usually, you get excessive RPM drop with a shudder. Sometimes the engine even quits on the affected mag.

A shudder is not normal and indicates a problem, possibly with fouled spark plugs.

You might get no drop if you try a run up aggressively leaned, but any mixture problem will affect both mags equally.
Click to expand...

I am pretty sure it was no RPM drop and shudder, CFI ran the engine hot, leaned out for some times, checked the mags again and everything was normal. he said its a fouled spark plug, but I will check with him again. sometimes things just gets mangled in my head
 
WannFly said:
Fly heading 320 for 4000, expect higher in 3, thanks ground...er....tower...sorry...I meant approach..no damn it.. departure
Click to expand...

Hey, you sound like me on radio!...just add "...sorry, coffee has wore off" to the end of the brain fart transmission and all will be forgiven. Works every time.
 
WannFly said:
I am pretty sure it was no RPM drop and shudder, CFI ran the engine hot, leaned out for some times, checked the mags again and everything was normal. he said its a fouled spark plug, but I will check with him again. sometimes things just gets mangled in my head
Click to expand...

It probably was a fouled plug. We used to have a C-172 that was bad about doing this. One thing you can do is to lean the mixture after startup while taxiing. Just be sure to push the mixture back in before takeoff. If you do it right, the engine will quit if you accidentally forget to push the mixture back in. You probably did get a rough running engine during runup. That is what ours would do.
 
WannFly, I could be mistaken, but I think you are around my low time flying hours area?

I wouldn't presume to tell you how to learn, but for myself, I tend to go the same route you are taking in that I realize I have a tendency to try and reinvent the wheel, in micromanaging my lesson plan.
I saw myself starting to do this. There is a fine line between communicating what I may feel are my specific needs in order to learn something now and then, and actually trying to steer the lesson plan.

I'm not writing this well, what I am getting at is I have the same tendencies that you seem to, for example your own rule about having to do 9-10 of 10 in every category, etc.

For myself, I realized I was starting to lean that way, and that I actually don't know enough to do this, and my CFI does, and it was muddying the waters. In a way, I was "taking control" of my education, I thought, instead of learning to take control of the airplane. The tendency is known to me, it stems from feeling like it is all a lot to take in, and as newer students we don't have "control" yet so transfer the control to the lesson plan where to me it isn't appropriate.

I'm a 40+ year guitarist, and I have seen the same thing in newcomers learning guitar. They focus on all the wrong things, put too much emphasis on less important things, too little on actually, you know, playing guitar, and way too much on equipment and on grading, on the metrics that don't have squat to do with actually playing a song, playing a solo, learning guitar. Some concepts come only after time, and most important is being able to put things together as a whole. Some could concentrate for example on bending a note, better is learning to bend a note a half, whole, or one and a half steps up and hit the mark...but you get to being a guitarist when you don't think about it except when playing you think if the note and if you decide to bend up to it, you hit it. Experienced guitarists do notice "I'm getting sloppy with my bends, gotta work on that" or "I keep using the same boring vibrato on bends...gotta stop letting that be automatic and get in the moment" and maybe spend a minute or two working on bends at home, concentrating on it. But more important is actually playing. Some folks can play notes, but not solo (guitar I mean) which is putting the concepts together.

The parallel, I notice a lot of experienced pilots mention the same..."been a while since I did a turning stall, need to work on that next time" etc.

So again, for myself, when I catch myself drifting into these things, like "I'll set up a system to rate myself, etc. etc." I catch myself and see it as distraction. My CFI (with some feedback from me, but only in the sense of "I feel like I'm not getting the sight picture" or "what am I doing wrong when I am leveling off?" Things) has forgotten more about flying than I will ever learn, literally, I'm too old to be able to get what he knows in the rest of my lifetime. I trust him, and frees me up to follow his instruction, and I go over everything in detail in my mind on the drive home, even keeping a journal, where I end up with some points on paper "remember for the next lesson" things. But I never let it get over three or four things maximum.

I think we best learn to fly by flying, then asking questions about what we experienced, checking that we understand the points of some meneuvers, etc. a goal of "doing a nine or ten" on a specific maneuver is redundant. We always want to nail it. But say one student flubs it fifteen times, and on the sixteenth he nails it, on the seventeenth he flubs it again. Is he done? (Actually from pilots, they practice a lot after getting their PPL, and need to keep doing it to maintain their skills right?) another pilot that is consistently "rating" a seven or eight, and attains a nine. I'd say the second one was doing better.

I believe consistency comes with experience, and feedback. So rating isn't bad, but it's never over and I'm not sure at my level anyway I even CAN evaluate some aspects. I may thing I nailed something until my instructor points out I lost 500 feet while nailing it.

Probably ninety percent of what I wrote here is obvious or I missed some point that clarified, but even so, I'm personally fighting the tendency to take over my less plans and evaluations, letting my CFI do that, and focusing also, and this was important to me, on being the PIC when I fly even though I'm not qualified. At least for me, of course when beginning to fly I don't know that much experience wise, so I rely on the CFI correcting anything I may do that might be wrong and cause a problem. It was important to me as soon as possible to think of myself as the PIC and kind of pretend that the CFI was not sitting next to me, ready to take over if I really messed up.

I'm doing this to prepare myself for the day to get to solo. At this stage, I can't even imagine well not having the safety of the instructor next to me. So my biggest metric for learning, is I want to prepare mentally for when I am the only one in the plane, flying, and nobody there to take over. It's really all I can handle now anyway.

None of this is meant as if I knew anything, about you, or how you are learning, I'm just going through thoughts about this, inspired from your story, and my own tendencies that are similar.

I do notice in debriefing, when my instructor always grades each maneuver (don't they do this after each flight at your school) that there are some grades I woud have thought should be lower than I get, others I thought we higher. I don't disagree, this just points out to me where my biggest blind spots are.

Anyway, luck to you! And me!
 
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I said this on another thread a day or two ago, but my advice is to consider it less as lessons and more as experiencing the joy of flying with a pro helping you do it safely and giving you tips on how to properly do more manuevers as you go. Focusing this way, you'll be soloing and more, probably before you realize you're ready.
 
Leave it up to the CFI... Don't rate yourself, you have no baseline to work with... I wouldn't be surprised if, when the CFI steps out for your first solo, you won't think you're ready... But if he's letting you go, you are ready...
 
LongRoadBob said:
WannFly, I could be mistaken, but I think you are around my low time flying hours area?

I wouldn't presume to tell you how to learn, but for myself, I tend to go the same route you are taking in that I realize I have a tendency to try and reinvent the wheel, in micromanaging my lesson plan.
I saw myself starting to do this. There is a fine line between communicating what I may feel are my specific needs in order to learn something now and then, and actually trying to steer the lesson plan.

I'm not writing this well, what I am getting at is I have the same tendencies that you seem to, for example your own rule about having to do 9-10 of 10 in every category, etc.

For myself, I realized I was starting to lean that way, and that I actually don't know enough to do this, and my CFI does, and it was muddying the waters. In a way, I was "taking control" of my education, I thought, instead of learning to take control of the airplane. The tendency is known to me, it stems from feeling like it is all a lot to take in, and as newer students we don't have "control" yet so transfer the control to the lesson plan where to me it isn't appropriate.

I'm a 40+ year guitarist, and I have seen the same thing in newcomers learning guitar. They focus on all the wrong things, put too much emphasis on less important things, too little on actually, you know, playing guitar, and way too much on equipment and on grading, on the metrics that don't have squat to do with actually playing a song, playing a solo, learning guitar. Some concepts come only after time, and most important is being able to put things together as a whole. Some could concentrate for example on bending a note, better is learning to bend a note a half, whole, or one and a half steps up and hit the mark...but you get to being a guitarist when you don't think about it except when playing you think if the note and if you decide to bend up to it, you hit it. Experienced guitarists do notice "I'm getting sloppy with my bends, gotta work on that" or "I keep using the same boring vibrato on bends...gotta stop letting that be automatic and get in the moment" and maybe spend a minute or two working on bends at home, concentrating on it. But more important is actually playing. Some folks can play notes, but not solo (guitar I mean) which is putting the concepts together.

The parallel, I notice a lot of experienced pilots mention the same..."been a while since I did a turning stall, need to work on that next time" etc.

So again, for myself, when I catch myself drifting into these things, like "I'll set up a system to rate myself, etc. etc." I catch myself and see it as distraction. My CFI (with some feedback from me, but only in the sense of "I feel like I'm not getting the sight picture" or "what am I doing wrong when I am leveling off?" Things) has forgotten more about flying than I will ever learn, literally, I'm too old to be able to get what he knows in the rest of my lifetime. I trust him, and frees me up to follow his instruction, and I go over everything in detail in my mind on the drive home, even keeping a journal, where I end up with some points on paper "remember for the next lesson" things. But I never let it get over three or four things maximum.

I think we best learn to fly by flying, then asking questions about what we experienced, checking that we understand the points of some meneuvers, etc. a goal of "doing a nine or ten" on a specific maneuver is redundant. We always want to nail it. But say one student flubs it fifteen times, and on the sixteenth he nails it, on the seventeenth he flubs it again. Is he done? (Actually from pilots, they practice a lot after getting their PPL, and need to keep doing it to maintain their skills right?) another pilot that is consistently "rating" a seven or eight, and attains a nine. I'd say the second one was doing better.

I believe consistency comes with experience, and feedback. So rating isn't bad, but it's never over and I'm not sure at my level anyway I even CAN evaluate some aspects. I may thing I nailed something until my instructor points out I lost 500 feet while nailing it.

Probably ninety percent of what I wrote here is obvious or I missed some point that clarified, but even so, I'm personally fighting the tendency to take over my less plans and evaluations, letting my CFI do that, and focusing also, and this was important to me, on being the PIC when I fly even though I'm not qualified. At least for me, of course when beginning to fly I don't know that much experience wise, so I rely on the CFI correcting anything I may do that might be wrong and cause a problem. It was important to me as soon as possible to think of myself as the PIC and kind of pretend that the CFI was not sitting next to me, ready to take over if I really messed up.

I'm doing this to prepare myself for the day to get to solo. At this stage, I can't even imagine well not having the safety of the instructor next to me. So my biggest metric for learning, is I want to prepare mentally for when I am the only one in the plane, flying, and nobody there to take over. It's really all I can handle now anyway.

None of this is meant as if I knew anything, about you, or how you are learning, I'm just going through thoughts about this, inspired from your story, and my own tendencies that are similar.

I do notice in debriefing, when my instructor always grades each maneuver (don't they do this after each flight at your school) that there are some grades I woud have thought should be lower than I get, others I thought we higher. I don't disagree, this just points out to me where my biggest blind spots are.

Anyway, luck to you! And me!
Click to expand...
Think you are spot on and we are on the same boat. Went up yesterday with no pressure of rating etc and I did pretty good and achieved everything we set out to do. I wasn't over thinking and it helped. Even flying in light turb with medium chops wasn't as bad as it used to be even a week back. Can't get a break from wind where I leave, seems everytime it's my turn to fly, it's 15G25, increases my time to learn how to handle that kind of wind, but getting there... good luck to u too and thanks for chiming in

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WannFly said:
Think you are spot on and we are on the same boat. Went up yesterday with no pressure of rating etc and I did pretty good and achieved everything we set out to do. I wasn't over thinking and it helped. Even flying in light turb with medium chops wasn't as bad as it used to be even a week back. Can't get a break from wind where I leave, seems everytime it's my turn to fly, it's 15G25, increases my time to learn how to handle that kind of wind, but getting there... good luck to u too and thanks for chiming in

Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

Thanks, I was kinda long winded, but was thinking it through for myself. Main thing I learned from replying was why I was focusing on the "system" (because as most students, I felt I wasn't mastering anything yet) that was really not the main focus which is flying.

Anyway, sounds great, that you had a good flight and could drop the extra baggage of abstract, and just get into flying. Does sound like we are similar. I've had to curtail flying until I take my exam, but when I start up again, hopefully soon, I'm making a real effort just to focus on the whole of it, each maneuver as well as putting it together with the whole.

I do notice, and my CFI has been stressing this, that my sight picture (eyes outside) is a huge thing, and that improvements on that helped me in all maneuvers. Seems like some aspects do that improve one and it helps in the other tasks. So much to learn. Doing 45 degree banks taught me that the same elements apply even in shallower banks, but wasn't apparent to me until I did some 45 deg banks. Then i get the little "aha" moment, which deepens my concept, or even corrects my mistaken ones.

Anyway, good to hear. Overthinking my problem too, often without me having enough knowledge to even think, let alone overthink about it :)

Good luck! Happy flying!
 
LongRoadBob said:
Thanks, I was kinda long winded, but was thinking it through for myself. Main thing I learned from replying was why I was focusing on the "system" (because as most students, I felt I wasn't mastering anything yet) that was really not the main focus which is flying.

Anyway, sounds great, that you had a good flight and could drop the extra baggage of abstract, and just get into flying. Does sound like we are similar. I've had to curtail flying until I take my exam, but when I start up again, hopefully soon, I'm making a real effort just to focus on the whole of it, each maneuver as well as putting it together with the whole.

I do notice, and my CFI has been stressing this, that my sight picture (eyes outside) is a huge thing, and that improvements on that helped me in all maneuvers. Seems like some aspects do that improve one and it helps in the other tasks. So much to learn. Doing 45 degree banks taught me that the same elements apply even in shallower banks, but wasn't apparent to me until I did some 45 deg banks. Then i get the little "aha" moment, which deepens my concept, or even corrects my mistaken ones.

Anyway, good to hear. Overthinking my problem too, often without me having enough knowledge to even think, let alone overthink about it :)

Good luck! Happy flying!
Click to expand...
Looking outside was very challenging for me when I started and still is at times. That G1000 has so many things to look at, however, I fly much better when looking outside. In fact, did some hood work yesterday and 2as hav8ng tough time maintaining heading just by instruments, usually never a problem when flying looking at a road or a distant barn I pick to aim at. Now the next challenge would be transitioning to a 6 pack...but will cross the bridge when I get there.
Good luck on your exam

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WannFly said:
Can't get a break from wind where I leave, seems everytime it's my turn to fly, it's 15G25
Click to expand...
You say that like it's a bad thing. It's good you are training in conditions like this and getting both exposure and proficiency. Some students just wait only for the really good weather and winds straight down the runway. And while those might turn out to be safe pilots, when they encounter gusty conditions, significant crosswinds, and worse, they get uncomfortable fast and allow themselves to get behind the airplane.

So enjoy this. And on days with a good 10 knot crosswind going on, try to go out with your instructor and practice good crosswind takeoffs and landings and make them the only focus for that lesson. A few of those lessons, both before and after the checkride, will really pay off on comfort level and proper execution of a good landing in less than desirable wind conditions.
 
WannFly said:
Now the next challenge would be transitioning to a 6 pack...but will cross the bridge when I get there
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VFR flight on a 6-pack is not difficult, and really the equipment you should be training on anyhow. It would definitely save rental money since G1000 equipped aircraft typically cost more per hour over the analog birds.
 
It is really nice to see POA used to actually help fellow pilots out instead of picking a fight with someone over nothing :). Good luck to both of you! It will come.
 
AggieMike88 said:
You say that like it's a bad thing. It's good you are training in conditions like this and getting both exposure and proficiency. Some students just wait only for the really good weather and winds straight down the runway. And while those might turn out to be safe pilots, when they encounter gusty conditions, significant crosswinds, and worse, they get uncomfortable fast and allow themselves to get behind the airplane.

So enjoy this. And on days with a good 10 knot crosswind going on, try to go out with your instructor and practice good crosswind takeoffs and landings and make them the only focus for that lesson. A few of those lessons, both before and after the checkride, will really pay off on comfort level and proper execution of a good landing in less than desirable wind conditions.
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so its a double edged sword for me now. i cant land for **** in 15G25 or 19G30 and that seems to be the norm when its my time to fly, every other day its like 6kt wind :) . i was given an option to switch my training in the morning when the winds are calm, i chose not to for 2 reasons... 1) i want to get comfortable with winds and turbulence and if i can land safely under those circumstances, landing under ideal conditions should be a piece of cake. its taking me a long time to get comfortable, but i am getting there. 2) i am grumpy as hell in the morning o_Oo_O

initially i thought well, lets get some non windy days and get the landing part figured out and then will work with cross winds, but that didn't work out, everyday is windy day in upper Midwest
 
AggieMike88 said:
VFR flight on a 6-pack is not difficult, and really the equipment you should be training on anyhow. It would definitely save rental money since G1000 equipped aircraft typically cost more per hour over the analog birds.
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with ya on that, but at my school there ain't any 6 packs. it sucks to get used to an advanced equipment like G1000 and get spoilt and then come back to reality with 50 yr old 6 pack gauges :mad::mad:
 
WannFly said:
so its a double edged sword for me now. i cant land for **** in 15G25 or 19G30 and that seems to be the norm when its my time to fly, every other day its like 6kt wind :) . i was given an option to switch my training in the morning when the winds are calm, i chose not to for 2 reasons... 1) i want to get comfortable with winds and turbulence and if i can land safely under those circumstances, landing under ideal conditions should be a piece of cake. its taking me a long time to get comfortable, but i am getting there. 2) i am grumpy as hell in the morning o_Oo_O

initially i thought well, lets get some non windy days and get the landing part figured out and then will work with cross winds, but that didn't work out, everyday is windy day in upper Midwest
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Do BOTH.

Learn how to land in the early morning. Then polish it up in the afternoon.

It gets even better when you get an instrument rating. Then you look for those gray icky days with 800 foot ceilings for some good practice.
 
MAKG1 said:
Do BOTH.

Learn how to land in the early morning. Then polish it up in the afternoon.

It gets even better when you get an instrument rating. Then you look for those gray icky days with 800 foot ceilings for some good practice.
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i wish i could, but people at work gets a little mad when i don't show up :). may be i should take a week off from work and get this figured out... something to think about. wish they were paying me to fly...sighh
 
WannFly said:
i wish i could, but people at work gets a little mad when i don't show up :). may be i should take a week off from work and get this figured out... something to think about. wish they were paying me to fly...sighh
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You don't need to do both on the same day.

In fact, it's probably best if you don't.
 
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