Do You Have Fun At Your Lessons?

Always fun! I had a great instructor who always made it fun. He always would come up with funny lines to make me relax when he could tell I was getting stressed and back to fun. One thing he did if you were learning in a 4 place plane that could carry 4 average adults is take your significant other on your first night flight. Being in south jersey Cape May is a close night flight. He brought his wife and I brought my wife. We flew to Cape May and went to a late dinner and flew back. He also commerates the event by giving his students a hat with LED lights on the brim. Every flight ended with a smile.
 
steingar said:
If your lessons aren't fun it's time for a new instructor.
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I generally agree, although it might depend on your goals. My instructors always made it fun. We'd fly to interesting airports, get lunch, etc. Probably wasn't the most efficient or cost effective way to train and perhaps not the right method for everyone, but I'd much rather spend a little more and actually enjoy myself. I can't imagine not looking forward to flying!
 
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even though I've only had 5 hours so far, I've had 3 different instructors due to schedules. Two were really good (one has left the company nad the other doesn't teach due to COVID) and the third was good, but always used every minute to teach something. Don't get me wrong, learning every minute and optimizing the time the most efficiently is great but I think there has to be some balance.

Like Ron stated above, the instructor can make the teaching fun but also challenging at the same time.

I look forward to continuing my training and maybe one day I'll be the one to give the "fun lessons"
 
Let me add a little insight to my instructor. He is a chiropractor with a successful business. He loved flying and instructing. He was not building time as a career move. The flight school also capped how much per hour an instructor can charge. At the time (6 years ago) the fixed rate was $30/hour based on Hobbs time of which $8 was kicked back to the school. So it wasn’t even for the money since he made tons more in his business than giving instruction. If your instructor is not in it for the money or career you will be a happy student.
 
PPL, CPL (SE Add-On), CFI: Hated every lesson, lol.

I really enjoyed my instrument training though and my instructor was awesome. For the most part I also enjoyed my Multi-Commercial. Needless to say, I'm glad my training days are somewhat behind me.
 
RonP said:
Let me add a little insight to my instructor. He is a chiropractor with a successful business. He loved flying and instructing. He was not building time as a career move. The flight school also capped how much per hour an instructor can charge. At the time (6 years ago) the fixed rate was $30/hour based on Hobbs time of which $8 was kicked back to the school. So it wasn’t even for the money since he made tons more in his business than giving instruction. If your instructor is not in it for the money or career you will be a happy student.
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100% agreed. My CFI is a retired business executive and instructs because he loves to fly and loves to teach. And that, I think, has made all the difference.
 
If you hate the repetitions of the lessons objectives particularly the emergency procedures, I think you will really hate not to be ready for them when the real emergency, big or small, will actually happens and they do happens. If your instructor is trying to make you repeat over and over the same items, perhaps you are not proficient enough and shown consistent muscle memory to be a safe pilot carrying passengers. When you don’t see a value in a lesson , learning stops. Ask your instructor to ease off on the lessons for a bit and enjoy some xcountry to your local diner to see and enjoy one of the positive value of flying.
 
I always found them to be fun. I got scared once (2nd flight, first power on stall, instructor let me not mind the rudder and the plane broke hard to the left, scared the crap out of me), but otherwise I always maneuvers a lot of fun and enjoyed it immensely (and having since taken a fair bit of aerobatics training, I've managed to stall planes in all sorts of interesting ways :) and find that fun too!). Even now after having gotten the PPL and in the midst of IFR training, I think the fun stuff is not so much sitting up there waiting on the next waypoint for an XC time accumulation, but playing in the sky, maneuvering, doing the hard things that keep me busy and practiced, exercising my mind and keeping it sharply prepared for potential emergencies. Personally, I wouldn't take the viewpoint that any given plane is any more or less susceptible to failures of a given kind: I'd prefer to be prepared for them in any case.

I've been through a number of CFIs... some great, at least one I'll never get in a plane with again. I think a lot of it depends on the CFI, which typically come in two primary flavors: those that love to fly and teach and do it because they can and enjoy it, and those that do it because it's the expected way to build hours and keep some income on their way up the career path. Generally speaking, the former are far better instructors than the latter.
 
I understand you, OP. I always loved flying in planes growing up. Thought I would love the training part-- but for the most part, I didn't. I mostly found it stressful. It got better later in training. As soon as I finished training, flying was mostly fun and stress-free again. Still true 12 years later. Go figure.

That being said, it's not a bad idea to see how things go for awhile after you get your certificate and make sure you really want to purchase.
 
rewarding I'd say. Satisfying. I enjoyed the vast majority of the experience as I recall...but not in a pure pleasure sort of way....
 
In primary training my instructor was a young guy headed to the airlines who left when I was nearly finished. Second instructor basically just had to help me get my performance landings fine-tuned. Both were great. But .... after each lesson I felt like I had run a 5k. The only time set aside for banter was transitioning in and out of the Bravo. It was a lot of mental work.

Can’t say I had fun but I can say I was okay with it all because the end goal is something not very many people ever dream of accomplishing. And yesterday we woke up to a beautiful day and decided to grab a club plane and fly to Idaho for lunch.

I was in the process of working through my IR training but Covid put that on hold. Hopefully this summer get started again. I was kinda enjoying it. Still mentally challenging but in a very different way.
 
I always had fun in my initial training. Every lesson was something new and fun to me. IR has been a different story.
 
I was a teenager. There was nothing unfun about any of my training. Driving to the airport alone was exciting too. I could stop at any gas station I wanted to get a coke and some peanuts. Fun just depends on your perspective I guess.
 
Late to this party but I found all training fun.

Doesn't mean I didn't end up ticked off at myself or exhausted after a particularly difficult lesson or series of them though.

Would I say on that day it was "fun"? Maybe not in that moment but then later one realizes the gains from the hard work, or just the flat out reality that one is fortunate enough to do something very few on the planet get to do.

Some days are just a slog doing anything. Even things you adore. No getting around that.
 
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