Being a car guy with a lifelong fascination with airplanes, rc planes in my teens I thought for sure I'd be soloing at 10 hours. After my intro flight I still felt pretty confident. Somewhere around hour 3 or 4 I realized how little I knew. I'm right around hour 10 right now and am nowhere near soloing. A large part of that has to do with poor runway conditions so I've only been involved in 3 landings. Today was supposed to be the day to really work on landings but the forecasted ceiling of 1800' turned out to be 1200' and rain hit about an hour earlier. My whole point is it's still pretty overwhelming to me the amount of info I have to cram into my head so I'm in no rush right now. You may want to ask me again when I actually have some landings under my belt and solo or xc some.
Boy do I feel your pain.
My Dad was a design engineer on Concorde (Bristol), my Godfather was a Lightning pilot in the RAF, I have one cousin who is a multi time RC aerobatic world champ, another in the RAF as WC on both Tornado's and Euro Fighter, half my parents friends are/where capt for BA......so no pressure on me to get a PPL
I sort of had a different reaction when I started training, I went to 5 different schools to do the "introduction flight", all said I would solo in 10 hours except one, he said it would happen when it was safe.. I chose that school. I was told I was ready at about the 18-20 mark, did a pre solo check ride with a different instructor and then i could not find a flare point to save my life,
nerves, expectations, vulnerability confidence all went to hell and back.
Even to the point in one lesson after my third horrific touch and go I was going to give the controls back to the instructor and say I have no business flying a plane, the next one was better, the next better and so on. But for about another 10 hours I never thought I would solo because of weather, sick instructors, broken planes and so on.
Got that solo in, and with in the next 15 hours had all solo requirements including the cross country's done.
It is over whelming at first, but after a few more lessons you will be doing something and realize that 3 weeks ago you couldn't do that without overthinking about it, I was most nervous about talking to ATC when I started, but according to everyone i fly with I sound like a seasoned airline pilot...I couldn't taxi on the yellow line for love or money, now I cant believe I even worried about it. Then it was dealing with ground effect, then it was cross wind landings, then it was....well you get the picture.
As long as you are enjoying it, learning something every time you go up, know your instructor is teaching you and not just building hours you will do just fine and get there when you are safe and ready.
As for the cost that someone mentioned, I'm paying $150 hr for a G1000 C172, and $65 hr for the instructor, Sporty's on line $300, Gliem study course $250, headset and various other nick naks who knows the $$$$.
Due to delays because of airport construction, vacations, weather, examiner availability , my wanting to keep practicing and have just one more lesson doing slow flight or S turns or what ever, & postponing one check ride, I will be in the 70-80 hour mark when all is done ( check ride is set for later this month), I expect to have spend more than $15k.
But I didn't get into this trying to do it as cheaply or as quickly as I could, so no budget on time or money, my limitations where on being safe.
