How many hours it take you to solo?

Caramon13 said:
Nope, I got you beat. 25 hours until solo for me. Had a lot of breaks between flights and the school I flew out of did a LOT of other training with me before I went to solo.

The good news is I was over-prepared for my PPL :).
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thanks! that's my hope. My instructor says that it's not time wasted and he has plenty of students that are on the "longer end", but he says I'll be surprised how fast the "back half" of the PP training goes because before solo at my school, you have to basically do all the standard maneuvers to standard or darn close. So post solo, it'll be performance T/O/landings, plus cross country stuff and another 2.5 hours of instrument time and that'll be mostly it (assuming I don't have issues with the CC or performance stuff).

I hope I can get through it this weekend so we can move on to the stage check, and performance section (which is only a few lessons) and get on with the CC stuff where I can apply it. I plan to push hard on the CC stuff and actually fly to places that might have more "exciting" weather and more airspaces to go through so I get more practice in complex situations (crosswind, short runways, marine weather, communications and altitude/course precision) while I have a CFII in the right seat with me in a /G airplane to help us get out of trouble. (things I would NOT likely do on my own shortly post PPL without additional training)
 
MIFlyer said:
thanks! that's my hope. My instructor says that it's not time wasted and he has plenty of students that are on the "longer end", but he says I'll be surprised how fast the "back half" of the PP training goes because before solo at my school, you have to basically do all the standard maneuvers to standard or darn close. So post solo, it'll be performance T/O/landings, plus cross country stuff and another 2.5 hours of instrument time and that'll be mostly it (assuming I don't have issues with the CC or performance stuff).

I hope I can get through it this weekend so we can move on to the stage check, and performance section (which is only a few lessons) and get on with the CC stuff where I can apply it. I plan to push hard on the CC stuff and actually fly to places that might have more "exciting" weather and more airspaces to go through so I get more practice in complex situations (crosswind, short runways, marine weather, communications and altitude/course precision) while I have a CFII in the right seat with me in a /G airplane to help us get out of trouble. (things I would NOT likely do on my own shortly post PPL without additional training)
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Yep, that's how it went for me as well. I learned to fly to PTS standards before I soloed. After solo I did a LOT of practice, even had to learn to fly a 172 instead of the 162 I learned in, due to weight restrictions.

Had a few more cross countries, instrument, etc and eventually did my checkride. And your instructor is correct, there is NO time ever wasted in the air. All time is loggable time. And think of it this way, if you're going after commercial, you'll need at least 250 hours total time anyway..so might as well rack them up while you can :)
 
I had 12.2 hours logged when I started the engine the day of my first solo.
 
Friggin 36.2! (Do I win?) Of course, that's because I had to wait 4 months for my SI medical! (That's what you get when you turn in your paperwork the day before the government shuts down for a month.) My instructor told me I was ready to solo by my 4th lesson. I had everything except all the solo requirements done by the time I got to solo! But that's okay. It was worth the wait.
 
33 for me, I was delayed getting the medical so I was treading water for a while there. I didn't have that many landings logged since we weren't aggressively working on "getting me solo'd" :) After my medical I had a couple hours in the pattern then solo. I think it probably helps to be at a smaller field, you could get more landings in a given time. With ATC and traffic sequencing, long runways, I average 6 landings per hour doing touch and go, if I stay in the pattern.

So, for newbs, I'd recommend sorting out your medical early on, you may run into unforeseen issues there. I haven't been in a huge hurry so It wasn't that big a deal to me, I've enjoyed every flight so, there's that.
 
Mine was near 20 ... but I live in West Texas and it gets WINDY here starting in January. After being delayed twice, I delayed an additional time myself in order to get at a memorable solo date ... rather than February, my solo was 03-04-07
 
write-stuff said:
It's virtually impossible to get a solo done in under 9 hours unless you skip some of the FAA's requirements.
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Agreed...

I'm working out of a towered airport and between the extra taxi time and radio work in addition to the minimum requirements I think my students are averaging around 13-15 hours before solo.
 
16 hours for me. In a Cherokee 150. I started a few weeks before I turned 16 so that delayed it a bit. But I think the CFI would have let me solo earlier but my nervous mother warned him if I got hurt of killed she come after him with a .30-.30. Yup, I come from a redneck family.

That was a long time ago when we still had to watch for dinosaurs on the runway.
 
CC268 said:
You should add what class airspace...my dad soloed at 6 hours, but that was at a small airport in Idaho. I soloed at 13 hours at a pretty dang busy Class D airport :) - not bragging by any means just throwing it out there
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Yeah, class D adds a dimension to it. Glad I trained in it.
 
I solo'd at 26.8 hours on my 16th birthday . I took my flying lesson on my 15th birthday so I was a victim of having to wait to be 16 to do the solo!
 
16.1 hours, but 9 months. I took off 6 months in 2004 for hurricanes and selling/buying houses and moving. My instructor told me on our 4th flight (at just over 6 hours) he'd have soloed me that day if I'd done the solo written. It made me nervous. Then on the next couple of flights I demonstrated why I SHOULDN'T solo. Then 6 months off, 3 flights and solo.

John
 
Ten-elevenish hours, IIRC.

Soled at KTKI, the field at which we did most of my pattern work (KADS does not like touch & goes). When my instructor hopped out, he said, "Now, three times around then COME BACK HERE AND PICK ME UP, before you fly back to Addison." Yeah, it happens, but I did OK, and the tower congratulated me on my solo. Nice touch.
 
I can't remember without looking at the logbook, which is in the car. Somewhere between 11 and 15 hours? I just remember that when I hit V(r) and the airplane left the ground, I immediately thought: "... and now I gotta put it back down again in one piece!!" :confused: But it went okay, and I got a couple congrats around the pattern too, which was a nice touch. I just wish I'd remembered to wear one of my crappy shirts...
 
Soloed at 14.4 in a C152
 
Discounting the people who were forced to wait for their medical and those with really fuzzy memories, we have and average of 11.6 hours to solo with a standard deviation of 4.4 hours. That includes those who soloed in what are considered "unachievable" times if you go by the book.

If I throw out entries below 7 hours an a lone outlier at 20, I have 37 data points with an average of 12.3 hours and standard deviation of 3.8 hours.

A rough histogram look like this:
poasolodistribution.jpg
 
My memory is pretty good; the reason I can't recall offhand my exact time to solo is that my (excellent) CFI did a really good job of minimizing the importance of that number and maximizing the importance of flying the airplane. :)
 
"I'm the slowpoke. Busy class d and lots of gaps in training..."

About the same here. I get close and then life starts throwing curve balls. Like the chest infection that has had me in bed for a week, but we have had a death in the family so I have to get out of bed and deal with that...

It will happen soon.
 
I think I was at about 17 hours. I was ready by about 12 or so but was flying frequently and had a big string of really windy days. Got really good at crosswind landings but my instructor thought turning me loose with 10+ mph crosswinds with gusts wasn't the best idea in the traumahawk.
 
11 hours in July of 1971 in a Cherokee 140. 45 minutes less than it did my Dad in a J-3 almost exactly 20 years earlier. :) I just found both log books.

I soloed a 7AC with 0.0 tail-dragger time shortly thereafter. I was young and stupid and it almost ended badly.

Jim
 
19 hrs for me. I had a depth perception problem because I left my weak reading glasses on. Now I fly with the glasses on the tip on my nose (to see instruments) and look over them for the landing.
 
This thread is as much about the cautiousness of the instructor as it is the skill off the pilot....

And that's not even taking into account frequency of flying (for various reasons)...
 
Rook said:
My memory is pretty good; the reason I can't recall offhand my exact time to solo is that my (excellent) CFI did a really good job of minimizing the importance of that number and maximizing the importance of flying the airplane. :)
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That's why the rest of us are looking it up in our logbooks. Heh. :)
 
50 give or take it was a good thing ,dual instruction is the best money spent .
 
dmspilot said:
Well finally someone said it. I was about to have an aneurysm.

Not only is there a pretty decent-sized list of maneuvers that are supposed to be done, but the student is supposed to demonstrate reasonable proficiency at them as well.

I wonder how many instructors who solo students in 5 hours are the same ones who won't let them do touch and goes or stalls while solo, or babysit them with a handheld radio.
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Someone who thinks like I do! It took me somewhere over 20 hours to solo... 22 maybe? I don't recall anymore. I did just solo a student last week though and he was between 18-20 hours and I thought it was progressing quite quickly. There is a lot to know anymore and be proficient with.

These threads get ridiculous because they discourage people who are struggling with this point in their training. I have one guy who struggled with turning left and right until 4 hours or so (he didn't understand which rudder to use). It happens. Not everyone is a pilot prodigy but these boards make it seem like it's the norm.
 
Z06_Mir said:
Someone who thinks like I do! It took me somewhere over 20 hours to solo... 22 maybe? I don't recall anymore. I did just solo a student last week though and he was between 18-20 hours and I thought it was progressing quite quickly. There is a lot to know anymore and be proficient with.

These threads get ridiculous because they discourage people who are struggling with this point in their training. I have one guy who struggled with turning left and right until 4 hours or so (he didn't understand which rudder to use). It happens. Not everyone is a pilot prodigy but these boards make it seem like it's the norm.
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Yep. Also depends on where you train. If you're training out of Joe's landing strip that gets about 1 plane a day you'll have an easier time than someone who trains out of a busy Class C airport in SoCal.
 
What if you never really solo'd because of multiple personality disorder?

Anyway, if you trained in busy airspace and have to fly 0.2 to get to the practice area, ya just won't solo as soon as the guy who trained at the only airport for 20 miles. You will also have better traffic spotting skills and chances are your radio work will be better.

I have encountered pilots who won't enter a pattern unless it is empty. Freakin' awesome skills...
 
61.87 makes it really hard for anyone to solo under 10 hours and be proficient in those tasks. I guess PoA is filled with a bunch of super pilots!
 
jordane93 said:
61.87 makes it really hard for anyone to solo under 10 hours and be proficient in those tasks. I guess PoA is filled with a bunch of super pilots!
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More than half of those items listed can be/are done in the traffic pattern.

Also, what you find "proficient" may be different from instructor to instructor. Some may hold a brand new solo student to PTS standards before soloing. Others may not. I have seen a few people get signed off to go solo that I was nervous about. One ended up going off the side of the runway. Thankfully no harm to him or the airplane.
 
Gucci Pilot said:
More than half of those items listed can be/are done in the traffic pattern.

Also, what you find "proficient" may be different from instructor to instructor. Some may hold a brand new solo student to PTS standards before soloing. Others may not. I have seen a few people get signed off to go solo that I was nervous about. One ended up going off the side of the runway. Thankfully no harm to him or the airplane.
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Exactly. It's all about how comfortable the instructor is. I expect my students to demonstrate the maneuvers safely with minimal loss of altitude and maintaining positive control of the aircraft. I certainly don't except them to perform to PTS during their solo. I just want to be assured that they can go to the practice area, do a few maneuvers, a few landings, and bring them and the airplane back in one piece.
 
jordane93 said:
61.87 makes it really hard for anyone to solo under 10 hours and be proficient in those tasks. I guess PoA is filled with a bunch of super pilots!
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Sure, it might be hard to get everyone performing given tasks to satisfaction in the same amount of time. But just like in every aspect of life, there are people who can do things better/worse or faster/slower. We are not all created equal. Measuring us with the same meter won't work very well.
But I agree, there are plenty of super pilots here!! :D
 
Z06_Mir said:
Someone who thinks like I do! It took me somewhere over 20 hours to solo... 22 maybe? I don't recall anymore. I did just solo a student last week though and he was between 18-20 hours and I thought it was progressing quite quickly. There is a lot to know anymore and be proficient with.

These threads get ridiculous because they discourage people who are struggling with this point in their training. I have one guy who struggled with turning left and right until 4 hours or so (he didn't understand which rudder to use). It happens. Not everyone is a pilot prodigy but these boards make it seem like it's the norm.
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You use the rudders to turn? I thought they were for doing an awesome forward slip and that's all.
 
As someone who took twice as long as the average here, I don't view it as a competition, HA! My first solo was awesome but, I actually think my second solo flight which was out of the pattern, was the best memory for me. My instructor just said go out to the practice area and do whatever maneuver I wanted and have fun, look around, enjoy it. So I did power on and off stalls, steep turns and turns around a point, etc. Then I flew back to the Class D. When I came back, she said I sounded good on the radio and asked what I did. She was surprised I did all of that and I asked why. She just said that some people aren't comfortable with stalls and such on first flight out of the pattern but, maybe because I had a few more hours doing that stuff it wasn't such a big deal. The stalls bumped up the heart rate a smidge. Oh well, if anyone is reading this and worried that they are taking too long, some will say that i took too long. My response, I took just the right amount of time for me. btw, i think its great that some can pick up flying faster than I did.

Just don't give up. I had a great night flight last night. It was by myself and just did a couple landings at another airport and a little sight seeing just for fun. The training work is worth it! Just try to make as many mistakes as possible with your instructor, that is when you really learn. First solo is awesome and you will get many more awesome experiences. Just typing this makes me want to "come down with a bug" so I can bolt from work and go poke holes in the sky. Ramble over...
 
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