Post-Solo Fun

Bman.

Pre-takeoff checklist
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Jul 20, 2014
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Bman.
So now that the solo + another dual instruction flight in the book, I am endorsed and ready to go! Mow the yard, no... go fly. Work... nah, go fly. I can't think of any excuse outside of weather or illness to keep me from flying solo at this point.

With that being said, how long did you new pilots wait to head out on you first solo trips? Did your flying frequency increase or decrease with your newly minted endorsement? The month of June is open for me, CFI is out of town a lot this month so he said "Go practice! Go learn! Call me before you go, please."

Benjamin
 
Uh I started flying just about every day. Flying just got cheaper.

Don't let a bunch of solo flying make you sloppy. I did and it cost me a lot of re work.
When you solo make sure you are practicing too not just flying because you can.

But go fly and take lots of pictures for a few flights.
Then get back to training.
 
My second solo consisted of leaving the pattern, practicing a few maneuvers and coming back to land. Maybe did that a week after my solo. Then it increased as I went into solo XC, long XC and checkride practice.
 
Excellent - I went for a flight this morning with the CFI to run through the gamut of procedures. I am now free to go.. and well, honestly, want to go right now! I better wait a few days.
 
Go out and practice your maneuvers they just got a lot cheaper.
 
I had a traffic patten only restriction on my solo endorsement (my instructor did it to all of his students... Was afraid of practice area accidents), so I just flew enough to meet minimums and didn't start doing much else beyond touch and goes in the circuit until I had my ticket.
 
Go out and have fun! Go site seeing, buzz a buddies house (legally). Go have some fun!
 
Fly. Be free.

And by "be free" clearly I mean be free of all ur discretionary income.
 
Honestly I don't think I ever flew solo other than to fulfill requirements for my PPL. I could only fly once a week or every other week sometimes so I wanted to work on specific things either with the instructor or knocking out cross countries.
 
When you head out solo, take a written list of what you want to work on for each flight. Have some fun, enjoy being up alone, but practice something you've learned every time.

One of my made up tasks was to fly over my house, and using both VORs, triangulate it's position. Tune 'me both on, fly over and center the needles, then write them down. On the ground, draw the lines and plot my house.

Turns around a point work well, both at the standard practice area point and over the house, or work, or wherever. It helped that home was very near the practice area.

Write your list of 3-5 things to practice on today's flight, then go do them. Have fun between the airport and the practice area,that gives you two times to enjoy yourself. One trip back I practiced slips--climbed nice and high, and slipped 1000' to the left, leveled off for a little, then slipped another 1000' to the right. Gave me lots more confidence to slip in the pattern.
 
Honestly I don't think I ever flew solo other than to fulfill requirements for my PPL. I could only fly once a week or every other week sometimes so I wanted to work on specific things either with the instructor or knocking out cross countries.

Same for me, except in some cases it was once every other month or so. Better to devote the flying time to be with my cfi and learn new things.
 
Honestly I don't think I ever flew solo other than to fulfill requirements for my PPL. I could only fly once a week or every other week sometimes so I wanted to work on specific things either with the instructor or knocking out cross countries.
Same for me. I don't really remember just taking the plane out and going for fun. If I went up, it was to fulfill a requirement.
 
Ahhhhhhh...........I remember my post-solo days as a student pilot (summer of 2008)!

It brings back such fun memories with the sudden newfound freedom I had, even though of course I was still under the watchful eye of my CFI!

To relive the same level of excitement now, I'd need to be lucky and fly one of the most gorgeous ladies in my office somewhere nice, wearing a nice skirt, but I'm afraid that's a much higher hurdle to clear!!
 
Congratulations. I truly felt like I really became a pilot when I left the nest of my home drone, and navigated my way to an entirely different airport -even more so than when I soloed.

Have fun!
 
I averaged three days a week. lots of work when it was hot and gusty because I knew it would be like that on my checkride. I picked out steep turns and soft field landings as the things I could not do well. I worked on steep turns every time until I could do them to the commercial pts. I did soft field landing a lot and eventually went up with another instructor to get a different point of view. Even at my checkride I wasn't totally comfortable with my consistency, but the one I did was good enough for the examiner.
 
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