Pre-Solo Student: Feeling Stupid :(

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Zulu99

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Zulu99
Hello all, new student pilot here. Warning: it's long. But if you have time to kill I'd appreciate any advice, insight and "it could be worse" stories.

I've been enjoying my flight training so far, though it was a great disappointment to discover that I am not a natural born pilot by any stretch of the imagination. I've been wanting to fly for so long and I finally saved up the money and set aside the time to do it. I have somewhere in the range of 15-20 hours (I don't want to add them up since I hate the competitive mentality of "I soloed in 8 hours and passed at 40 hours." My flying is all about ME and I will get there when I'm good and ready. Also the airspace here is quite crowded under Class Bravo and we've definitely been limited at times in practicing maneuvers because of it. The upside is that I'm totally confident on the radio due to all the practice)

Up until this week I've been quite spoiled by nice weather, so on Wednesday I had the unpleasant first experience of turbulence in a C152. I felt like we were bouncing all over the place and had a death grip on the yoke, but my instructor told me "This is nothing" and it was quite normal for the C152. There was a 9KT crosswind taking off so we planned to fly to a different airport with less crosswind to work on the pattern. But as soon as we arrived the wind changed and we had a 12KT crosswind gusting to 18KT. Oh well, time to make lemonade and practice crosswind landings sooner than planned. My instructor did all the flares/touchdowns and I just did my best to keep the approach somewhat in the vicinity of the runway.

We had an early morning flight Friday, no wind and it was awesome. We stayed in the traffic pattern and my instructor didn't need to touch the controls once, I had one go around when I overshot the approach, but all the other landings were pretty good. I left feeling great.

And then today we went for an afternoon flight. A little wind but it wasn't too far off the runway heading. We had to fly the other 152 today, which is a couple years newer and there are a few very minor differences. It made me feel a bit stupid during startup and runup as I was trying to figure out how to turn on the radio, stuff like that (plus if you can't hear anything you're instructor is saying it just might be because you forgot to plug your headset in :mad2: )

So we take off and it's a bit sloppy. Compared to the older 152, this new plane's yoke feels a bit looser and it needs more right rudder, so it was a bit disorienting. As soon as we get airborne there is a nonstop barrage of turbulence. I know it's nothing to write home about but aside from Wednesday I've only flown in really smooth air and it's just one more difference throwing me off. Then the stall warning horn goes off briefly and I'm jolted back to thinking: eyes outside, keep that pitch and airspeed consistent

Okay, finally time to head out to the practice area. I'm a dunce and have to be reminded when to keep climbing (Bravo changes from 1500' to 4000' as soon as we turn). So now I'm feeling pretty stupid and incompetent, not to mention my stomach is in knots from the turbulence knocking us around.

Perfect time to practice my favorite thing, right? Stalls. I've got the power off stalls down just fine, so we're just going to do one of those to warm up before it's time to move on. But it ends up being really sloppy since the flap control in this plane doesn't have those handy little notches that keep it firmly at 10, 20 or 30. Every time I adjust the flaps I have to peek over at it and make sure I'm at the right flap setting. Which means the nose of the plane keeps drifting whenever my eyes are inside.

After several of those I finally got my s*** together and did some halfway decent power off stalls. Time for the real torture to begin: power on stalls :( . I had been feeling much better about those but today the turbulence is still bouncing us around. Remember how this plane needs more right rudder? I sure didn't. Needless to say when we stalled the left wing dropped and I was like :hairraise::hairraise::hairraise: and cranked the yoke to the right. So it was time for lots more of those. First I needed more right rudder or we'd break to the left. Then I was overcorrecting with right rudder and we'd end up breaking right. Then I was jumping the gun and recovering at the first hint of buffeting, long before we even stalled.

My instructor is annoyingly calm and patient during all of this (which makes me feel worse because he is an awesome instructor and I must really suck at flying) and his policy is to not touch the controls unless I've really f***ed it up so I have to learn how to fix my mistakes. I'm sure I'll appreciate this teaching later down the road but right then all I wanted was to give him the controls and get back on the ground.

At long last, my feet were safely back on the ground and I was able to take a deep breath. Wow, I was so tense my right hand had cramped up from my death grip on the throttle (had been focusing on keeping left hand loose on the yoke)

As I'm putting the plane away two of the other young pilots are talking about hours and how they soloed in x hours and took checkrides in x hours. I am a really competitive person and from other sports I know how easy it is to lose enjoyment when you start feeling like you're in a competition with someone else. That's the big reason why I haven't been counting my hours, because I know I'm not a natural pilot and it's going to take me longer to feel safe and confident.

I feel better writing this all out (sorry, I know it's long) since it's pretty clear to me now that the additional factors of wind/turbulence and the slightly different handling/feel of this 152 is what threw me off my game initially and I just didn't recover from that. But as someone who has dreamed of flying for so long and invested a lot of time and money into training, it's really frustrating to have a bad day.

I have another flight on Monday so fingers crossed I do better.
 
None of us were born with wings. Real exercise involves pain and callouses and lots of sweat, which is what you are putting your brain through. You are much farther along than I am, but as someone that has re-invented himself several times over 50+ years, I can tell you that nothing worthwhile and new ever comes without the stress and discomfort that you describe.

Congratulations on choosing and keeping such an obviously great instructor. Oh - and welcome to PoA!
 
Welcome to PoA and flying! First, put that competitive instinct aside. Really, just forget about it, hard as it might be. It bothered me for a while (I took something like 50 hours to solo and 82 hours to get my sport pilot certificate!), but in the end, once I had that certificate in hand and looked back on it all, I realized the number of hours till whatever simply didn't matter.

Much of what you described sounds perfectly normal. Try to relax. It sounds like you are creating a lot of inner turbulence, which only compounds that going on outside the plane. Don't beat up on yourself. It'll all come together. I'm sure you're doing fine, or your instructor would let you know otherwise.

It would be nice if we always had calm days to fly in, but of course some days will be better than others. Your comfort zone will grow with experience. Expand it at your own pace.

Good luck, and keep us posted!
 
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1) sounds like you're going thru what ALL of us students have gone thru at some point....the questioning phase...."can I do this?". Yup, you can, just keep working at it!

2) there will always be those people who feel they have to throw #s at you...."I solod in 9 hours", "I finished in 40 hours" blah blah. There are several here on PoA. No one gives a shyit. Hopefully you can quickly get beyond focusing on that and just fly.

:)
 
Welcome to PoA, Zulu. Regarding your competiveness and the amounts of time others soloed in, just don't do it. It's irrelevant how long it takes you to get to that first solo flight. Pushing yourself to solo sooner will just increase your stress and won't get you to the milestone any sooner.

Here's an article about solo hours that you might enjoy. - Russ
http://www.faa-ground-school.com/ArticleShow.aspx?id=2049
 
Hours and number of landings are totally irrelevalent. I sucked at landings it took forever for me to solo but my CFI said "You can give up if you want but I won't tell you to do it" So I kept writing the checks and eventually I got it. When you get nervous remember why you started this whole adventure. (It's different for everyone) For me, I wanted to go flying and see places when my IR husband didn't want to go. Okay and to prove to my in-laws that I'm not as stupid as they think.

Sure some people in PoA are competitive but your hours that you took are yours. You'll solo when your CFI thinks your safe and hopefully you have the same confidence in yourself. Hang in there. (If you read this again when you are taking your checkride - after you totalled up the columns; which you should do in pencil. I had like 220 hours and 885 landings on the day of my checkride. Some of those hours were some adventures my CFI, husband and I went on but the majority are training hours. Oy! But I'm still a pilot)
 
No two students have the same set of training circumstances so you can never compare one to another. Down the road no insurance company is going to ask how many hours it took you to solo. All they will care about is total time and recency of experience, so by that count you're ahead with more hours!

Hang in there. Suddenly everything will start clicking and you will scoot through the rest of your training. You're building muscle memory, even if you don't realize it. It will all pay dividends in the end.
 
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That just sounds like typical training to me. It takes a while for your brain to click that every landing is different. Early in the game, my experience, was that I was trying to do the same thing every time for consistency. That's ok, to an extent. But every landing is different. The wind shifts, your pattern is slightly different so you might adjust your descent a bit, that kind of thing. Once I realized I needed to stay in control, at the same time being flexible enough to deal with all the dfifferences, things got easier, faster.

As far as feeling awkward when you get into a different plane - that's normal. I fly two or three different planes (rentals) and I alwas have to sit down and scan everything when I first climb in because so much is different.
 
Want to feel incompetent?
Then get a simulator for an RC Helicopter. I use Real Flight 6
According to mine I have crashed hundreds of times and the total repair bill is pushing a quarter billion dollars. (sims never forget)

Why do I bring this up?
Because Jonesy is right on - it's muscle memory. (eye-hand coordination without thinking because thinking is slooooow)
Ya gotta do it to learn to do it.

My first sim crashes were because I was slow in recognizing I needed to make a correction and then I pushed the controls the wrong way too often. This was in trying to lift into a hover about 3 feet up and just hold it there.
My current crashes are due to the same problem with muscle memory - late to recognize a needed correction and pushing the wrong way too often (and too much - over control is a beginners nemesis). And I'm still only 3 feet off the ground.
The difference is that now I'm flying figure eights backwards, inverted, and doing pirouettes simultaneously. (crunch . . . . damn, there goes another 100 grand)

Same thing for you with flying and flying different planes. You need to do the task over and over enough times and in varying conditions to where one day (and you won't even realize it happened) your eyes and your hands/muscles will suddenly bypass the thinking/slow part of your brain and just make those small corrections automatically.

Case in point. Throwing something. Wad up a sheet of paper and toss it into your wastebasket. Do you sit there and think, - oh wait, it's 4.5 feet away and I need to push it out of my hand at a 45 degree angle above level, etc. etc. etc.. No. You don't. Your eyes gauge the distance and from muscle memory you simply toss it. Most of the time you make it, or at least bounce it off - why?
Because you have tossed something many, many times before. Eye-hand coordination - aka, muscle memory.

Don't over think it - just DO IT.
 
Zulu99 said:
Hello all, new student pilot here. Warning: it's long. But if you have time to kill I'd appreciate any advice, insight and "it could be worse" stories.

I feel better writing this all out (sorry, I know it's long) since it's pretty clear to me now that the additional factors of wind/turbulence and the slightly different handling/feel of this 152 is what threw me off my game initially and I just didn't recover from that. But as someone who has dreamed of flying for so long and invested a lot of time and money into training, it's really frustrating to have a bad day.

I have another flight on Monday so fingers crossed I do better.
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You sound like a very "normal" student to me.
 
Hey ZU,

Thanks for sharing your experience. You have received lots of good input from the brain trust here so all I will add is that if you can self motivate like what is in your post, you will be just fine.

It gets better ;)

Kevin
 
You might have an easier time all around in a 172 with rudder trim. 152s have ground adjustible trim, and sometimes it just isn't adjusted right 'cause someone eyeballed it or whatever.

But the real issue is keeping calm. Even when the airplane does something unexpected. I'm sure your instructor told you all about it, but aileron in a stall is a bad thing.

You'll get it with practice.
 
Feeling stupid is a big part of being a student pilot. Don't worry, you'll get over it. You learn how to adjust to a new situation or a new maneuver, and then you get a variation of that - like doing a maneuver in turbulence. And now you feel like you're at square one again because you have to adapt your skills, and learn to make this new situation feel like second nature. Soon your skills will become even more generalizeable, in that you can apply what you're learning to new circumstances without much hassle. But, that takes a lot of time.
 
turbulence almost made me quit. When I did my solo Xcountry I hit some nasty desert hot windy turbulence. I was so scared I was actually saying my goodbyes. When I finally got back to the home airport, I parked it, called my instructor to say I was fine, and went home. I didn't speak to anyone for two weeks (I did my whole training in 4 months). After talking to my CFI, he said there are gonna be days like that you just have to get used to them.

This is how I deal with it. The avg plane is 30-40 years old. My plane is 65 years old. They get checked thoroughly and have gone thru years of turbulence. They are still flying, they want to fly, they are built to fly. So now I am OK.....Not comfy....But ok with turbulance. I figure anything short of the wings falling off, we can get it back to mother earth. Just my $.02
 
It doesn't sound like you're having unreasonable difficulty. I've known pilots who have taken much longer to solo than where you're at right now. But, for the sake of argument, let's pretend that you are way behind the curve.

What is your goal in flying? If your goal in flying is to be a really skilled and talented student, than go ahead and feel bad about your performance.

If, instead, your goal in flying is to be a really good pilot, well you have many years and thousands of hours to work on it. This has nothing to do with how many hours it took to solo. It has to do with how serious you are about continuing to improve and learn once you do have your license.

What you do after you get your certificate is far more important than what you did before it.
 
It doesn't matter how long it takes you to solo or to earn your certificate. No one ever asks me, because it's that irrelevant after you earn the certificate. Your training sounds like it takes place where mine took place too, at a class D under a class B. There is more to learn and more to lookout for. You're also spending a lot of time getting to/from the practice area in the 152, ours was at last 5 minutes away if not more and that's by Warrior.

Landings were a challenge for me, heck I had an easier time getting my entire instrument rating than I did learning to land I think. And that's OK, that doesn't make you a bad pilot. It sounds to me like you're close to solo, you're making trips around the pattern without any help which is excellent, and once your CFI feels like you can handle anything surprising that pops up you will be cut loose. But you don't need to be in a hurry. Eventually you will WANT a lot of hours, not too few hours, for insurance, additional ratings etc.

You will never achieve perfection, but you will achieve a level of safety. Your CFI is NOT disappointed or irritated in your skills. If he is, find a new one (but it doesn't sound like he is). He's likely seen students worse than you, and students far less motivated which are much more frustrating than a student struggling to get a concept like stalls or landings. Bottom line, do not feet stupid. You're not. What you're feeling is beyond normal, we have all gone through it. To some extent I've gone through that every rating I've added, and going through it again working on my CFII. But like everyone on these boards, you will work through those challenges and you're going to come out a private pilot as long as you stick to it.
 
Get used to the bouncing around, it's pretty typical. Just keep at it.
 
You don't sound stupid. You sound typical. The only thing that bothered me is your reaction to use the yoke when the wing dropped.

Suggest that on your next slow flight adventure, get the airplane trimmed for straight and level, and then just use the rudder and observe the roll behavior. Then have your CFI put you into a bank and have you recover using only the rudder. That should help get you in the habit of using rudder whenever you're rolling.

Don't get me wrong, you want to use the ailerons for rolling, but in unstalled flight you always want to use rudder as well. In a stall, when the ailerons are ineffective, the habit of using rudder (which IS still effective) will help recovering.

A "falling leaf" is a great way to learn this, IF your instructor is comfortable with it and the airplane is ok for it.
 
I fly better without an instructor, you may too. Keep going, you'll get there.
 
Thanks everyone! I guess I just felt really disappointed after having such a great day Friday. I came in feeling great with high hopes, and then I couldn't do anything right before we even took off. Logically I KNOW I'm a beginner and some days are going to be tougher than others, but when it actually happened it sure made me feel like crap.

write-stuff: Thanks for that article, definitely makes me think. I know I've wasted a lot of Hobbs time on the ground during runup and waiting for clearance to take off.

denny: You completely nailed one of my problems. Even if I notice a problem, it takes me awhile to think: what do I need to do? and then do it. Like turning final I sit there thinking I might be low, but I'm not sure, and by the time I finally decide to act on it we're really low. So next time I come around thinking I'm NOT going to be low, so we end up too high and that needs a different correction, which also takes me a long time to recognize and then act on. It's never the same!

GAZOO: Thanks for sharing your solo XC. I've always thought turbulence in the big jets is fun since it's the only exciting part besides take off and landing. But in the 152 it feels like so much movement all the time. It was such a relief on Wednesday when my instructor gave me a break and took the controls because I knew a professional was going to keep me safe. But when I had the controls (even with him sitting next to me) it was so nerve wracking that I was the one flying the plane and could potentially get us really screwed up at traffic pattern altitude. Not much time left for him to save us.

brooklyn26point2: Yup, I thought I had finally learned the power off stalls fairly well but add a little turbulence and I was basically back to square one

OneEightTwo: Yes, it's a busy class D under class B. It's great because I love talking on the radio (ha, I love to hear myself talk :D I even go back and listen to myself on LiveATC so I can say THAT'S REALLY ME ON A PLANE!!!!) but we've definitely spent a lot of time flying to/from the practice area and dodging traffic.

Tim: Yes, he made sure I knew using the ailerons during a stall could put us in a spin. But that was the first time I've done a stall and had it break to the side and it scared the crap out of me. All logical thinking went out the window and I started steering with the yoke like a car, and completely forgot about the rudder pedals.
 
Henning said:
Get used to the bouncing around, it's pretty typical. Just keep at it.
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One of my pre-solo flights was during one of those blustery, turbulent Spring days. The Warrior was getting thrown all over the sky. It really wasn't a good day for a lesson, but we went anyway. The whole time my CFI was griping at me for overcontrolling, or whatever. Eventually I was able to smooth things out enough to stop the complaining. We got back into the pattern and the CFI took over for the landing. As soon as we transfered controls, two things happened at the same time - the plane started bucking again and my CFI said, "Son of a *****!!!" I got a chuckle out if it.
 
Don't feel discouraged. I'm a bit competitive and I soloed a little under 30 hours. Now that I VERY recently got my ticket I don't care about these other guys bragging they soloed so quickly. I'm in a very busy Class D under a Class B as well and I'm sure at least 5 of those hours are spent waiting to be cleared to take off and being extended on the downwind multiple times. It's not realistic in that kind of airspace unlike guys who learn in the middle of nowhere at an uncontrolled airport.
I'm not a huge fan of stalls, and power on I normally ended up a bit uncoordinated or over correcting and the wing would drop. We did accelerated stalls a lot too to make me more comfortable with them. My wing dropped on my check ride on the power on stall, I knew it was going to happen, I could feel it uncoordinated before I could fix it, but I recovered just fine. It wasn't a big deal because I made sure my CFI and I covered it enough that I felt good with recovering when a wing dropped. It's about recovering properly from a stall, not doing a perfect stall.
 
You will have good flights bad flights and training sucks it's a hard journey but once it's does it feels good. Just keep going I just finished and I threw up, got sick hated things and kept going and then it all came together. In terms of hours I am the same way but just because u didnt solo yet doesn't mean yiu won't get done in 40 or low 40s but really it doesn't matter. When u see guys with thousands of hours they aren't thinking damn I wasted an extra 2 here 3 there and 5 there it's all part of it.
 
Zulu......keep on keeping on man you will get it.......you're just finding out it's not as easy as it looks. Parts of your story were right out of my experience, and I"m sure others as well. The good ol 152's are all rigged a little differently. You're going to suffer from sensory overload, and we all did. Somewhere along in the middle of training I had the basics down and now it was time for me to "do it all" on just a short trip about 15 miles away. I made it over to the other airport and managed to do a decent job, so now the return looms. Do the takeoff and stupidly climb up fairly high to 5,000ft to clear some class C on the way back to the home airport, I'm jabbering away and just aviating my brains out and a couple miles from downwind (I think) the CFI calmly asks " "do you think you need to lose some altitude?" ..........I look at the altimeter and I'm still at 5K !.........pattern was 2,000ft.........LOL.........talk about the air going out of your balloon.........you'll be fine.......we've all had some wild training days..........
 
I would count your landings and hours, monitor the situation, might need a different instructor with a different teaching style.

Two ideas based on your post.

A) appears you do not fully understand the stall. You need to do extensive falling leaf stalls and one or two full spins, that will fix that and probably also your turbulence issues

B) spend time just in the pattern till you solo, you should be averaging one touch and go (NOT FULL STOP) per .1hr. I do these with my guys that are good on their airwork and are pre solo, well do 2hrs a time.

Fly often too.
 
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TMetzinger said:
A "falling leaf" is a great way to learn this, IF your instructor is comfortable with it and the airplane is ok for it.
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I've never seen a GA plane that can't safely do a full falling leaf stall, we do them in a Grumman Yankee with students before they solo, infact that's the second stall they do.

If your CFI is not comfortable doing them, I WOULD NOT FLY WITH HIM, he is not competent in the aircraft or as a aviator. If our sub 10-15hrs guys can preform a falling leaf stall in a AA1, there is no excuse why your 250+hr CFI who should have preformed at least a few stalls, can't do a falling leaf in a docile 150/2
 
Zulu, it takes time. Don't count hours. Just enjoy every lesson and try to learn something every time. I consistently beat myself up over stuff that is not perfect. I have come to learn it's counter productive to beat yourself up. There will be good days and bad days. Good luck!
 
Not much more to add after what everyone else has said.

I'm a week from my checkride, and I can't count the number of times I did something that made me feel stupid throughout the course of my training. The most important thing is that if you screw up, learn from it.
 
Like Bill and others, I'm getting ready for my checkride too. I agree that the bragging rights of minimal "hours" is really a misnomer and should be absolutely disregarded...and that's coming from a 38-total-hour student who soloed at 8 hours and had all my logbook "requirements" done shortly after 30 hours. Why do I say it doesn't matter? Because even though I "checked off" those requirements early in the process I find myself struggling with things that other students who have more hours seem to have down. More hours provides more practice time, more time to solidify that "muscle memory", provides more exposure to wind and other factors that a pilot needs to learn to navigate in, more time on the radio, more time in busy patterns or different airspaces, etc.

Am I saying I want to be that 150-hour pilot before I take my checkride? Well, that's not in my plans, but it will take as many hours as it takes for me to be safe and competent. In the end, I'll have the same ticket as other Private Pilots. It's everyone's journey to GET THERE that makes for the colorful stories in the pilot's lounge. :goofy:

Hang in there, and best of luck to you!
 
I'm sure all you guys have heard this before, but the checkride isn't the end of the process. It means the examiner thinks you're safe, which is far short of perfect. I didn't get a good soft field landing in gusty winds down until well after my checkride, when I started flying Cessna retracts and it's a bit more important not to thump it in.
 
When I started my training I also found a great instructor who, much like yours, would only take the controls away from me if something really bad was about to happen. The time of year that I chose to start my training happened to be a windy time of year and there were times when flying a 152 in those turbulent conditions made me ask myself if I really wanted to do this. I also remember one day when it was very turbulent and we were getting knocked around and my hand were sore from the death grip I had on the yoke when my instructor said, I'll take over because I want to demonstrate something to you. When I gave the controls over to him I looked over and saw that he had two fingers on the yoke. I told myself if he can do that then so can I and when he gave to airplane back to me I did just that, two fingers. The experience I gained from flying in those conditions was a real benefit and as the years went by I made sure I got out in conditions like that to keep my skills up. I also remember being scared to death the first time the left wing fell out from under me during a power on stall. Later on in my training my instructor wanted to introduce me to spin training even though it wasn't a requirement for the private. I'm glad he did and I can say that I came to enjoy spins. For me that was a big transition from being scared to death by a power on stall. When I decided to start my training I had the money and the time set aside to do it and I flew every day unless conditions scrubbed our plans. They say the more often you fly the more you retain. After two and half months and 43 hours I took and passed my check ride. I think I chose the right time of year and the right instructor to get the most out of the experience. Best wishes!
 
Oh no, sounds like you're getting way to nervous. I am only on my 8th hour or so, so I can definitely see where you are coming from. Very often the workload is overwhelming, and it doesn't help when the wind is trying to kill you.

I think you just need to try to stay as calm as possible and do everything systematically. What helps me a lot is to try my best to predict situations and know ahead of time how I will react... that way when it happens you already know what to do. For example before I do a stall, and I know there is some wind coming from a direction that may cause a wing to drop.. I already make a plan in my head of how to deal with it.

I basically apply this ideology to every part of my flight (or at least try to). Every situation is a lot less stressful if you know what you are going to do about it ahead of time. It has helped me a ton with radio communications especially. I actually learned the importance of this from my little league baseball days :) When playing second base, I would always play out the most common scenarios in my head for the next potential hit. If I just waited there for something to happen, there is not enough time to think and react. If instead I had a small list of situations in my head such as:

If ball comes to me, throw to first.
If ball goes to outfield, cover 2nd,
etc

I would immediately be able to execute my plan as soon as the situation began. Applying this to my flying has really helped. I think that any problem requiring quick and complex reaction can benefit from forward thinking.

Most of all, just try to relax. Youll get it!
 
Had to cancel today for wind. I'm going out of town for a few days so no flying for a week. So I will have lots of time to study those pesky FARs.
 
Hang in there, Zulu99. None of us like turbulence, and despite what anyone tells you, it can get pretty "exciting" even for very experienced aviators. It is all a matter of degree. Never give up :).
 
somorris said:
Hang in there, Zulu99. None of us like turbulence, and despite what anyone tells you, it can get pretty "exciting" even for very experienced aviators. It is all a matter of degree. Never give up :).
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I kind of like it ;) But then again I wish I could do rolls in the Alarus because I would love to.... I guess its a personal thing.
 
Hang in there. I had the same doubts as you several times during training. It took me close to 40 hours just to stop being nervous. I'm at 175 hours now and have flown 7 different types of planes. I'm now glad that I did most of my training on windy days with crosswinds. The clear weather/light wind days is almost like cheating now. :)
 
I am afraid of pretty much everything, I have now just "manned up" and didn't get over the fear, but told my CFI "look I really just don't feel comfortable... ever... so I need your constant reassurance" and after we had a conversation about it, they were so much better. You come on here and hear these guys who used to fly jet fighters or whatever and they say "oh after a few hours it will get better", and that at least for me... is BS. It /will/ get better but most of my biggest issues took at least 10-12 hours to get past.

If you look at my own similar thread (Hershey Bar thread, this category), you will see you and I are in very similar boats.

Like me, you probably realize your fears are irrational and that if you were really in danger your instructor would save you. However, for whatever reason when we are flying it's hard to get the rational brain to overcome the irrational brain.

The only thing I /do/ know is that fears can all be overcame, and I don't know when mine will be overcome, but I do know that if I keep trying and trying eventually I will just get over it.

The one tip I did learn is when you are most afraid, try smiling. It works, remind yourself "good weather is just pointing an airplane, it's this turbulence or this stall that shows that I am actually in control of this airplane... I am becoming a pilot"
 
OP you will be a fine pilot. You'll get used to the turbulence.

Keep your head out of the cockpit and chant this mantra when landing a Cessna.

...trim,power,rudder ... trim,power,rudder ... trim,power,rudder
 
Zulu99 said:
Thanks everyone! I guess I just felt really disappointed after having such a great day Friday. I came in feeling great with high hopes, and then I couldn't do anything right before we even took off. Logically I KNOW I'm a beginner and some days are going to be tougher than others, but when it actually happened it sure made me feel like crap.
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Zulu, your instructor may want you to fly afternoon flights later in training post-solo ... not because he's mean, but to get you into more turbulent air. I'm in the desert SW and hated getting my slot changed.

During night training he got upset that I was in such a huge slip (winds were supposed to be NIL - 152 just like you) on approach and flare. He took over and wanted to demonstrate the next approach ... winds were high and his landing was UGLY ... I had to laugh. Sometimes I wonder if he did that on purpose as this was his ONLY landing in training that wasn't a greaser.

My prep for PPL flights the week before the test were the worst ever. August, high winds and over 100* at 3pm ... the only thing that went well was the high cross wind landing at the end. PPL was on an overcast cool Saturday morning and my altitudes were DEAD ON not having to deal with heat, wind and thermal activity.
 
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