So, student pilots.. Who are we and where do we stand?

2.1 today. 1.7 under the hood. All partial panel for the first time. Basic attitude flying, compass turns, timed turns, unusual attitudes, ILS and a simulated surveillance approach. Other than my brain not being able to do math (How many degrees is that? How many seconds?) And an occasional "No. The other left." I was (according to the instructor) excellent. He thinks I have z very good feel for it. And I should be done by the end of November. Even given how many gaps there are in my flying schedule.

He had me doing attempted standard rate turns with my eyes closed to get us into unusual attitudes but it didn't work. I listen to the engine and make sure it's not speeding up or slowing down. I may not be turning accurately but I'm not going into a stall or a death spiral.
252 hours TT, 33 hours IMC + Simulated IMC.

John
 
He had me doing attempted standard rate turns with my eyes closed to get us into unusual attitudes but it didn't work. I listen to the engine and make sure it's not speeding up or slowing down

He'll get ya! :fingerwag: :yesnod:
 
Check ride, check. passed

My experience was very similar to this one posted a few weeks ago:
https://www.pilotsofamerica.com/com...-where-do-we-stand.61619/page-47#post-2146063

The worst part was the weather reschedules. So I got to prepare 3 times: try and review general knowledge 3 times, worry about it 3 times, calculate my winds 3 times, etc. 3 times.

Now I'll have to think of a new excuse to fly. Hmm...
 
Mock check ride passed although my steep turns need cleaning up and I need to do better at holding altitude more precisely while distracted. But CFI says I'm ready. Time to talk to a DPE.
 
Mock check ride passed although my steep turns need cleaning up and I need to do better at holding altitude more precisely while distracted. But CFI says I'm ready. Time to talk to a DPE.

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First solo "small" XC successful today. Got scrubed 2x in the past 2 weeks due to weather - has been horrible. Today was perfect, as was the flight and my 6 patterns at the destination airport. Feel like I am really becoming a pilot now. Even dealing with ATC was not a big deal, although they had closed 10/28 at KSYR when I returned, and I've only ever landed on 15 once before. The taxi back to the hanger was interesting, since I don't think I've ever taxied on that side of the airport before.

Instructor now wants me to do 10 hrs of solo work, then I do the "real" solo XC (50mi+). Then it's dual night/solo night, and prep for the checkride. Still hoping to get this done before the dead of winter, but we shall see. Not rushing it.
 
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First solo "small" XC successful today. Got scrubed 2x in the past 2 weeks due to weather - has been horrible. Today was perfect, as was the flight and my 6 patterns at the destination airport. Feel like I am really becoming a pilot now. Even dealing with ATC was not a big deal, although they had closed 10/28 at KSYR when I returned, and I've only ever landed on 15 once before. The taxi back to the hanger was interesting, since I don't think I've ever taxied on that side of the airport before.

Instructor now wants me to do 10 hrs of solo work, then I do the "real" solo XC (50mi+). Then it's dual night/solo night, and prep for the checkride. Still hoping to get this done before the dead of winter, but we shall see. Not rushing it.
Nice! Are you forgetting long XC?
 
Ah, no, didn't forget it - just forgot to mention it (And I'm still working on figuring out my costume changes anyway :) )

Still have both short and long XC solo and all night work. Seems like some of the requirements/details have changed this year anyway - time for me to review again.

Instructor wants me to buy the King Schools "checkride prep" video/course for the new ACS. Anyone used this or the prior version have any comments? Seems to have very good reviews.
 
Agree.

Since I have 2 weeks to kill until my checkride I'm taking another long XC tomorrow for fun. This one is almost 300nm. For once the midwest is supposed to be clear skies and no wind. On my way back I'm stopping at the field my DPE is doing the test out of. Unfamiliar to me so will get some pattern work in and roam the area for places to do ground reference maneuvers and what not.
 
I should be flying today - perfect weather, but I came down with a nasty cold last night and I just don't feel 100%. Not going to fly if I'm not 100% - not at this point anyway. Hoping to get two 2-hour lessons (solo work) in next week. I'd like to do a couple long XC's for my solo work. I have one planned out already (one stop near my parents city, will stop there for lunch with them). Thinking of ideas for #2, maybe head out to the northeast for some Adirondack fall leaf viewing.If I can get enough solo time in to get signed off before the leaves fall...
 
Put almost 4 solo hours on the hobbs today and nearly 300 nm flying. Maybe did 300 with the pattern work at one of my stops. Added 2 new airports to my list of places visited. Also did about 3 hours of ground with my instructor to prep for the oral exam. He officially signed off my logbook to take my checkride. 2 weeks to go.

Oh, and I got to experience what happens when people come looking for you on a non-closed flight plan. Shoulda added more time to my flight plan for that pattern work at the end (and paid attention to what time it was). :sigh:
 
Put almost 4 solo hours on the hobbs today and nearly 300 nm flying. Maybe did 300 with the pattern work at one of my stops. Added 2 new airports to my list of places visited. Also did about 3 hours of ground with my instructor to prep for the oral exam. He officially signed off my logbook to take my checkride. 2 weeks to go.

Oh, and I got to experience what happens when people come looking for you on a non-closed flight plan. Shoulda added more time to my flight plan for that pattern work at the end (and paid attention to what time it was). :sigh:
1800wxbrief also will text message you if you forget, if you enable that service option on their site.
 
This thread has been around for a while. It was here when I started my training, but I never really posted on my progress. So, consider this a catchup!

Since I started this adventure, I've completed my PPL, instrument, tailwheel, commercial and most recently a seaplane rating. Good times! I've learned something new at every step.

Lately, I'm towing gliders occasionally, stepping into aerobatics and having a blast with the occasional cross country.

So, to those at the beginning of the journey, don't get discouraged (we all did at some point). Enjoy your journey and know that this thing you're doing is going to change your life.

Wow. Very cool! I have ambitions like that but am still just a low time student. How long did all of that take?

I'm only in my 8th hour, and for the first time, threw up yesterday at the end of my hour. Wasn't as gross as it could have been, mostly water looks like. Embarrassing. It was my first time doing 45 deg banks, and at some point I was not keeping the nose up enough, the instructor raised here "here is where you need to be" and I felt that g force on me and that was when I think I started getting queasy.

It took a while after though before I got bad, and was worth it because I think I finally get what nose "up" means in that it has no relation to the ground just the situation and AOA, and that I have to have way more back pressure even though it seems wrong, to counter the loss of lift that opposes weight. Maybe I'm not even saying it correctly, but it makes sense to me now. I'm such a beginner at this point, and feel like a 45 deg bank it like another world than a 30, but it really isn't, it's just my perception.

My current instructor does put me through the paces...I keep wanting to get one thing solid, then move onto the next but as as soon as I starting banks, descent, climbs, he just throws them at me, "now turn in a 30 right, 180 and descend to 3200" and as soon as I am almost there, "immidiately start a bank left and climb to 3900" etc.

It's a long way off before I even get my PPL, but I kind of dream of flying seaplanes and getting instrument ratings. First I just need to concentrate on learning to fly though.
So much to take in, and get used to.

that's a lot rock stars here, I'm a student pilot myself, 10 hours of flight time. I'm very frustrate at this time and thinking my CFI is going to tell me quit learning due to my poor performance, poor judgement, the only thing i'm good at is positive attitude. After today's event, my CFI didn't give me any debrief, he signed my logbook, and told me he will cancel my tomorrow's flight training and text me next week to regroup my training. I'm so jealous at you guys doing solo in 13 hours or so, at this point I can see myself Nowhere close to do solo, maybe 25 hours later, but i'm pretty sure I'll get kicked out of the program before that happens.

Just do the best you can. I've got less hours (8), have been getting good marks on my evaluations, but I don't feel like I'm "getting it" quickly enough. I'm nowhere near getting to solo. My instructor seems to me to be both very hard on me in the air, but also giving me encouragement and saying I am doing well. He pushes me to the limit to where when I get home my "tail is dragging" and I feel like I've been through the wringer. He's demanding, and I make mistakes, but I am new to this. Because of circumstances I'm not able to fly every week, and I think this helps me digest as I go over the last flight in my mind, correct things in my thinking and then prepare for the next flights lessons, as well as going through the ground school material. For myself it feels like faster would be better I want to know and gain confidence. It's so critical to do things right I think we student magnify our mistakes (cringe at some of them) and maybe don't see what we have learned.

I'm happy for folks that solo so quickly, I don't want to be one of them though, I want to solo when my CFI tells me I am ready as I trust him to evaluate me correctly. I'm sure I won't feel ready even then. But will trust him.

You can't fix everything, but it does worry me that he he didn't debrief you. Why didn't he?

I wish you good luck.
 
1800wxbrief also will text message you if you forget, if you enable that service option on their site.

For some reason the texts don't work for me. The emails do. And it wasn't a case of forgetting. It was a case of me not putting enough flight time in for doing pattern work at my destination. It was just me being an idiot really. I was still in the air when the plan wanted to be closed.
 
Another twofer update in this post...

First one was about a week and a half ago, my instructor was out of town so it was too be a solo practice day. The winds were gusty with a lot of weather in the area so rather than go to the practice area I decided to just stay in the pattern and do some landing and takeoff practice including the different techniques.

Overall it went well but I was definitely too hard on one and bounced it. Recovered okay and the other landings were all acceptable.

.7 on the Hobbs for a total of 18.8
 
Second lesson happened today, it was the first cross country for me.

I spent a lot of time planning a flight from Peter O Knight (KTPF) to Inverness (KINF) only to lose the nav log. O well, good practice to redo it especially as the weather would be totally different.

Redid the plan last night, essentially KTPF X39 KTPF with staged climbs as I cleared each step of the Bravo shelf.

When we got to the airport we went through the plan with my instructor and he seemed satisfied with it. Preflight went well, taxi to run-up and the Low Volts light and ammeter are indicating a little low ammeter. We couldn't quite tell if it was a real malfunction or not so we decided to just get into the pattern and see what happened but it was very quickly apparent that we weren't charging so landed and found another plane.

The only other one available was a G1000 equipped plane, something that I've never used. It's not bad but just different.

My nav log was pretty much spot on and I didn't find it difficult to follow my path on the chart. I did not cheat with the G1000 so it was pretty cool when the airport was right exactly where it was supposed to be.

Landed, taxi back and head back to KTPF. On the way back we got flight following and between that and the G1000 it was eye opening. The G1000 had some kind of traffic display and we saw a guy our altitude and closing from the left but could not see him for the life of us. Tampa Approach warned us about him and ended up saying he was going to be crossing in front by a fair distance and would be no factor. Never saw him.

Landed and shut down for a successful flight.

1.4 Hobbs for a total of 20.2


It's definitely a lot of fun to go somewhere and can't wait to do that with friends and family in the future.
 
Well one more step closer to getting my ppl. I passed my written on sun with a score of 87. i was happy till i looked up the questions i got wrong. A few of them were a DOOH you D... A.. i knew the right answer and still clicked the wrong one . lol . So now its on to the 3 hrs of prep and the checkride.
 
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Well one more step closer to getting my ppl. I passed my written on sun with a score of 87. i was happy till i looked up the questions i got wrong. A few of them were a DOOH you D... A.. i knew the right answer and still clicked the wrong one . lol . So now its on to teh 3 hrs of prep and the checkride.

Congrats! I was going to say "I hope I do half as well" but that would be a score of 43.5 and I really hope I do better than that, but I'd be very happy with a score of 87! Good job!
 
Second lesson happened today, it was the first cross country for me.

I spent a lot of time planning a flight from Peter O Knight (KTPF) to Inverness (KINF) only to lose the nav log. O well, good practice to redo it especially as the weather would be totally different.

Redid the plan last night, essentially KTPF X39 KTPF with staged climbs as I cleared each step of the Bravo shelf.

When we got to the airport we went through the plan with my instructor and he seemed satisfied with it. Preflight went well, taxi to run-up and the Low Volts light and ammeter are indicating a little low ammeter. We couldn't quite tell if it was a real malfunction or not so we decided to just get into the pattern and see what happened but it was very quickly apparent that we weren't charging so landed and found another plane.

The only other one available was a G1000 equipped plane, something that I've never used. It's not bad but just different.

My nav log was pretty much spot on and I didn't find it difficult to follow my path on the chart. I did not cheat with the G1000 so it was pretty cool when the airport was right exactly where it was supposed to be.

Landed, taxi back and head back to KTPF. On the way back we got flight following and between that and the G1000 it was eye opening. The G1000 had some kind of traffic display and we saw a guy our altitude and closing from the left but could not see him for the life of us. Tampa Approach warned us about him and ended up saying he was going to be crossing in front by a fair distance and would be no factor. Never saw him.

Landed and shut down for a successful flight.

1.4 Hobbs for a total of 20.2


It's definitely a lot of fun to go somewhere and can't wait to do that with friends and family in the future.
I'm pretty surprised your instructor didn't know this, but you can turn the alternator off at the master switch to see if it's dead or not. If it doesn't make a difference in the ammeter, it's gone. Best done during run up. Alternators die all the time.

TIS makes false alarms all the time, and it's easy to misread a target as being closer than it really is. It creates a hazard when both occupants go heads down to fiddle with it. TIS is not a radar, and it will just quit when you leave its service area.
 
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I'm pretty surprised your instructor didn't know this, but you can turn the alternator off at the master switch to see if it's dead or not. If it doesn't make a difference in the ammeter, it's gone. Best done during run up. Alternators die all the time.

TIS makes false alarms all the time, and it's easy to misread a target as being closer than it really is. It creates a hazard when both occupants go heads down to fiddle with it. TIS is not a radar, and it will just quit when you leave its service area.

We definitely tried the Alt switch during the run up after seeing that it was indicating low. It was just around 0 amps. Hard to tell whether it was positive or negative. It was just hard to tell with the vibrations causing the needle to vibrate if it made any difference or not.

TIS, if that's what it was (I'm not familiar), was dead on accurate with the report from the controller. My point was more that even with it and the info from the controller we still could not see the traffic. More of an observation than anything else. We're in a busy airspace and I keep eyes out but it doesn't mean you can see everything.
 
I'm a long time student pilot. I'm completely ready for my check ride but feel like I am not prepared for the oral. Hopefully soon I will just suck it up and get it over with


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I'm a long time student pilot. I'm completely ready for my check ride but feel like I am not prepared for the oral. Hopefully soon I will just suck it up and get it over with


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First post? Welcome to POA.

What are you waiting for? I was apprehensive as most are, but I found my oral much less taxing than the written. I suspect that the DPE is typically relying on the written to ensure that you have a base knowledge so then he can just confirm vs. retest you. I was much more prepared for my written than I was my oral I think. Also, lots of DPE's do not charge for retest so, worst case? You get part of it done, go study up and come back. I'll quote an email from one of the DPE's that I was shopping: "cash only; no additional fee for retakes for any reason."

Get it done!
 
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I'm a long time student pilot. I'm completely ready for my check ride but feel like I am not prepared for the oral. Hopefully soon I will just suck it up and get it over with


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
First post? Welcome to POA.

What are you waiting for? I was apprehensive as most are, but I found my oral much less taxing than the written. I suspect that the DPE is typically relying on the written to ensure that you have a base knowledge so then he can just confirm vs. retest you. I was much more prepared for my written than I was my oral I think. Also, lots of DPE's do not charge for retest so, worst case? You get part of it done, go study up and come back. I'll quote an email from one of the DPE's that I was shopping: "cash only; no additional fee for retakes for any reason."

Get it done!

I have to second what excnsurfer said, quit waiting. I just had my check ride Saturday and I was nervous about the oral. I knew I could fly the plane, but the thought of sitting there for hours getting asked questions had me nervous. What if I didn't know some obscure regulation? I know that there are all different kinds of DPE's out there and some are more difficult than others. I was fortunate that the DPE I got was a great guy that saw it as the "Practical Test" and how I apply what I know to real world situations, not to see if I could just regurgitate everything I had been putting into my mind. There were a lot of different scenarios he would throw at me and I would work my way through them, what I would do, what do the regulations say about them, etc... I got most of it right, and stumbled around on some of it. He's been flying for over 30 years and knows that this is the "license to learn" so didn't expect perfection. We knew we had time to kill during the oral because the haze wasn't going to clear up until after noon-1pm so the oral went longer than it probably would have otherwise. Turned out to be 4 hours, of which maybe 30 minutes was going over paperwork, maybe 90 minutes of me actually answering questions, and a couple hours of him telling me stories of things he has seen/done flying and me telling stories about my flight training. It really felt a lot more like a discussion than an exam and I actually enjoyed it.

If you don't have copies yet of the ACS and FAR/AIM then get copies. Use tabs and a highlighter to mark up the FAR/AIM. Go through the ACS page by page and make notes about which regulations apply as well as things to help you remember stuff. The oral portion is open book and you can use both of those during it. You are probably more ready for it than you think you are.
 
2.2 dual today, visited two additional airports within my 25 mile sign-off and now have sign-off to fly solo to any of the three. Practiced short field landing a few times, and spent some time just rehashing the basic maneuvers (I haven't practiced much solo and want to be sure I'm practicing correctly). Watching the King ACS check ride videos and refreshing all my test knowledge. Still have a few hours of dual (night) left and then the big XC. Not rushing things, enjoying the ride.
 
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