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

My CFI sent me a text yesterday after I had cancelled training due to crosswinds.... He sent me a text saying...”Let’s see how you do in these crosswinds”.... Of course I said I am on my way. It got sporty in a sometimes 15-18 mph crosswind on a 24th wide RWY. Did 9 landings, 12 approaches to final... Obviously 3 go arounds.
 
Well, I'm feeling like crap: I have 19 hours (this includes 3.2 hours of dual XC) and though my landings are general solid I am not consistent. It is driving me nuts and has me very frustrated.
 
Trogdor said:
Well, I'm feeling like crap: I have 19 hours (this includes 3.2 hours of dual XC) and though my landings are general solid I am not consistent. It is driving me nuts and has me very frustrated.
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First of all, I totally understand that feeling, but it's also not helpful or accurate! I had 33 hours before solo. It's mighty frustrating! Don't let it get to you, though, except as a motivator to keep working at it. It is worth it! :)

Do you know what is going wrong with each and every landing that isn't "working"? I would land, takeoff, and analyze on downwind - I was 5kts fast, or applied inadequate xwind correction, or was too high on final, or reduced power too soon, or flared too soon. You start seeing trends, and that can help a lot. Mine was rounding out/flaring. It helps to have a cushion and be able to see over the nose, but I stiill instinctively want to flare too soon. Since I know that tendancy is there, I can make sure I'm not doing it. It helps me, at least. Forget, if you can, about trying to solo, and focus on landing the plane as well as you can. You'll get there!
 
Passed my written exam yesterday and feel relieved. I scored well, and I’m glad because I heard (can’t remember where) that the DPE will “test” me on the area of questions I got wrong. Either way, I am one step closer to my dream
 
Hi. This is my first post as I just stumbled across this website.

I am starting my ground school next week (first week of October) and plan on starting my flight training a few weeks after that. So, based on a cursory review of other posts on this thread, I would say I am probably the most newbie of all (although at the age of 55, I don't feel new on any level). My goal is only to stick with PPL for now, and perhaps get into instrument rating sometime down the road. I have no interest of commercial or other levels of pilotage.
 
IRA written test scheduled for the 14th of October. Could only find two spots open within 100 mile radius of Kansas City over the next 2 weeks o_O
 
I got a bunch of solo flight done last night and this morning - I've now got 5.2 hours of solo time! When I got to the airport this morning, I looked at the clock, and thought, "Huh. I was just here 11 hours ago. I should have just camped out in the FBO!" :D I did a bunch of landings on the grass runway last night, since I didn't feel like dealing with a crosswind. That was a lot of fun, and soft field was something I needed to work on, anyway. This morning, I wanted to have a crosswind, so I used the pavement. The crosswind was pretty small - 70-80* off runway heading, but only 4-6kts, so that was nice. I had some very nice landings, and even a super sweet "wheelie" landing this morning when the crosswind was strongest. That was absolutely awesome!

Now, I just need to get my xc solos done - I was going to do some of that today, but the afternoon looked kind of nasty for a first solo xc - forecasted rain and low, dropping ceilings. I didn't want to take the risk, so I am going to try again tomorrow afternoon. Besides solo, I just have night xc and checkride prep left!
 
Finally getting to the point where landings consistently "squeak" instead of *thud*. The airplane breaks through the last 6 inches and rolls onto the runway when I tell it to do so, instead of me flying it down to the last three feet and riding it in. Minor achievement (and under benign conditions), but man alive it feels great when things my CFI has been barking begin to click.
 
Well, y’all might wanna stay outta the skies for a while. After having to postpone my Checkride twice due to smoke from the CA wildfires, I took my ride today. And passed! Kinda surreal.
 
SC777 said:
I took my ride today. And passed! Kinda surreal.
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Congratulations!!

5.5 hours either simulated or actual remaining to meet the 40 hour requirement for IR. Written passed with a perfect score. Plenty of PIC XC. Already met the dual requirements. Studying the ASA IR oral exam guide non-stop. Watching videos of IR oral/flight checkrides.... I can't wait to get this rating. Much harder than the private, but already more satisfying...
 
Been working on solos and passed my private pilot airplane written on first try yesterday! Just have XC, some night landings, and ride left. Already started studying for the ride. Shouldn't be too long!
 
Deelee said:
Congratulations!!

5.5 hours either simulated or actual remaining to meet the 40 hour requirement for IR. Written passed with a perfect score. Plenty of PIC XC. Already met the dual requirements. Studying the ASA IR oral exam guide non-stop. Watching videos of IR oral/flight checkrides.... I can't wait to get this rating. Much harder than the private, but already more satisfying...
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There's far more information to learn for IFR v VFR. For me the written required a lot more studding than the PPL but the check ride was a lot easier.. You already know what check rides are all about, and he won't ask you to do anything you haven't done before. I felt a lot more comfortable doing my IFR check ride. You got this!
 
AlphaMike said:
There's far more information to learn for IFR v VFR.
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It might be better said that there’s a lot less tested information. If one knew all of the things to know about VFR flight, it’d be easily as big a pile of knowledge, but we tend to test only to a limited point where most folks won’t kill themselves. :)

Thus, the oft repeated “license to learn”.

The mass memorization for IFR is making sure someone knows how to operate in the “system” on top of the stuff that’ll harm ya, so the system rules aren’t tested more heavily. Along with a bunch more systems knowledge of how the systems work and/or fail.

The interesting part about the instrument written will be how systems will continue to disappear as “black boxes” do all the work. Many of them today we have no idea how they actually work, and the only knowledge needed is whether their self-tests and built in self-monitoring pass. Don’t need to know about the mechanical bits as the black boxes replace those.

Probably the highest neglected topic for both is real world weather. Aviation weather testing is only taken to a point of understanding hazard but experience and more training can help with personal ability to better predict what’s likely coming. We mitigate this risk caused by a giant hole in our weather knowledge with concepts like “personal minimums” or more formal limits in commercial ops until someone has flown with a more experienced pilot in real weather.

Very interesting to me honestly how the testing is laid out for all of it. It becomes a way to deep dive into the heads of risk management decision makers.
 
73 hours into this adventure over the last 10+year. But 27 hours this year. Made it through 2 milestones on this run. 1. I passed my written (1st try) and 2. have completed my first XC. This is the first time I really feel like I can “get’r done“.
 
David Seiler said:
73 hours into this adventure over the last 10+year. But 27 hours this year. Made it through 2 milestones on this run. 1. I passed my written (1st try) and 2. have completed my first XC. This is the first time I really feel like I can “get’r done“.
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Sounds like you are close to the finish line! You must be getting close if your instructor thinks your skills are to the point where he/she signs you off to fly from point A to point B solo.

For me... 4 hours simulated or actual instrument remaining until requirements for IR checkride are met... Yeah, it's a countdown at this point...
 
Just had the forward slip to landing click for me. That's such a cool trick!

Current plan is to pound the pattern on Friday and, assuming all goes well, solo on Saturday. Getting nervous but excited! Going to dinner with my family for my father's birthday Saturday evening - if all goes to plan, I'm going to be gnawing my tongue to keep from stealing the show!
 
First solo today! After a few laps in the pattern at LZU with my CFI, he hopped out. I was a little nervous at first but I settled into my routine when getting my taxi clearance. However, I had to hold about 15 minutes while waiting on 8 inbound landings; plenty of time for my imagination to run wild with everything that could go wrong! The nerves faded when I was rotating (although it did occur to me shortly after rotation that I was all done with the “voluntary” aspects of the solo now that a landing was compulsory!), and were completely gone once the wheels squeaked gently onto the runway. The next lap was just incredibly fun with the self-doubt long gone. Some of my best landings ever. I picked up my CFI and was beaming all the way back home to PDK.

This has to be one of the top 5 moment of my life. I’ve read and heard that the XC solo is that much more rewarding and I can’t wait to get there. But for now, I’m enjoying the day. And what a day it was.
 
Congrats!!

Just noticed your location - from where in NOVA do you fly?
 
Deelee said:
Congrats!!

Just noticed your location - from where in NOVA do you fly?
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Thanks! Primary training was from KJYO. However, will be renting from KHEF as well now that I can do that! :)

Im always up for group flyouts for $300 burgers and whatnot if youre from the area too.
f.
 
Hello everyone. This is my first post since I joined this forum and I figure this topic is as good a place as any to add to the conversation.
I'm a student pilot with 49 1/2 hours of logged flight time. The only thing I have left to do is the review and about 40 minutes under the hood.
My biggest struggle right now is mastering the written test and preparing for the oral. The practical flying is easy for me, especially the ATC communications.
Any suggestions for passing the oral exam? I watch a lot of YouTube videos discussing the testing. It seems to help some but I could use any tips.
 
Bulldog1653 said:
Hello everyone. This is my first post since I joined this forum and I figure this topic is as good a place as any to add to the conversation.
I'm a student pilot with 49 1/2 hours of logged flight time. The only thing I have left to do is the review and about 40 minutes under the hood.
My biggest struggle right now is mastering the written test and preparing for the oral. The practical flying is easy for me, especially the ATC communications.
Any suggestions for passing the oral exam? I watch a lot of YouTube videos discussing the testing. It seems to help some but I could use any tips.
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Hey there!

I just picked up a book called the "Private Pilot Oral Exam Guide" from ASA. Seems to be pretty thorough in possible scenarios or questions a DPE could ask. My CFI recommended that I pick it up and he began going through and telling me different questions he "knew" where going to be asked based off of the DPEs in my area. You can not take this book into your Oral examination however.

You can have the PHAK, FAR/AIM, and AFH on your person during your oral exam. If you can, I would try to get with your own CFI and see if they could help you with pointing out/highlighting those books. Honestly, reading them ALSO does wonders.... especially the specific sections in the FAR/AIM that are labeled under the "Private Pilot" sections...
 
Howdy. Please allow myself to introduce....myself... Austin Powers I am not. My name, however, is Aaron, and after 23 years in military aviation maintenance and being on the ground looking up, I am finally pushing forward and getting my tickets to be up looking down. I currently have around 24 hours and probably that many or more landings...some were even acceptable!

I am flying out of Glendale KGEU and that will most likely be my base. I do intend on buying an aircraft soon after I get my PPL cert, and still trying to figure out the best way to go for that. I'd be happy to chat about that if anyone wants to know more, and would love to hear opinions and ideas of others concerning first aircraft experience.

Thanks to everyone for sharing your experience and knowledge. It helps many more than you know.
 
Bulldog1653 said:
My biggest struggle right now is mastering the written test and preparing for the oral. The practical flying is easy for me, especially the ATC communications.
Any suggestions for passing the oral exam? I watch a lot of YouTube videos discussing the testing. It seems to help some but I could use any tips.
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Some will say split those. Written, there’s cramming into your brain options like Sheppard. However it will leave you somewhat unprepared for the oral. But it will get the written out of the way. Some don’t like it because it’s just answer memorization and not concept understanding, and I can see that opinion also.

As far as the oral, the ASA books mentioned are a decent start. They’ll get you thinking about typical questions. Also remember the order of the day from FAA to DPEs is scenarios. And scenario based questions. Thus, a common practice today is simply to tell you to plan an XC flight and then just start conversationally asking you questions about the entire flight from planning, aircraft performance, why you chose the amount of fuel in board, airspace along the way, weather, to whatever. It’s pretty easy for an examiner to tell if you’ve done your homework simply by talking through “what will you do in real life?”

If you’re confident in your planning and such and know what everything on the chart from here to there is... you’ll do fine. There may be flat memorization stuff tossed in there you’ll have to know. “Hey, I see you avoided that Class Bravo airspace but there’s weather right here, and we can get around it by flying through... what’s required to go in there and how do we do it?” The scenario will be “changed” as you go along to figure out both if you can make real world adjustments as well as if you know the regs and such.

And of course some examiners have pet questions designed to see if you’ll simply answer the question or dig yourself into a hole. A favorite around here is airworthiness. The candidate who rattles off only the FAR that lists standard VFR and IFR equipment will be asked, “Anything else?” If they look super confused perhaps a hint... “What about the AFM?” The examiner knows other things control airworthiness besides that list. The applicant should too. :)

No oral can possibly cover everything. But a solid understand of the regs for the flight, good planning, and chart reading... will go a heck of a long way. Additionally knowing the regs at least well enough to know where to look something up (frankly many people find this difficult under pressure — relax — just look it up like you forgot it at home and you already have the certificate!) that can be fine too. General rule of thumb there: If it’s something you must know not to break a reg in the air, memorize it or at least the main jist of it and know where you look up the oddball stuff. Anything you normally would look up on the ground anyway, can be looked up for a perfect and proper answer in an oral. But this assumes you at least know the answer is there in the book and where you find it. What section, his not to be fumbling around in the book. Some folks like to use colored tabs and such. I’m not a fan. The book has a table of contents and subject reference by word in the back. I just pick it up and use the built in tools in it. :) But some say the tabs make it look like you sturdied. Ha. Every DPE knows how to ask questions to see if you studied. Some colored tabs aren’t fooling them. :)

And hey. Some like electronic FAR/AIMs too. That’s fine. I’m faster with a book. Some of the apps have nice bookmark and search features and some people zoom zoom with their electronic tools. I bring both. But I usually end up referencing the dead-tree version. I did find the search function useful on something very left-field on one checkride so... your mileage may vary. The electronic search let me scan the results because I knew the answer was there bur couldn’t remember the section it was in. So... it was faster that day.

All in all, also trust your instructor. They have to sign off that they prepped you for the ride and the oral is included in that. They’ll be tossing quizzes at you orally as you go along and many will do a complete mock oral before the checkride to help you find any gaps in your study. You’ll get feedback on what was weak if you don’t already immediately “get it” during those.

Usually when we hit a topic I had forgotten to bone up on, it was a head slapper... “Oh right! I need to go re-read all of that. Let me make a note here to do that at home. It’s this section of the regs... here it is... riiiight... got it.”

Also read the pinned post titled Capt Levy’s Checkride tips here, or something like that. It has good advice on stuff like the aforementioned “Just answer the question. Don’t get hung up wondering why they’re asking it and get nervous or add to it.” (Paraphrased...)

Finally there’s theory. Almost all examiners are going to ask you how aircraft fly. What flight controls do and why. And some aircraft systems questions. Describe this airplane’s electrical system. What do you do in X scenario (electrical system smoke for example, or the more vague “smoke in the cockpit”) or a different system and emergencies they can typically have.

Don’t overthink the oral. It’s a conversation with a very experienced pilot seeing if you understand the stuff you’ll need to know to plan, prep yourself and the aircraft, and fly, a flight. Then you go out to the airplane and demonstrate those XC skills and emergency procedures and such. Plus all the required maneuvers too.

It all builds off of each other. Good DPEs have a plan that’ll lead from basics right up to “okay you get all this stuff, let’s go see how you fly”. No real surprises by most of them. They’re just making sure you know what you need to know I be safe, efficient, and legal.

I barely remember my private ride other than how fast it all seemed to go and a couple of sketchy landings I wasn’t happy with and I said so. Examiner gave me the evil eye and agreed. Wasn’t out of spec but wasn’t pretty either.

Also a story about Morse code but that’s not a thing y’all will be dealing with. (He didn’t believe I could tune and identify without counting dots and dashes on the chart. Ha. I could. (I had to prove it. I don’t think he was expecting a 19 year old to solidly copy Morse. Haha.)

As far as regs go, I found them much more interesting over the years when I sat down to study them with a “when will I need to know this part in real life?” sort of attitude, instead of trying to read them like a story or just a pile of regs. Like airworthiness. When do I care? Preflight! Is that transponder check up to date? Where is that kept for this airplane? 100 hour and or annual? Pitot-Static? Etc. If I took the reg and related it to my next airport trip and asked “hey where’s the aircraft logs, can you show me where the sign off for X is?” Much more useful and interesting than dry reading of regs.

Have fun. Hope that helps.
 
Second solo today. I feel like I can't appropriately describe to anyone that hasn't done it just how. much. fun. flying laps in the pattern by yourself can be. The guano-eating grin just won't go away today.
 
It's been a rough couple of weeks for flying, but I got a little flying in tonight! Between winds and snow, this is only the second time I've been flying in the last 27 days, and I hope I've used up my weather cancellations for a while. It was pretty hazy and without much of a moon, it was still very dark. It was definitely easier this time with a lot less task saturation. I actually really enjoyed the flying instead of being stressed out and task saturated, which was fun. :) It was getting hazier very quickly, though, so I didn't even get an hour. I was going to round out and finish up all ten night landings tonight, but ended up doing three, to bring the total to nine...I turned final, and all of a sudden, visibility went way down. I don't know if it was super low clouds/fog or smoke or what, but it was white stuff that dimmed the runway lights considerably! It's already a very dark approach and with the cloud/fog/smoke, the ground didn't really exist. Suffice it to say that was not one of my prettiest or softest landings. I thought I was doing okay with judging round-out height, but not that one! :p I decided that I didn't need to do one more landing and called it a night, lest the cloud/fog/smoke was still there on final. It was a short but fun flight.

I still haven't been able to take my night cross-country, but I've rescheduled it seven times! Winds, snow, and random unforecasted overcasts at 1000'...all summer, the nights were beautiful, and now when I want to fly at night, it's the days that are beautiful! Some day, I'll get that night flight in. Tomorrow, I'm hoping to head down to the airport in the afternoon and knock out the last half hour of solo cross country I need. I haven't flown during the day since October 24th, so I'm excited about that! Did I mention it's been a struggle to get good flying weather?! LOL My instructor and I are going to start on the checkride review and prep stuff and just try to get a decent night some time before the checkride. I'm ready to get this wrapped up and so is my instructor. It's been *so* hard to try to get these last couple things done!
 
Do your cross-country to Arizona - sunny, low winds...
SkyChaser said:
It's been a rough couple of weeks for flying, but I got a little flying in tonight! Between winds and snow, this is only the second time I've been flying in the last 27 days, and I hope I've used up my weather cancellations for a while. It was pretty hazy and without much of a moon, it was still very dark. It was definitely easier this time with a lot less task saturation. I actually really enjoyed the flying instead of being stressed out and task saturated, which was fun. :) It was getting hazier very quickly, though, so I didn't even get an hour. I was going to round out and finish up all ten night landings tonight, but ended up doing three, to bring the total to nine...I turned final, and all of a sudden, visibility went way down. I don't know if it was super low clouds/fog or smoke or what, but it was white stuff that dimmed the runway lights considerably! It's already a very dark approach and with the cloud/fog/smoke, the ground didn't really exist. Suffice it to say that was not one of my prettiest or softest landings. I thought I was doing okay with judging round-out height, but not that one! :p I decided that I didn't need to do one more landing and called it a night, lest the cloud/fog/smoke was still there on final. It was a short but fun flight.

I still haven't been able to take my night cross-country, but I've rescheduled it seven times! Winds, snow, and random unforecasted overcasts at 1000'...all summer, the nights were beautiful, and now when I want to fly at night, it's the days that are beautiful! Some day, I'll get that night flight in. Tomorrow, I'm hoping to head down to the airport in the afternoon and knock out the last half hour of solo cross country I need. I haven't flown during the day since October 24th, so I'm excited about that! Did I mention it's been a struggle to get good flying weather?! LOL My instructor and I are going to start on the checkride review and prep stuff and just try to get a decent night some time before the checkride. I'm ready to get this wrapped up and so is my instructor. It's been *so* hard to try to get these last couple things done!
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