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

Timmer said:
Hello!

This can be a frustrating time with the marine layer, too. I'm hoping June Gloom gets out of here after this week is over, although we did have a nice June overall.

It is still amazing to me how close Gillespie is to Lindbergh and CRQ and so forth when you're in the air. For such a decently sized county, you can pretty much see it all from the air. Heck, Julian is just "right over there" and the same with Dana Point.

Good luck and have fun with your flying lessons -- it's such a wonderful place to fly! MYF is great practice, too: it can get pretty hectic at times. Luckily the controllers are generally very friendly and helpful :)
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One of the great views in aviation is coming back to SoCal from Vegas and crossing the ridge N of Big Bear at night and going from the dark to the lights. Really cool is when a thin marine layer is blanketing over the basin and you come across into this billowing glow of light from below.
 
Henning said:
One of the great views in aviation is coming back to SoCal from Vegas and crossing the ridge N of Big Bear at night and going from the dark to the lights. Really cool is when a thin marine layer is blanketing over the basin and you come across into this billowing glow of light from below.
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Sounds great. I hope to see that some time. I'm so excited to be at the beginning of my adventures :)
 
Henning said:
The views are the greatest selling point of GA to me, getting places is number 2.
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Definitely. I just did my first off-shore transition at 400' along Mission Bay down to Point Loma and around San Diego Bay the other weekend:


Flights like this just are something I cannot put into words how grateful I feel to be able to partake.
 
Timmer said:
Definitely. I just did my first off-shore transition at 400' along Mission Bay down to Point Loma and around San Diego Bay the other weekend:


Flights like this just are something I cannot put into words how grateful I feel to be able to partake.
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You can pretty much transition all the way up the coast to Long Beach at that altitude then climb some and head over to Catalina. You can also take a quick flight up to Big Bear for an afternoon of skiing and be home before dark.
 
Just finished my first night flight. 8 takeoffs and landings, of 10 completed. The last set will be done on the night cross country. Fantastic night to be up. Calm winds, very clear sky, and fireworks all around us. After a very hard first landing, when I judged the ground wrong at night, my other 7 were some of my best landings ever. The CFI even made me do two landing with an "out" landing light, and for the final decided it was time for an engine out night landing. All good fun.
 
Just did that same CRQ>RNM>MYF>CRQ flight again early this morning and things went much better this time. Still made a few minor mistakes, but at least this time they were little ones that weren't too terrible. Also managed to make 3 nice landings in a row all at different airports without any CFI intervention, which made me feel pretty good! Gonna try to see if we can get in another flight this afternoon, then do my first night flight tonight!
 
StinkBug said:
Just did that same CRQ>RNM>MYF>CRQ flight again early this morning and things went much better this time. Still made a few minor mistakes, but at least this time they were little ones that weren't too terrible. Also managed to make 3 nice landings in a row all at different airports without any CFI intervention, which made me feel pretty good! Gonna try to see if we can get in another flight this afternoon, then do my first night flight tonight!
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Fantastic. today was absolutely beautiful for flying, with the exception of some annoying clouds right at 1,000' off of La Jolla through Carlsbad. I took a friend up around San Diego Bay and he just posted this great picture:
 

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Half way done with the ASA CFI written test prep book. I plan to take the FOI first then CFI
 
Firefighter_324 said:
Going on my first solo cross country this afternoon.. Right at 200NM total.. I'm stoked!!
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This was when I actually started to feel like a pilot. I don't remember my first solo around the pattern as much as I remember my first solo XC. Enjoy the ride!

eman1200 said:
nice! remember to use that empty right seat to help organize ur stuff. bring water. have fun!!!
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Just don't drink too much of that water.
 
Been doing a lot of pattern work and take offs and landings lately, but also did my first cross country last week from KCRQ to KTOA. That was pretty fun and went well overall. The last couple flights have been working on soft field take offs, and short field landings. The take-offs really felt weird for me and I was having a lot of trouble, first with keeping the nose down and staying in ground effect, and then with not actually getting off the ground before wanting to push the nose down. One extreme then the other. Today I finally got the feel for it though and things really pulled together. Today was the first day for the short field landings and I actually did really well. Well enough that my instructor told me that they were better than my normal landings, and whatever I was doing different I should apply the rest of the time. I think the main thing was just paying more attention to air speed, and power level, or it could just be more practice with landings in general. Either way I'm feeling pretty good, and it sounds like I'll be getting to solo here pretty soon.
 
StinkBug said:
Been doing a lot of pattern work and take offs and landings lately, but also did my first cross country last week from KCRQ to KTOA. That was pretty fun and went well overall. The last couple flights have been working on soft field take offs, and short field landings. The take-offs really felt weird for me and I was having a lot of trouble, first with keeping the nose down and staying in ground effect, and then with not actually getting off the ground before wanting to push the nose down. One extreme then the other. Today I finally got the feel for it though and things really pulled together. Today was the first day for the short field landings and I actually did really well. Well enough that my instructor told me that they were better than my normal landings, and whatever I was doing different I should apply the rest of the time. I think the main thing was just paying more attention to air speed, and power level, or it could just be more practice with landings in general. Either way I'm feeling pretty good, and it sounds like I'll be getting to solo here pretty soon.
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Great stuff. I found Soft Field take-offs to be strange at first, too. I absolutely love them now. Which reminds me, I need to practice some soon -- I've been doing mostly local scenic flights with friends lately so haven't done any of the unusual flight ops practice.

How was the flight to KTOA?
 
Timmer said:
Fantastic. today was absolutely beautiful for flying, with the exception of some annoying clouds right at 1,000' off of La Jolla through Carlsbad. I took a friend up around San Diego Bay and he just posted this great picture:
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Nice, the old Intercontinental Marina.
 
4/24 - solo'd with ~22 hours

I'm currently working on my xcountry flights hoping to get my PPL by end of year!
 
Timmer said:
Great stuff. I found Soft Field take-offs to be strange at first, too. I absolutely love them now. Which reminds me, I need to practice some soon -- I've been doing mostly local scenic flights with friends lately so haven't done any of the unusual flight ops practice.

How was the flight to KTOA?
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Yeah the whole nose down when you're trying to take off thing kinda twisted my brain around for a bit. It is a pretty cool feeling though.

The flight to KTOA was fun, and not too terribly stressful. We got flight following both directions which made things pretty simple and easy. Got to see several commercial Jets departing KSNA which was kind of neat. Thankfully not too much trouble getting through that traffic though. Only real mistake was starting my descent to TOA a bit late, which made me really high on final. I got the plane down ok, but pretty far down the runway. After landing my instructor told me that though I had plenty of room, I should have done a go-around. I was still trying to switch from listening to direction, to being PIC and making the decisions, and he hadn't told me to go around, so I landed. Lesson learned. On the up side there was a shifting cross wind so while we were doing the after landing checklist tower asked if we would like to take off using 11 instead of 29 (I cant remember if it was R or L) which gave us a straight out departure. Made things really simple there.

On the way back south he showed me how to use the planes auto-pilot which just totally feels like cheating. I did however get the descent done properly and made an acceptable landing. Not my best, but nothing too awful.
 
Starting to get annoyed, I was supposed to have my checkride on the 12th, but my DPE had to get recertified and the local FSDO is taking their time on the paperwork so it wasn't ready and therefore, no checkride.
Talked to my instructor and he's saying the St. Louis FSDO is short 3 instructors right now due to paperwork issues (I know one is medical and then the recertification, don't know about the 3rd). And supposedly the neighboring FSDO's are short as well to the point they're requesting St. Louis loan examiners to cover.
 
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Hope your issues clear...if not, get another DPE.
 
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CTLSi said:
Paperwork? Your school or CFI doesn't use ICAM? All you need is your 8710 filled out with the hours from your logbook and a DPE. Your med, pictureID and the 8710 are all the paperwork you need.
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The DPE's recertification paperwork is what was delayed. So he wasn't legal to give checkrides.
 
CTLSi said:
Paperwork? Your school or CFI doesn't use ICAM? All you need is your 8710 filled out with the hours from your logbook and a DPE. Your med, pictureID and the 8710 are all the paperwork you need.
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Huh? Did you read his post? Not his paperwork.
 
Did another flight in the pattern yesterday morning practicing short and soft take offs and landings. The soft field take offs took a few attempts, but I finally got the feel for them. My first landing of the day didn't go so well, but after that everything kinda fell into place there too. We did a bunch of short field landings, and then on downwind he talked me through how do do a soft field and I nailed it on the first try! That was my best landing of the day in fact.

All we have left to do now is a couple cross country flights we've been trying to get done, and the night flights. The weather hasn't been cooperating for the XC's and it seems nothing has cooperated for the night flights. First the weather, then the starter in the plane went out, then last night they closed the runway on us! I'm sure it'll come together soon though.
 
StinkBug said:
The weather hasn't been cooperating for the XC's and it seems nothing has cooperated for the night flights. First the weather, then the starter in the plane went out, then last night they closed the runway on us! I'm sure it'll come together soon though.
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Great practice for post-certificate. :)
 
Student pilot. 3.9 hours. Love studying and flying my sim. Could probably pass the written tomorrow. Went up with my CFI(who's amazing). He did a power-on stall a month and a half ago. I haven't been back in a plane since. :hairraise::yikes:
 
brianwrites said:
Student pilot. 3.9 hours. Love studying and flying my sim. Could probably pass the written tomorrow. Went up with my CFI(who's amazing). He did a power-on stall a month and a half ago. I haven't been back in a plane since. :hairraise::yikes:
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Hello,

Just due to timing or did the stalls scare you?
 
Student Pilot here. 11.5 hours. Flying out of KSRQ. I've always wanted to do this, finally got the nerve to go on a Discovery Flight in April. Hopefully soloing here in the next 2-3 hours.
 
Well I survived my 5+ hours of solo cross country.. My last flight was over 205nm total and flew into class C airspace and landed at an International Airport. That was awesome ! (Flight Following made it very simple !) Then the next airport was filled with Skydivers. That was a great experience as well.. (Communicating with the pilot of the other aircraft dropping the skydivers)


I am at 49 hours now and have my written scheduled and am currently planning a few hours to fly with my CFI to fine tune my maneuvers for the check ride ! I really wish I would have gotten the written test out of the way along time ago now ! :mad2:
 
33 years old. Started flying 3 months ago for hobby purposes. 25hrs so far, solo'd @ 15hrs.
I've always loved aviation but never seemed to have the cash to take it seriously until lately.
 
StinkBug said:
Yeah the whole nose down when you're trying to take off thing kinda twisted my brain around for a bit. It is a pretty cool feeling though.
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Do you understand why you want to level the nose out now though? You can get the plane off the ground in ground effect well below Vx or Vy, not to mention VSo. You level out a couple feet off the ground and you don't have wing tip vortices dragging on you so you can accelerate to Vy easier, plus you don't settle back to the ground instead of accelerating. Once you hit Vy (or Vx for short and soft) climb out.
 
I posted this elsewhere, but headed to Class C John Wayne from my uncontrolled field for a quick XC through the LA airspace on Monday.

Will be a challenge for this rusty reentry pilot.

Will need to talk to lots of people. Will need to be on my game.

Looking forward to it!
 
Henning said:
Do you understand why you want to level the nose out now though?
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Oh I know exactly why, and what's going on. It's the half of my brain that says "this feels wrong" fighting the other side that says "this is how it works". The proper side has started winning that fight recently though. :)
 
I'm at kcrq also. I did all of my work up to the check ride nearly 20 years ago....going back to wrap it up finally.


Sent from my iPhone
 
Where are you flying from Matt? I'm usually in 366CA, over at Plus One.

Just got back from doing my first night flight. Practicing takeoffs and landings. Definitely very different, and a lot harder to see the field from the traffic pattern than I expected. My landings were pretty good though, slightly off center on a couple but only a few feet. Better than I expected given the very different visual cues. Unfortunately we only got to do 4 though. We were supposed to do 8, then try to get in our night cross country to KONT, but after 4 we did a quick run up to check the mags and it really stumbled on the left one. Pretty sure we just fouled a plug, but that ended our flying for the evening. It was really nice being there late when there's not much of any traffic though. I'm so used to how busy it is during the day that it was really relaxing just having the tower tell me "yeah you're cleared to taxi, you dont need to bother asking every time, we dont have anyone else". They even let us do a 180 on the runway and backtaxi a couple times. That NEVER happens during the day.
 
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Just met with an instructor at pinnacle - I won't start in the air for probably another week. I used to do all of my practiced takeoffs and landings at French Valley, and slow flight and stalls over Pala.


Sent from my iPhone
 
Seems like there are a lot of us on here!

Yesterday was another cross country, this time to KSMO. I was kinda freaked out about crossing over LAX using the special VFR corridor, but that turned out to be one of the simplest parts of the trip. The very fast descent into SMO was interesting, and ATC decided to cancel our landing clearance when we were already on final due to a jet overtaking us. We had to climb back up to the right and circle back in. Also had a pretty good crosswind (250 at 10 gusting to 19 on runway 21) but managed a smoother landing than I expected. I forgot a number of things throughout the flight, and am still working on organizing myself for all the busy airspace and constant radio changes, but I'm getting better at it. My Uncle is visiting for the week and my CFI was kind enough to let him come along for the ride, and he got this pretty cool shot of the landing back at CRQ.

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Tonight we're doing our night cross country to KONT and doing some more takeoff/landing practice.
 
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