Learning to fly, or thinking of learning? Post your questions, comments and experiences here

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By Crash one
#1854011
T6Harvard wrote:@lobstaboy "your learning is what you can analyse in your own flying, even if you can't always make it go right yet"
Yes! More often I know what's wrong, I can even FEEL what's wrong now. I'm looking at the relevant instrument or recalling the target speed but just can't do the correction quickly enough. It's a bit like wading through treacle :mrgreen:

Thanks for everyone's input, all very useful and gratefully received.


If you are starting to feel what it’s doing rather than looking at instruments then you are, as said, making big progress. :thumleft:
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By tr7v8
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1854024
Well yet another lesson under my belt. Weather today was disgusting in Kent. Wednesday night through to Friday torrential rain, with thunderstorms at times. Today dawned as no rain but very low cloud & very grey. Lesson was booked for 16:00 but phoned the school at Rochester & told circuits OK, come down straight away.
When I get there, cloud base still low but OK for circuits. Quite cold 14 Deg. bit different to Tuesday when it was mid 20s, bit of wind around 10kts.
So did 7 Landings & take offs more take offs & landings, much smoother, definitely came together & got a "Well done, good lesson" from my instructor. Did 3 Flapless as part of it.
Flying 02 at Rochester is interesting as there are a lot of trees on the approach.
I was getting frustrated as circuits seemed to have been going on for ever, but today it definitely took a step forward. I am a lot happier now. Next lesson Tuesday but the advance forecast on Metcheck looks grim, lots of rain.
So now 24 lessons & 24 hours 25mins in.
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By T6Harvard
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1854027
Oh, a good lesson @tr7v8 ! Good that it's actually feeling better too :thumleft:

Weather for me on Monday indicates a change of runway and a bit gusty. Should be OK if I engage my brain :)
By Crash one
#1854102
tr7v8 wrote:So now 24 lessons & 24 hours 25mins in.


I wonder how much time and concentration the instructor is giving to keeping the length of each lesson to precisely one hour plus or minus one minute?
I seem to remember mine being plus or minus ten to fifteen minutes depending on whether it went well or not (an extra circuit just to make sure) or (you are concentrating too much, give it a rest, make this one to land).
Plus, when you get to 45 and skill test hasn’t been mentioned, how disappointed are you going to be?
By TopCat
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1854105
Crash one wrote:
tr7v8 wrote:So now 24 lessons & 24 hours 25mins in.


I wonder how much time and concentration the instructor is giving to keeping the length of each lesson to precisely one hour plus or minus one minute?
I seem to remember mine being plus or minus ten to fifteen minutes depending on whether it went well or not (an extra circuit just to make sure) or (you are concentrating too much, give it a rest, make this one to land).

It doesn't seem surprising to me that a flying school that needs to schedule time in blocks aims for about an hour per flight on average, and gets quite close to it.

Plus, when you get to 45 and skill test hasn’t been mentioned, how disappointed are you going to be?

I doubt he'll be at all disappointed. There have been huge amounts of discussion on many threads about how almost no one gets their licence in 45 hours.

Not sure it's helpful to question this without actual evidence that anything is amiss. If @tr7v8 is happy with the way things are going, they're probably going fine. It's fairly obvious when landings get reliably good enough to start suspecting that you might go solo.

Especially when EFATO practice starts to become frequent as well as landings getting generally better.
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By Crash one
#1854118
My apologies, I wasn’t questioning the progress being made, tr7v8 is doing very well. Just that instructors must be watching the clock quite a bit of the time.
I’m not suggesting that this is the case here but I’ve heard students worry about how long to solo or test as if it is important.
Apologies again :D
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By lobstaboy
#1854119
Crash one wrote:...instructors must be watching the clock quite a bit of the time.

When I began instructing I worried a lot about timing of a lesson. At what point did I say to the student, "OK let's go back to the airfield and land" so that the total lesson time was 1hr plus or minus 5 minutes? Really hard at first to pay attention to the time (without making it obvious) and keep everything else going smoothly.
Needless to say it became second nature after only a few days. I can still do it, even at unfamiliar airfields.
There are lots of reasons why getting the time of a lesson spot on is important. For example
- scheduling the day, so that by the end you aren't keeping folk waiting, and so the instructor can get time for a coffee, bun and pee occasionally
- to avoid having to charge the student more than they were expecting - this is a real issue for some folk and you'd get to know who was doing their flying on such a tight budget that it mattered
- to avoid students getting too fatigued - about 40 minutes is the optimum time for learning, much more and they can't take any more in and it's a waste of time and money. Just as a lesson at school is the same sort of time.

Anyway, it's one of the things that students maybe don't realise that the instructor is doing...
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By tr7v8
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1854164
TopCat wrote:
Crash one wrote:
tr7v8 wrote:So now 24 lessons & 24 hours 25mins in.


I wonder how much time and concentration the instructor is giving to keeping the length of each lesson to precisely one hour plus or minus one minute?
I seem to remember mine being plus or minus ten to fifteen minutes depending on whether it went well or not (an extra circuit just to make sure) or (you are concentrating too much, give it a rest, make this one to land).

It doesn't seem surprising to me that a flying school that needs to schedule time in blocks aims for about an hour per flight on average, and gets quite close to it.

Plus, when you get to 45 and skill test hasn’t been mentioned, how disappointed are you going to be?

I doubt he'll be at all disappointed. There have been huge amounts of discussion on many threads about how almost no one gets their licence in 45 hours.

Not sure it's helpful to question this without actual evidence that anything is amiss. If @tr7v8 is happy with the way things are going, they're probably going fine. It's fairly obvious when landings get reliably good enough to start suspecting that you might go solo.

Especially when EFATO practice starts to become frequent as well as landings getting generally better.

So many comments, so I'll quote this one and try & answer them all.

I was getting frustrated, not at instruction but my inability to grasp it. I have had 2 instructors in my time there and both have taken me for circuits. I have done around 75 circuits, in the last lesson it all seemed to hang together, thanks heaven!
I have no illusions at doing my PPL in 45hours dead. I was told when I started, don't treat the lessons as a trial to get your licence, enjoy them all. Grinding round circuits I did begin to wonder but I've stuck with it & now improving. I can see soloing in the near future rather than never happening as I felt before.
Rochester do 2 hour slots for lessons. So typically my flights are xx:30 -yy:30 give or take. The longest has been 1:10 and the shortest 0:50 Stuart has a kneeboard & stopwatch & he keeps a hobbs start/stop time. To be honest by the time I've done an hour of circuits around 6-7 depending on how many flapped/flapless, whether we've had to slot in behind someone etc. I am knackered both mentally & physically. I certainly couldn't do anymore.
I do two lessons a week (Tues & Sat) not sure I could do anymore, financially or mentally. I skive work for lessons so if it got busy then it would be a challenge as well.
When I do exams I schedule them for around 14:00 & then take the day off & precovid used to revise in the cafe on site.
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By T6Harvard
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1854172
@tr7v8 . To my untrained eye I'd say you have it right. Progression, confidence built, a solid performance in the circuit, near to solo, etc. After that Nav will be easy!! Sounds like time well spent.

Circuits for me tomorrow.
I am planning to fly competently, having read all the thoughtful advice above and done my homework today :mrgreen:
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By TopCat
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1854173
tr7v8 wrote:I was getting frustrated, not at instruction but my inability to grasp it. I have had 2 instructors in my time there and both have taken me for circuits. I have done around 75 circuits, in the last lesson it all seemed to hang together, thanks heaven!

Did anything specific change in this lesson, or was it more a question of the familiarity building gradually until it wasn't so hard any more?

I'm genuinely curious, as I have a long-standing interest in how students (not just in flying) learn, and what happens in the lead-up to the penny dropping.
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By tr7v8
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1854194
TopCat wrote:
tr7v8 wrote:I was getting frustrated, not at instruction but my inability to grasp it. I have had 2 instructors in my time there and both have taken me for circuits. I have done around 75 circuits, in the last lesson it all seemed to hang together, thanks heaven!

Did anything specific change in this lesson, or was it more a question of the familiarity building gradually until it wasn't so hard any more?

I'm genuinely curious, as I have a long-standing interest in how students (not just in flying) learn, and what happens in the lead-up to the penny dropping.

@TopCat
Good question. I don't think anything changed in this one lesson, I suspect it was a combination of some of it becoming muscle memory, also grasping some pre-emptive actions, winding trim on in roughly the right amount and in the right direction, again semi automatically. Also getting used to the landing flight path "picture" so you know what rough height you should be where.
Landing on 02 you come over a ridge with a white house on it. You have to be over 500ft there, as A. the ridge is 300ft alone & B, I suspect the people in the white house would get mighty pee'd off if a Cessna is coming in their bedroom window! So once you get a grip on 500ft here then you can start making adjustments accordingly.
I was certainly less tired both mentally & physically on Saturday post lesson. Physically possibly because it was cooler, but generally because it is becoming a bit more automatic.
The control height on the throttle & speed on the elevator is counter intuitive as well, so that needs to sink in.
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By T6Harvard
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1854202
Quote @tr7v8 - The control height on the throttle & speed on the elevator is counter intuitive as well, so that needs to sink in.
-----

I 'got this' in my head, and during slow flight in the training area, but it was only last lesson that it actually felt like exactly the right thing to do. I sort of pictured the prop chewing into the flightpath. So on Final, felt a little sink, added a little power. Hey presto, that felt right.

So far my experience of learning to fly has been quite different to much of the rest of my learning over the years.
This is definitely due to capacity, or lack of spare capacity, I should say. Early lessons cover a heck of a lot of totally new Stuff, both the principles and the practical, physical application in an unfamiliar environment (cockpit and 3d!).

I've sometimes had a LBM DAYS after a lesson, when my Instructor's words have popped into my head along with the phrase, "Ah, THAT'S why he kept saying that!". I can be a bit slow on the uptake :roll:

The learning experience, and indeed the teaching, is fascinating indeed.
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