Learning to fly

[CyranoAH]

Originally posted by Gixer
LOL
I don't know a single instructor who's doing it for "returning the gift of flying" romantic but total rubbish. They all do it  for one reason only, gaining hours.

There's an exception to that: aerobatics. I have learned a lot from instructors here at the club. Most of them wouldn't accept money, they just asked for dedication in return.

I myself have got to advanced (after a tour-de-force last week with lithuanian Vytas Lapenas, best aerobatic trainer one could ever have) and will start giving duals for beginners in a few weeks.

Daniel

[eagl]

Haha.  You should have started studying for the test the day you soloed

My Dad aced the test, 100%.  I think I got one wrong on both my PPL and my instrument/commercial/MEL upgrade tests, but I don't really remember except being a little irritated at not getting 100%.  You can buy books with all the questions and lists of which questions are on each test, so it's a matter of brute-force studying in addition to your normal ground school and general studying.  There's always the chance you'll get a question or two that weren't in the study books, so it's better to know both the basic material AND study the actual questions.  If you read through the questions twice, you'll probably be able to recognize the right answer when you see it so at worst you'll only have to really think on the flight planning questions that require calculations for fuel burn, wind correction, course corrections, etc.  Of course, my Dad memorized the answers to those questions too so he finished the test in exactly the time it took to fill in all the bubbles on the answer sheet twice, since he went over the test 2 full times to make sure he didn't make any stupid mistakes.  Like I did.  *grumble*

[eagl]

Additions after reading what others read...

I agree 100% about getting a commercial ticket.  When I finished UPT, my entire class gave $40 each to one of our civilian instructors at Laughlin AFB and spent a weekend learning the rules.  During the next week in our spare time, we drove to San Antonio, forked over some more bucks to the FAA, and took the written tests for instrument, MEL (centerline thrust limited), and commercial.  Bang bang bang DONE.  Guys who didn't already have their PPL also took that test at the same time.

Once you know the PPL rules, the commercial rules aren't that much more information.  It's an additional couple of sections in the FAR/AIM manual to know, some more questions in the master question file to study up on, but that's it.

You don't always need a class 1 medical certificate to be a commercial pilot either.  It depends on what part of the FARs you're operating under, and IIRC to charge more than expenses for short hops in light GA aircraft, you may only need a regular med certificate every 2 years.  I could be wrong and it was 10 years ago when I took the test, but the FARs have multiple sections depending on the services you're providing and the number of passengers, that sort of thing, and for many commercial services you really don't need much more than what you need for your PPL.  Say AHHHH and look at a color vision chart every 2 years, and maybe bend over and sing every 10th birthday if your flight doc takes his job seriously or is a perv.

The big thing about commercial ticket is that it makes it legal to say "yes" when you're going up for a joyride, and someone offers you $60 to take a carb, some oil, and a box of spark plugs to podunk airport because an instructor and his student are stuck away from their home field, or a buddy says he'll pay for you to take him and his girl out to Big Bear, Catalina, or Bullhead City for the weekend.  Without the commercial ticket, they can't compensate you for more than your basic expenses.  With a commercial, you can charge whatever you think you can get out of the cheap bastage and not worry about bumping into an FAA goon asking too many questions while digging through your logbook.

Oh yea...  You're not legally required to have a logbook so unless you need to prove something, you don't necessarily want to carry that thing with you all the time.  Carry a copy of your endorsements and your license/medical, but a logbook can be both proof and evidence

[Gixer]

I don't think it's smart to make a point of studying the questions and answers. Especially for flying. It's like these idiots who use to study 100 questions and answers and get their MCSE. Thing is they still no fu*k all about comptuers at the end of the day, your just robbing yourself. Maybe get away with it at PPL level but that's it.



...-Gixer

[Chairboy]

Well, before I solo'd I took a pre-solo exam that the FBO uses to make sure I wasn't sleeping in ground school.  Took a few hours to do, and I passed.  I know enough to pass right now, what I haven't done is the intense studying to get a 90-100%.

I don't have a great place to study, I'm living on a friends couch right now, but I'll get one of the quiz programs and spend some serious time on the ol' Lappy 486 doing questions/answers whenever I can.

As for the gift of flying thing you laughed at me for, Gixer, that's fine and dandy for you, but I've always enjoyed teaching, and I figure that if there's anything I can do to get someone else to like flying half as much as I do right now, it'll be a good thing.  Plus, if you really love your job, then it's like you're being paid twice.  It used to be like that for me where I work now, and since it isn't any more, I'm keeping my eyes open for something else that sparks the same interest.  

I'm usually the jaded one in conversation, it's interesting to be on the other side of the fence.  Interesting.

Anyhow, I scheduled a solo for 1:30 to 2:30 today.  A half hour before, I called ATIS and got an ok, if borderline, weather report.  Not a big problem because I wanted to do some pattern work.  I get to the airport, and I call the weather robot, and it tells me that the winds are now 9 gusting to 17.  I wait around a little to see if it gets better, but it gets worse.  When I leave, it's winds of 15 gusting to 25knots with visibility of between one and three miles.

I drove back to work, came up in the elevator.  It's gusting like crazy as I go into the office.  A few minutes ago (near the end of the block I had scheduled) I called again, and now winds are 10 knots steady, visibillity 3, clouds are fine.....  bah.  I managed to schedule the one block of time where ol' man weather threw up all over west LA.  Gonna try again tonight at 5:00.

[Gixer]

"I've always enjoyed teaching, and I figure that if there's anything I can do to get someone else to like flying half as much as I do right now, it'll be a good thing. Plus, if you really love your job, then it's like you're being paid twice"

Yes that's nice but you still have to eat and it won't feel like it's paying your mortgage twice.


...-Gixer

[Chairboy]

I re-read my post, and I don't see me saying I would do it for free.  

I prefer to like doing what I get paid for.  If the language I used is unclear, I apologize for any misunderstanding I may have caused.

Ah, and a quick followup, with the new business purchase my wife and I are completing this next week, I expect to pass the passive income point needed to pay all my bills.  If that's all taken care of, it doesn't really matter that I'm not making $100K giving flying lessons, not if I'm doing what I love.

[eagl]

You're right Gixer, however there is value to studying the test as well.  My advice is always to study the basic core knowledge as if you didn't have the test questions, but to use the master question file as a supplement.  That serves two purposes.  First, it helps make sure you don't have any gaps in your knowledge.  Second, it makes sure you don't waste money on having to take the test again.  Most of the stuff in those tests is practical knowledge that any decent instructor will MAKE SURE you know and practice, so the purpose of the test is to help ensure nobody slips through the cracks without some basic knowledge.  The REAL education comes through flight time and applying what you've read about, and you can't get the flight time without getting past the test.

So I recommend students study the flight manuals and all the other materials, and also take the time to go over the test questions to cover all the bases.  

Instructor philosophizing follows:

A new pilot will likely learn as much or more in his first 100 hours AFTER his checkride than he learned throughout his training, and he'll remember it longer.  Up to 500 hours, he'll keep learning.  And then he'll get cocky and nearly kill himself somewhere between 300 and 700 hours.  If he survives that period, he'll probably make it to old age.

My Dad learned enough in the first 300 hours to know that he was getting too old to survive very long as a casual pilot getting 50 hours a year, so he put his gear in the closet and quit.  It was probably the safest flying decision he ever made.  He was a good and safe pilot when he was flying more often, but after visiting half the airports in so-cal in the first few years, he realized he wasn't flying enough to keep up his skills so he quit before he killed himself.  Smart move.  Many people who are less honest with themselves would have kept flying and eventually bought the farm.  For a while back when he was flying, it seemed like every month a low-time doctor would rip the tail off his bonanza because he didn't have the experience to do what he was doing and didn't have the honesty to admit to himself that he was over his head.  That Kennedy learned that lesson a little too late a few years back, and he died with the stick pulled full aft past VNE in 80+ deg of bank, 30+ deg nose low, a perfectly good airplane.  John Denver found it out over SF Bay when he ran himself out of gas and stalled while pushing full rudder trying to reach the fuel switch positioned on a bulkhead somewhere behind his shoulder because the builder was terrified of fuel lines routed through the cockpit.

The written test is (IMHO) mostly to make sure you're taking the whole thing seriously.  The real test is when you get out there on your own with no CFI or evaluator looking over your shoulder, and you find yourself in a situation you've never seen before.  That's when it matters if you've read the books or just memorized the test questions, and any honest self-respecting pilot has already decided that they'd rather know what's going on than rely on luck.

BTW I found it very interesting to know that as a military instructor, the FAA automatically gave me most of the privledges and responsibilities as a ticketed CFI.  My instruction "counted" just as much as that given by an FAA CFI.  There were some restrictions as to what endorsements I could give and I never tried to check anyone out or do anything on the civilian side of things, but I suppose I could have if I'd kept up my private flying.  I am proud of every student I taught, soloed, and sent to checkrides, and I found that sometimes the definition of fear itself is letting a student fly formation lead with a solo student on your wing.    That's probably our most hazardous training mission and we had a solo student die in a midair collision with a dual instructor/student crew during a formation sortie while the solo student was leading.   I think even our most skilled instructors and dedicated students tried harder to do better after that mishap.

[eagl]

Er... My point in my last post was that someone who doesn't take the ground and flight training seriously is gonna get killed regardless of how they past the test.

Good call on the WX cancel Chairboy...  No point pushing things, especially at your phase of training.  I know a couple of guys who got their first hour of IFR training while solo prior their first checkride, because they pressed when they should have weather cancelled.  A bit of courage and some experienced controllers kept them from becoming dead solo students.  You're not getting paid to press into bad weather, so play it safe, kick the dog if necessary, and fly another day.

On my first ever flight lead upgrade sortie, a 1v1 BFM ride out of Mt Home AFB, we were sitting in the arming area getting the pins pulled and I saw the weather was kicking up.  My flight control computer kicked offline due to gusty tailwinds and as I fiddled with the systems getting them back online, I saw a line of thunderstorms building over the training airspace.  I called the SOF to get a weather check, and he said on the radar he saw a thick line of storms between the base and the airspace, but beyond that he couldn't tell if it was clear or if the storms were occluding the radar returns, masking more bad weather in the traning area.  He also said the weather guys estimated the storm front would hit the field in about an hour, which would give us just enough time to go out, get around the storms, get a couple of BFM engagements, and maybe race back home before the storms hit.

I asked my IP in the other jet what he thought, and he said it was time for me to make a flight lead decision.  I thought about it a minute and WX aborted.  During the taxi back, the winds kicked up to 35 knots, visibility reduced to a half mile, and it started a mixture of heavy rain and hail.  During the debrief the IP said he likely would have pressed out himself, but as an inexperienced flight lead I would have probably spent 100% of the flight trying to keep us from getting killed and then we'd have diverted up to Boise and walked home, so aborting was as good a decision as any.  The lesson there was that there is no training/non-combat mission worth unnecessarily risking your life or damage to your aircraft.

If we were in the bar where this discussion should have taken place, I'd finish my beer, gumble about how the damn kids these days can't make decent popcorn, and listen up for a reason to start cussing or making fun of vipers *P'tooie*.

[Dnil]

EDITED FOR CONTENT

[bunch]

I was told it is not so bad to miss a few on the PPL written exam, as you then know what areas the examiner is going to focus on for the oral.  This wasn't my experience, but the gent who told me is much more clever than i am.

[Chairboy]

Well, had a very humbling lesson today.  The plan was to do a mini-cross country to practice navigating by pilotage (flying from a map) and operating into and out of unfamiliar airports.  

Ahead of time, I went in, read the charts and wrote down the frequencies for the various towers as well as cruising altitudes and figured that was it.  It turns out that I was missing quite a bit.

I'm running late, so I get to the airport just past 8:00AM when I was supposed to meet the instructor.  I should have arrived 10+ minutes early to pre-flight, but didn't.  That was item the first.  This created some time pressure a minute later when the instructor realized I hadn't called 800-WX-BRIEF to get a standard weather report.  I had called and gotten the automated weather report for the various airports and thought I was ahead of the game, but it turns out that I should have actually talked to a flight briefer so I would know about any notices/airport closures/etc as well as enroute weather.  Also, the act of getting the briefing means that your airplane # is put into the system so if you violate a temprary flight restriction they didn't tell you about, there's a recording of the call that'll clear you.

We taxied and took off with a left downwind departure, heading towards downtown Los Angeles.  There's a big approach area for planes landing at LAX from the north, so we needed to stay below 2500 feet, but the congested ground and tall buildings of LA meant we needed to stay as high as possible, so I had a very narrow window to fly in and chose 2300 feet.  

My instructor started asking me questions about our flight, like landmarks I had chosen, and I hadn't.  So I pulled out the chart and started looking, then the instructor told me to check my altitude.  I instantly realized I was less then a hundred feet away from infringing on LAX's airspace, so I learned the importance of flying the airplane first and not letting cockpit distractions interfere.  

I started trying to correlate landmarks on the map with my path, and the thing I thought was a lake on the chart turned out to be a field, and that really messed with my head.  I finally found the airport, got ATIS info for it, called in and got clearance to land.  

My landing went ok, except I felt like I was high so I went to full flaps, but my instructor told me I was actually low by the time we were on short final.  Afterwards, I realized that I had grown so used to Santa Monica's 1,200 foot traffic pattern altitude (above ground) that the standard 1,000 AGL traffic pattern at El Monte didn't feel right.  After the flight, my instructor told me to trust the standardization of the airports a little more, eg, if you turn to base when the airport is at your 45, and begin your descent at the same place, etc, you'll be in a good position most of the time.

On short final, I heard a Cessna get clearance to position and hold (eg, park on the runway).  My instructor grabbed the mic and called out that we were on final, and the tower told the plane to get off the runway immediately.  We thought it was a little bit odd at the time, later on the ground we figured out (by hearing the someone talking in the background during a transmission from the tower) that a new controller was being trained.

As I landed, I dodged a big dead seagull lying int he runway.  I reported it to the tower and taxied off.  My instructor and I went over the flight and taxied back to the runway.  As we did, tower sent a car out to clear the meat off the runway.  We got clearance and I took off nicely.  As I climbed out, tower asked if I was the guy that hit the bird, and I answered back it was dead already when I reported it.  We climbed out and headed towards Whiteman.

I got confused a few times, reading the chart, because again, I hadn't set up landmarks and I was having a hard time figuring out where the hill with the Hollywood sign was on the chart.  As I passed over Glendale, I called into Burbank (Class C) to get clearance to transition to Whiteman, which is a small airport that's like a couple miles past Burbank and is consequently nestled inside their airspace.  

No response.

I looked at the radio, made sure it was on the right frequency, then called again.

Still no response.

I'm already a bit wounded from encountering all my other mistakes, so I'm starting to get stressed as I try to figure out what I screwed up.  I ask my instructor, and he shakes his head and says it's not me.  I'm getting real nervous because I'm about to enter his airspace if I don't turn, and I need clearance to do it.  Right before I turn around, I call again and he finally answers and clears me.  I'm thinking this guy is a real jerk, but I don't know what's happening in his tower, so I should probably just forget about it.

I fly over Burbank, land at Whiteman without incident (other then another full flaps, low approach because I'm not trusting the standardized patterns at the unfamiliar airport, oh and Whiteman doesn't actually CLEAR me to land until I'm on base, right as I'm ready to call him).  

As I taxi back, the instructor asks me what my plan is to get us back home, and as I start to answer, the controller at Whiteman asks "58 Sierra, you planning on making a right downwind departure to transition south past Van Nuys at 1800?"  My instructor is practically clawing at the radio because he wanted me to figure this out myself, but the damage is done.  I answer in the affirmative and we take off when we get our clearance.  I fly to the 405, talk to Van Nuys, fly back along the 405 without incident.  

I go over the Sepulveda pass, make my radio calls, everything is fine until a private jet re-enters the atmosphere out over Las Vegas and gets cleared to make a fast approach in ahead of us, so I have to turn to follow him.  I swear, I know the guy wasn't going mach, but he sure was faster then I was.

I come in and land, and my instructor tells me afterwards that I have 'light fixation' because I watch the PAPI too long while on short final when I should be looking at the runway.  I land, chagrined, and we do a postflight while waiting for clearance to taxi while some other guy gets a long flight plan filed on the frequency we want to use.

As I park the plane, the instructor tells me we flew 1.4 hours, and I'm shocked.  It felt like 3 hours with all the stress, and he laughs.

I've been trying to solo since I got back, and it's looking like I might be able to today at noon.  So, looking forward to getting up alone again.  It's been three plus weeks, and I've got a hankerin' for some aviatin'.

I told my instructor afterwards that my biggest problem was in preplanning.  I thought I had done it all, but it turned out that I didn't know what I didn't know.  He agreed, and said that was a really good way to put it.

[Maverick]

Chairboy,

First congrats on pursuing the license!

Second, don't let a "bad" flight get to you. We ALL have them on occasion. Learn from the mistakes and just try to not make them again. Remember this is a learning process. If it were really easy there wouln't be a need for instructors.

Sometimes it's best to get right back in the air but there are times when a day to sit and think about what you are doing while in the air is in order. Let it sink in if you will.

Lastly think of this. You are flying in some of the most complicated airspace in the nation. It ain't easy. I would hate like heck to try to do my flight cert. in that area. I learned at TUS and was told it was hard there with only one towered airport in the area. I still run into some folks that are intimidated by the airspace restrictions and they refuse to fly into anything but non towered fields.

Hang in there guy and enjoy the process. Remember you are doing what many dream of yet never attempt.

[slimm50]

C'Boy, once again, thanks for your posts. This is some of...no, this is the best reading for me on this board.

[eagl]

Chairboy,

If he hasn't already done so, ask your instructor to step you through a 100% complete x/c flight prep cycle.  From the day prior calling the FBO at your destination to see if they have gas, getting forecast winds aloft and planning crosswind directions, through pre-planned VOR cuts for nav assistance and all the other things you forgot.

At UPT, we basically plan the first instrument out and back flight for/with the student.  We do the flight plan, the fuel cards, everything.  We do it all 100% according to the book the first time.  Then we have them do it the same way the next time.  Then usually on a leg of our all-weekend cross country where we'll hit up to 5 destinations, we mix in "combat planning" where we show them how quickly you can come up with a plan when you're in a hurry, and how to rely on the "WANTS" check before departing any base.  Weather, Alternate, Notams, TOLD, Shxt.

Anyhow, you might see if your instructor has the time to walk you through the entire process so you can see how he does it, and how much time it should take you when you get good at it.