Time to solo

I'm sorry, I don't have my CFI yet -- hopefully early next year -- but I just cannot see how the hell you can teach a student things like slips to a landing and both power on and off stalls in four or five hours.

Maybe it's because I'm a crappy pilot, but know what my first six hours of flight time looked like?

Preflight, straight and level flight, 10, 20, 30 degree turns, slow flight, climbs and descents, turns around a point, emergency landing, normal landings.

No stalls. No slips to a landing. No pattern work.

Definitely not ready to fly solo in six hours, much less four or five.
 
[ QUOTE ]
I've heard of less than 10 hour solos, but I've also understood that a lot of those people are people who had only logged maybe 5-7 hours but had actually flown a lot with relatives, friends, etc. before they officially started flight training.

[/ QUOTE ]

I resemble that remark. I had flown a few GA aircraft purely as a right seat passenger with other ASEL PPL pilots. I never landed those of course. It was always simple stuff like turns, climbs or descents. For me it was a chance to do what I'd been doing in the simulator for years.

I added up my total time prior to my solo and I did it in 6.6 hours after 7 training flights. I had confidence not only in my abilities but in the fact that if I wasn't ready to do it my CFI wasn't going to let me do it.
 
It’s not a question of can one safely fly the pattern and land in 5hrs. It is a question of can you cover all of the required material and have achieved “satisfactory proficiency” in that short of time? I don’t see how it is possible and I sure as hec wont be hanging my ass out for a lawsuit to test it.
 
Take a look at all the things students have to learn before they're allowed to solo......

............Now, maybe it's because I was a crappy pilot, but I sure don't remember learning how to do all these things in the first four or five hours of my training!

[/ QUOTE ]


AMEN!!!!
Solo in about 25-30 hours
 
[ QUOTE ]
It’s not a question of can one safely fly the pattern and land in 5hrs. It is a question of can you cover all of the required material and have achieved “satisfactory proficiency” in that short of time? I don’t see how it is possible and I sure as hec wont be hanging my ass out for a lawsuit to test it.

[/ QUOTE ]

With today's technology and everyday changing regulations and airspace, even around a non-towered field...it is a lot to know and I see no way it could be done in 4 hours. The more the safer!!!
 
I soloed in about 8 hours, but looking back I would've wanted to wait a bit longer. The more I fly, the more I realize what I didn't know back then, regardless of what I thought back then. I am not in a position to say if my instructor made a bad judgement in cutting me off with only 8 hours. I had all the required stuff in my logbook and I was proficient enough to fly the pattern and land, maybe even go to the practice area if I needed to for some reason, but looking back I realize how "screwed" I would've been had something abnormal happened.

Its really amazing to me how I see myself viewing things and their importance compared to when I was a newbie student pilot. Before I started flying I was probably a little bit of a know-it-all. I was of the school that "real, good" pilots were the type that soloed in as few hours as possible and had the stick and rudder skills necessary to grease every landing. I had way too simple a mind for what flying is really all about. Now I recognize that time to solo means jack, and that it could very well be a sign of a better pilot if they took their time to solo. I used to care about the superficial things like that and used them to judge skill. My, how things change when you learn the truth!!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top