When your flying lessons are relatively infrequent it helps to do some revision to take stock on where you’re at and hopefully give you a confidence booster.
I was given this opportunity one Saturday thanks to low cloud which prevented me from practicing forced landings, but provided sufficient height to do some solo circuits.
I was quietly thankful for the chance to take to the air on my own again, but I had to do a couple of laps with an instructor first, as it had been a while since I last soloed.
It was good to know that all that training I had done till now had sunk in. You don’t really appreciate this when you’re struggling with something new.
After a pretty ordinary first circuit, Don, who’d never flown with me before, decided to gauge my ability with flapless and glide landings.
I flew the extended downwind and turned base with flaps up and did everything right on the shallow approach and into the flare to the point where it was probably the best landing I have ever attempted – so much so I yelled into my headset to Don: “that’s the best thing I’ve ever done!”
Flaps? Who needs ‘em!
Brimming with confidence everything else just felt right as I took off again. I even trimmed bang on 1000ft AGL on downwind (I’m always over) before pulling back on the throttle early for the glide approach. I trimmed to 65 knots and controlled my descent, gradually lowering my previously forsaken flaps. I was a little high over the threshold but had plenty of Lethbridge’s temporary runway in front of me for the planned full stop.
I greased the landing.
Don jumped out leaving me to back track and take off again on my own. The feeling was almost as exhilarating as my first solo, but this time everything felt more instinctive and my subsequent landings were smooth.
The 20-hour myth
It was good to know that all that training I had done till now had sunk in. You don’t really appreciate this when you’re struggling with something new.
It got me thinking about my initial enquiries about flying lessons and the expectations I was given about how long it would take to gain my licence.
It’s common for prospective students to be told they’d solo in 10 hours and have their RPL by 30. That may be the case for students learning in a full-time block, but I’m thinking it’s uncommon for anyone doing it part time.
The perception that you breeze through flying lessons was enforced in the first few units. I had the sense that lessons were merely an exercise in being shown something, showing you can do it and ticking it off. Hence I became frustrated when I found myself in the circuit for another 20 hours thinking it was a failure on my part rather than the learning process being turned up a notch.
So it was encouraging to hear one of the staff at Skythrills giving a prospective student the real low down on the phone, even telling him that it takes some people more than two years to get their licence depending on their individual circumstances.
Some may argue that such honestly might scare someone from learning to fly, which is the last thing general aviation needs. But if explained in a way that makes it clear that you can learn at your own pace and there are no strict time frames it should actually be of reassurance to anyone seeking the confidence to take that next step.
I still would have embarked on this journey if I knew it would take me this long. If anything, it might have helped my self-confidence if I knew my apparent slow progress wasn’t unique.