r/flying•
abbott333

After two instructors, 21 hours, and plenty of bad weather cancellations, I finally soloed!

A quick brief: I began flying lessons in May of this year. Everything was going great and I was ready to solo at the 10-hour mark. My instructor and I applied for my SPL, but he was under the impression I would get a temp certificate and get the real one mailed later. (apparently this is the process when receiving your PPL?). So the solo got put on hold for 3 weeks as I awaited my SPL cert. Until then, we went and did more stall practice, landings, takeoffs, as well as a bit of navigation to and from a nearby airport.

A few days before the SPL came in the mail, my instructor told me he was moving and that he would hook me up with another instructor to get me soloed. For clarification, I knew he was moving, but things got surprisingly expedited

So I hop in the plane with the new instructor (SPL in hand) waiting to solo. Of course, to cover both of our asses, I have to go out and shoot more maneuvers, stalls, landings, radio-work, and all that. We keep setting dates but the weather in Wisconsin seemed to have it in for me and every day we planned a solo the wind would be too high, too low of cloud ceiling, too hot, or any mixture of those. To add, the original C150 I was learning in had a bad idle issue, and my instructor was not comfortable with me flying it alone, so we borrowed another 150 from a guy next to our hangar and that also added onto the hour total just to make sure I was comfortable flying another airplane.

Long story short, today was the day! Such an amazing feeling and it was so relieving to fly the airplane by myself. The takeoffs were smooth and the three landings were smooth, even with a slight crosswind. I simply cannot wait to continue with flying and cross-countries with my new instructor. I would have recorded it, but my instructor said using a GoPro might have been a bit of an extra stress during flight :/

Any advice from any of you experienced pilots as I move forward in lessons?

Posted Aug 29, 2016, 11:25 PM UTC · edited

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