My roommate and I both finished our first solos!
Posted Feb 8, 2022, 2:42 PM UTC
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Good job, glad to see more younger people interested in aviation
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Thank you! We're both really excited for the next step.
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Just don’t give up, it’s one of the last true freedoms we have and it’s pretty liberating to take to the skies. Took me 8 years through ultralights, sport pilot and now private pilot certificate.
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Hah! I caught you with 2 hands on the yoke at rotation. :)
I totally agree, hands free recording should be a service from the CFI. Heck, my golf pro insists upon it, and that is a pretty different set of potential consequences.
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Like I said, cameras are a great tool for catching bad habits haha. There's always something to find after each recorded flight.
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Hah! I caught you with 2 hands on the yoke at rotation. :)
That's the way we rotate the big 'uns.
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Congrats and good stuff. I'm 18h in and just started my pre-solo test to get ready for my solo at some point. Still having trouble with landings 🤦
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Thank you! You'll have fun with your solo. You may or may not be nervous, but it will all melt away after the first landing. We did 3 in the pattern, and after my first landing...it was smooth sailing for the other two. Even with a bit of a crosswind.
You may find it easier to focus on your landing point on the way down, then look down the runway as soon as you cross the runway threshold before transitioning. It made my landings a lot more smooth.
Let us know how it goes!
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Thanks. Good advice. I'm getting to see or recognize better when I'm coming around from base to final a lot clearer whether I'm high or low... it's really now making the right amount of correction whether pitch or power or both when flying to my target and knowing when to start the flare to level off (typically I'm pulling up too much/hard causing a ballon and floating for while down the runway, or hard landing cause I'm pretty high off the ground and obviously airspeed decays causing the drip in/harder landing...) ... that's what's been the hardest for me. Been agree with your advice, looking down the runway when I'm passed the threshold/runway is made (correct term?)...
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So far, the flying experience has been phenomenal. We're both around 18 hours of flight time, and both of us felt comfortable to knock our solos out. Our instructor has been the keystone that made us confident in our ability to get this done. During my last few flights prior to the solo, I've positioned cameras within the cockpit to capture my flight performance. My instructor starting doing this early on to help us catch our mistakes before they become habits. Here's what we learned...
The camera has been a powerful tool in helping us visualize our mistakes. We didn't even know that we were making most of of them. Some we made during our solo. All in all, I would recommend using a hands-free recording device during your flights. You could also recommend your flight school to invest in one. It might stop you from developing a bad habit.
So I'm continuing the practice of recording my flights while in training. In the meantime, I made a video for our instructor to thank him for getting us into the air.
That's a great idea even for veteran pilots to evaluate performance.
I didn't really see the benefit to using them until after the first recorded flight. You can miss a lot when there's multiple events going on at once.
Yea that’s why I said it would make sense for even long time pilots to do it. Will help yo identify issues before we learn those bad habits.