Earlier today, I finally passed my first stage check. For the past two weeks, I had struggled with the practical. I failed horribly the first time, and during the second time, the ceiling came down to just over 2,000 feet and the visibility was less than 6 statute miles. Because of these past two attempts, I had experience of the mistakes I made. The mistakes left me feeling confident and comfortable this tie around.

The winds were definitely not optimal for a check ride. During the preflight paperwork, the winds were coming 30 degrees off the active runway at 11 knots. By the time I was practicing my touch and goes, 2 hours later the winds were still 30 degrees off the centerline but at 14 knots and gusting to 25. While you might think the winds made it harder, they somewhat helped. My check airman judged my landings more leniently than if the winds were weaker or variable.

Just like the last two attempts, I was judged on both the power off and power on stalls, as well as slow flight. However, this time, I was instructed to a ground reference maneuver. Unfortunately the winds were gusting so my circle around a point wasn’t the best I had ever done. (After the flight, the check airman actually admitted that he was expecting a horrible circle around the point. So I won’t say I impressed him, but he was a little surprised). As for the rest of the maneuvers, they went well. The stalls were satisfactory, as well were my two engine failure procedures. Like I said before, the landings were a little bit dicey. I had to do 2 go-arounds; one because the plane in front of me was going way too slow and I caught up to him, and the other because the tower told me to do so. Other than that, my flight was a success.

Next lesson I can finally do my first solo. The first solo for our school is three taxi-backs. (Which means I’ll land, taxi off the runway, and go back to the active runway to take off again). The only thing I need to watch is the crosswinds. My instructors won’t let me solo unless the crosswinds are less than 5 knots. As for stage 2, I’ll be learning how to plan cross-country flights, as well as flying at night.

Don’t worry if you fail a check ride which would have allowed you to solo. This was my third attempt at it and it finally worked out. Everyone has a little trouble with the first check ride, whether they admit it or not.

Next post will be for my first solo. Hopefully, I’ll have pictures or a video to share.

Today I retook the first stage check for the private pilot course. If you read the last post, than you know how horribly I failed my first attempt at it. I had Bob again; however he wasn’t as intimidating this time. Having done it once, I knew what he was going to be looking for and what things I had to fix.

When I woke up this morning the skies were overcast, and I knew it was going to be questionable whether or not I was going to have the stage check this afternoon. I was scheduled to have the flight at 1715Z (12:15 pm local). So after my first class of the day, I headed over to the airport for the flight.

I checked in with the Air Boss and filled out my dispatch paperwork. The weather was winds of 12kts out of 340 and gusting up to 19kts. More importantly, the clouds were OVC080, or overcast at 8000 feet. These conditions meant I would be flying.

After pre-flighting the airplane I was assigned, I went back to the briefing room and met up with Bob. We both had a laugh about how horribly I had done the last time and how I should do better today. Well it went better, but not as good as I would have liked. From when the engine started until I left the ground, I only made a few mistakes. Forgetting to take the fuel pump off after engine start, and forgetting to retract the flaps after we were both inside the plane are two examples. I was about to radio tower to request permission to take off when Bob radioed the tower and asked to stay in the pattern for touch-and-goes. The weather had gotten bad enough that he knew going out to the practice grounds would be unfair conditions to test me in. I got permission to take off and taxied onto the runway.

The take off went well, as did turning crosswind and then downwind. This time I definitely didn’t forget to do the pre-landing checklists. Bob said he was going to use the radio today so I didn’t have to worry about that. However, I did have to worry about the rain and winds, which were gusting at 1,100 AGL (traffic pattern altitude). The visibility stayed VFR but went down to 5 statute miles at times. The hardest part of the flight was finding the traffic and reporting back to the tower that traffic was in sight. Bob helped me with this because of the deteriorating conditions.

The first landing went well, however Bob had me do a go-around on the second one because I forgot to announce the decent was stabilized at 200 feet AGL. After that one, I didn’t forget it for the rest of the lesson. All in all, I did 5 landings with one go-around. The worst part of my flying was that on most of the landings, the plane wasn’t lined up on the centerline. After 1.2 hours Bob had had enough and I landed for the last time. I taxied back to Echo ramp and shutdown the plane. During our talk, back in the briefing room, Bob had said that the worst part of today was my landings weren’t on the centerline. Other than that my approaches and line ups were good, as well as my traffic pattern maneuvers.

I got an incomplete on the day (because of the weather, not because of my flying) and I will finish up the stage check either tomorrow morning or next week sometime. I’m hoping I pass the stage one check ride before the Thanksgiving break next week.

The first milestone that students pilot will reach is the solo. The solo is the first opportunity the student has to fly the airplane by him or herself. However, no flight school will let a student take a plane up without a check ride. A check ride is simply the equivalent of the road test for an automobile driver. That’s what I did today. It involves 2 test and a flight with a check airman who judges the student on their ability to perform maneuvers, complete safe landings as well as establish communications with the tower and ground control.

The test has 3 parts. The first part is the written test. The written test gives 50 fill in questions. The questions are related to general aviation, FAA regulations and about the specific airport I’ll do my solo at, which in this case is my base airport of Republic. It took me about an hour and I did well, a 95%. The second part is the oral. During this part, the check airman, Bob in this case, asks me questions face to face in order to see how well I know what I’m doing without being able to look it up. Again this is about the airport, general aviation questions as well as specific questions about the plane I train in. This test was harder than the written, but again I passed. Lastly came the practical, the flight portion of the test.

It didn’t go well

First I filled out the pre-flight sheet and checked the airplane. Once that was done I told the check airman, the plane was ready. We walked across the ramp together and got in the plane. From that point on I blew it. It’s embarrassing to admit, but I suddenly forgot what to do. I looked down, got my checklist out and started going through the items. From when I started the plane and got to the end of the ramp where I was to call ground control, everything was normal. Then I called ground and fumbled the entire call. Later Bob would tell me he didn’t judge me too poorly for this, but it messed me up for the rest of what I had to do. Once ground told me I was clear to taxi, I started to roll and Bob pressed the brakes with his feet. I was about to cut off a plane which was to my right and waiting to taxi. I forgot to look right. The plane to the other’s right always has the right of way and I would have broken that rule if Bob didn’t stop me. After I finally got onto the taxi ways I thought I was going to be fine. I was wrong. Bob asked me when I was going to put the wind correction in with the ailerons, and why I was riding the brake pedals with my feet.

Once I made it to the run-up area, I started going through my checklist again. Once I felt I had sufficiently got the plane ready for takeoff, I taxied to the runway. Upon reaching the active runway, I called tower and asked for permission to takeoff, they granted and I rolled onto the runway. I guess I wasn’t rolling fast enough for Bob and he told me to hurry up.

I finally took off.

I was finally in the air, and was feeling good. I had messed up a few ground operations, but my flying had been good in the previous lessons with my instructor. The first thing I did wrong was I forgot the climb checklist. It’s supposed to be done at 1000 feet AGL, but I didn’t do it until about 3000 feet AGL. Bob commented on this while I was flying but it wasn’t anything major, so I headed towards the practice grounds.

My maneuvers were well below average. During slow flight I forgot to put flaps in until I almost stalled the plane, and I forced the pane into secondary stall while I was attempted to recover from the power off stall. My recovery from the power on stall was the only satisfactory maneuver I did the whole day. Perhaps the worst part of the flight was when I busted class C airspace. MacArthur Airport is a class C airport close to Republic, and its’ airspace go up to the edge of the training grounds. As I finished the engine failure procedure (which didn’t go well because I was attempting to simulate a landing on the beach and not a parking lot), I increased full power to go around and recover. However, I forgot about the Charlie airspace and flew right into it. The check airman grabbed the controls and flew away from the area. While he still had the controls, he asked why so much air was coming into the cockpit. I looked up and realized I never latched the door shut while back in the run-up area. It was closed and locked but not latched. This allowed excess air to enter the cabin.

At this point I knew I was going to have to retake the check ride. He told me, in a horribly grump voice, to take him back to the airport. I called the tower control and asked to land. I don’t know why, but I forgot to go through the pre-landing checklist. As I landed, he took controls away from me and taxied to the ramp where our airplanes are kept.

I knew it went really bad. When we got inside, after tying up the airplane, we went through what I did wrong. I don’t remember all of what he said because I was so mad at myself for messing up that horribly. However, I didn’t learn a lot from the flight. Make sure to always go through the checklists carefully, keep situational awareness and be confident. 

In the first stage of flight training, for the private pilot course, you learn only a handful of maneuvers. Flying an airplane isn’t very hard, or at least it was easier than I was expecting. The airplane I’m using now, the Piper Warrior, (go to the ‘Airplane’ section under ‘Base Airport’ to learn more about the Warrior), is very stale and beginner friendly plane. It’s a really great airplane to learn to fly in. Anyway, flying an airplane is fun; not only do you have to direct it left, or right, and accelerate or decelerate, you need to monitor altitude. With that in mind, I’ll go over the maneuvers I’ve learned so far.

The first maneuver I was taught was slow flight. Slow flight is important because it simulates the traffic pattern. At slower airspeeds, the airplane behaves differently. The control surfaces are less effective and the pilot needs to rely on the rudders to control where the airplane goes instead of the ailerons. The hardest thing about slow flight is that you’re only a split second away from a stall. When done properly, the entire maneuver should be conducted with the stall horn aloud. The stall horn is sounded when the airplane ‘senses’ a stall. What I mean is that on the leading edge of the left wing, there’s a little flap that will move around when not enough airflow is traveling over it. This occurs at slow speeds and a high angle of attack (AOA). With the stall horn on, and all the flaps put in, you need to be able to climb, descend, or turn the airplane. However, to ascend, you need to apply power since you can’t pull back on the controls. Dong so will increase the AOA and cause a stall. The same goes for descending, except reducing power. In slow flight, lowering the AOA will cause the plane to gain speed, and fly out of slow flight. Slow flight is definitely the trickiest maneuver for me in the first stage.

The stalls are important to learn because what you’re really practicing is stall recovery. The instructor needs to show you how to recover from a stall when one occurs. There are two common types of stalls, the power on stall and the power off stall. The power on stall simulates a stall if the pilot pulls up too much and too quickly during a takeoff. During a power on stall full power is applied at the rotation speed (rotation speed is the speed at which the plane can become and sustain lift) plus 5 knots. In essence, you’re simulating that you’re on the takeoff roll and rotating. Once you apply full power, you pull back on the controls (yoke) to simulate that you are taking off with too much AOA. The recovery for this is easy; you just lower the nose to regain smooth airflow over the wings.

The power off stall is a little more involved. It is my personal favorite maneuver so far because I find it fun. The stall is used to simulate that you took too much power out during a landing and have stalled the plane. To perform the maneuver, you establish a 3 degree descent to simulate an approach to landing. Then once at the ‘deck’ altitude (the altitude that is representative of the ground), or just above it, you take all the power out as to simulate that you’ve flared (a flare is the part of the landing which brings the nose up so the back wheels can touchdown first). As you do this, you increase back pressure on the yoke to simulate that you’re flaring too high. With no power and a high AOA, the airplane will stall. I like this maneuver because once it stalls, the nose drops dramatically towards the surface. The second this happens, you apply full power, step on the right rudder pedal to counteract the left turning tendency, and take out the first notch of flaps. It’s fun because you have to do a few things at once. The first time I did it correctly, I felt like I was Tom Cruise in top gun.

The last set of maneuvers in stage 1 of private pilot is ground reference maneuvers. The point of these is to practice flying with a reference point on the ground. There about 4 or 5 of them, but so far, I’ve only learned two. The first is turns around a point. The goal of this is to pick a point on the ground, and complete a circle around it while keeping a constant radius, as well as speed and altitude. The tricky part is playing the wind. If the wind is blowing hard form one direction, it’s going to blow you farther and faster when you’re in the downwind. This means you need to increase the angle of bank. While in the upwind, the angle of bank is shallower because you’re going against the wind. It only took me a few tries to get the hand of it, and of course the stronger the wind is, the harder the maneuver’s going to be.

The second ground reference maneuver I learned was S turns. This is done along a straight line, usually a road or straight beach. It is done at the same altitude and speed as the circle around a point. The difference is that once you make a half circle, you need to turn in the other direction and complete an S shape. It’s hard to picture it in your head if you’ve never done it before. The goal is to make the half circles the same distance away from the reference line. If you can be efficient with turns around a point, than the S turns become a lot easier.

The last maneuver, while not being a true maneuver, is landing. This is important because anyone can takeoff, landing is the tricky part. The first month that I did landings, my instructed never let go of the controls. He held on to them until I could prove that I was able to do them sufficiently without any help. The maneuver we do is called a touch and go. This means that I land, and once on the ground, I retract the flaps and apply full power and takeoff again without leaving the runway. After a month of doing about 5 touch and goes at the end of each flying lessons, I became comfortable and confident with my landings.

The maneuvers I’ve learned so far were challenging at first, but once I got the hang of them, they become fun and easy, almost boring. 

Since I missed the beginning of both the flight training as well as the ground school, I wanted to say a few things about the ground school. The last post has some of my experiences with the first few times I went up in a plane.

The ground school class is just like any college course. Twice a week my class and I meet in a room at the airport and learn about everything private pilots need to know. The first few lessons were about some of the FAA regulations, the airplane’s parts, the structure of the airplane and basic aerodynamics. After the first month, we started to get into the systems of the airplane. This incorporates the power plant (engine and propeller), fuel system, heating, oil system and braking systems. Every plane is different so I won’t go into the specifics for the plane I’m currently training in. In the first two months, the areas which needed more time were aerodynamics and aircraft systems. Basically, for aerodynamics, we learned what makes a plane fly. It wasn’t really hard but it was a lot of material. We went over stability, being streamline, stalling, spins, and emergency procedures.

There have been two tests so far in the class. The first test wasn’t so bad. In order to stay in part 141 I needed to get at least an 80% on it. I ended up with a 96%. Out of the 50 questions, I got two wrong; two questions which I would have gotten right if I read the answers more closely. The second test was centered on airport operations. Taxiing, navigating around the airport and radio communications were all covered in the second part of the class. Also, radar and air traffic control was explained. The second test was a little harder than the first, but not so bad. I ended up with a 94% on it and was able to stay In 141. For an understanding of part 141, vs. part 61, go to the ‘License’ page.

Personally, the ground class is generally more challenging than the flight training. Some of my classmates think the flying is harder. I find the flying easier because it’s what I signed up for. I like learning about how airplanes work and their systems, but I’d rather be up in the air than on the ground.

This week starts the third and final part of the ground school for private pilot. We’ll start with navigation, and end with a review for the third test as well as the private pilot ground school FAA exam. Again, look to ‘licenses’ for an explanation of the FAA’s role in training.

So I didn’t want to ignore the first month and a half or two months of my training. I wanted to explain a little about things I was worried about and how I felt after those first few flights. At the time I didn’t know it, but after a month or so, I realized that those first few flights, and the things I felt, were going to be some of the best experiences of my life; and it got better and more fun with every flight!

One of the first things I learned, but anticipated, was that flying takes dedication and perseverance. Learning to fly, learning and understanding regulations, deciphering weather information, and talking on the radio to ground or tower control is like learning a new language. There are terms and phrases that are only relevant to aviation. (Example: I always heard other pilots saying ‘wilco’ to the tower and ground control. This is a military term meaning ‘will comply’). Learning any of these things, as well as everything else in aviation can be challenging. But I feel that if you love aviation, like me, and are willing to put in the time, it’s not very hard at all.

In the first three weeks, I found myself being intimidated from things that I barely notice today (2 months into training). One of the most intimidating things for me was using the radio. During my first flight, my instructor did all the talking. However, on the second flight, I had to do it all. My instructor made me rehearse the radio calls with him before I pressed the button to talk on the frequency. It was still nerve racking knowing that anyone tuned into that frequency could hear what I was saying. What if I made mistake, or didn’t know what to say? One thing that my instructor told me, which was reassuring was that my base airport as over 300 students pilots. The tower and ground controls are use to people saying the wrong thing and messing up. It’s easy to be intimidated by the radio, but you’ll get use to it very quickly.

Another thing that I was uneasy about was finding my way and knowing where I was going, both in the air and on the ground. Navigation, as I learned a month into my training, is a section learned in ground school. The training grounds around my base airport are close enough that with 30 seconds of leaving the grounds, you can make out the airport on a clear day. Again, my instructor helped me a lot with where to go, what altitudes to be at and what speed I need to fly at. Every once and a while today he’ll still correct me for things I’m doing wrong.

The first few flights were some of my favorite lessons. Taking off for the first time felt amazing. It was a moment I had been anticipating since I was 12 years old. However, the first time I was at the controls and I had to do the takeoff was unforgettable.

Hello fellow aviators! This is my first post for this blog. The main objective of this website/ blog is to share my first hand experiences as a student pilot. When I was looking for flight schools a few months back, I had a hard time finding out what it took to become a pilot. Every school explained how I need to get a private pilot license, then an instrument rating, then a commercial license, and finally a flight instructor’s license. After a while of searching, I knew exactly what steps I needed to take from memory. What I was looking for was what the training was like. What are the hardest obstacles to overcome? Or how many hours does the average student pilot take to get his or her private pilot license? I couldn’t find any blog, website or flight school that could tell me information like this.

Anyway, I found a state college near my house, applied over the summer, and was accepted the very next day. (I already have a degree from another state school, so I guess the dean of affairs figured I would be accepted if I applied during the normal application timeframe). Once I started my flight training, my family wanted to know what it was like to fly. I went to my grandparent’s house after every flight for the first two weeks to explain exactly what I had done in that day’s lesson. Finally, I decided to share my flight training experiences with everyone. I’m trying to give people things to know about the training before they start their own training. Things I would have liked to know before I started my training, or any type of information I feel would be beneficial to a person trying to decide if flying is for them. (However, I will say that if you’re trying to decide about a flying career, or even to keep it as a hobby, you’ll need to give it 100% effort every single day and at every flight lesson, as well as the ground lessons.)

I have been trying to “build” this website for the past few days, (I’m not even close to being computer ‘savvy,’). I decided to start this blog two months into the training as well. So the posts from here are going to be my current experiences. As for the first two weeks of training, you can email me any questions you have. I understand that the first two months usually make or break you’re outlook on flying, as well as many other things, but I want this blog to be as authentic as possible. If I tried to go back and write about a past experience, I’ll have to embellish a little or make up emotions I was feeling. My posts will be within a day or two of any flight. In addition to the flight lessons, I’ll post about other things such as ground school lessons, aviation related field trips, or anything I think would be helpful to you as a future, or current, student pilot.

So I hope you enjoy my experiences, and more importantly, find them educational. Good luck with your training!