Private Pilot Flight Training and Instruction Flight Training Article Library | Back To 4VFR.COM The Second Solo The first solo is deceptive in that it overcomes much of the tension related to, "can I do it?" The next few lessons need to be tightly controlled since the confidence level is likely to exceed the competence level. Poor performance and attitudes require the instructor to be more demanding and critical in order to re-establish attention. Ask questions that require explanation and insight into systems and procedures. Supervise the flight preliminaries and carefully review the requirements of the next few flights. Make it clear that all solo flights require instructor approval. Once way of retrieving student attention is to introduce some advanced landing and takeoffs. Do this to establish a line for the student to see how much more there is to know. Review ground reference and send him out to practice. Make it so that each flight has a required series of maneuvers with PTS levels required. Solo Instruction When you fly solo you are self-instructing to prevent self-destructing. All at once you realize that in spite of all you have learned there is even more you don't know and need to know. Solo flight is truly an eye opener. Every flight is a new learning experience regardless of your pilot time. Every flight begins by thinking about everything related to the flight. Get your priorities in order before going to the airport. Make the checks of yourself, weather, scheduling and instructor approval required. Think through the flight by looking over the airport guide, frequencies, checkpoints, what you will say when, course, altitude and alternatives. Think through similar former flights and think/plan to anticipate events before they happen. Relive previous mistakes so that they don't become habitual. Getting away with a mistake is a sure way to have it grow into a bad habit. Don't 'instruct' yourself into accepting poor performance. Get the training you are paying for, even when solo. Every solo flight is a checkride where you are the pilot, instructor, and examiner. Tape every flight and save the tape. Every solo flight will have the good and the bad. You will know some and be deficient in part. While you may not know what you don't know, talk into the tape as you feel insecure, uncertain, or concerned. Play the tape back immediately after the flight and again ten years later. You will learn something new on each playback. Feel free to call your instructor regarding your flights. Cover everything, the good and the bad. Developing a self-improvement flying program as a solo student pilot should carry over as a practice into your flying career. Some pilots, once they have acquired a license and a few hours seem to quit learning. It almost as though they have taken a dose of medicine that prevents any further accumulation of knowledge and skill. Don't let it happen. A new pilot today is entering a world where airplanes are safer, easier to fly, navigate themselves, and often proceed with the pilot only as a monitor of what is happening. It's a new world. If you are not careful you will find some vital habits atrophying such as looking out the window, knowing where you are, seeing traffic, and even flying the airplane. Watch out or the fun will be gone, too. After Solo-What? Unless you deliberately write out your standards you are apt to be willing to accept less than your best. Do not make too many solo flights as your own instructor without a phase check by the instructor. Bad habits are quick to arise and difficult to eliminate. Make a list of the skills you dislike, avoid, or feel insecure doing. Work on how smoothly you can make a transitions from one configuration or airspeed to another. For one thing we will start working out fuel consumption figures for 85K. Top off tanks after landing. Up to now we have been burning fuel; now we will start managing fuel. As part of every flight we will fill the tanks up to the departure level and determine consumption. Then we will take to POH and compute fuel used for taxiing, runup, cruise, and descent. After doing this a couple of time we want to start estimating (not guessing) fuel burn for our flights and then comparing our estimate with actual. Make a fuel log for each flight with time for each power setting in every flight regime. Keep the fights in sequence and you will begin to see a pattern develop. When solo you are the instructor who much pre-plan the elements that you expect to accomplish during your solo flights. Write out the lesson as you expect to fly it. Airspeed control, altitude parameters and heading variations are all a part of your program. Slow flight, stalls, steep turns, ground reference, radio procedures and all sorts of arrivals, landings and go-arounds are included. Locate emergency fields but don't practice emergencies. Spiral descents should be planned to come out over a particular point at 1000'. When you get back to the airport study the area chart and the sectional. Try to find questions to ask the instructor. Every new issue has significant changes. Read at least one chapter of the POH. Do a weight and balance sequence by varying the passenger load so that less than full fuel will be required. The life of your newly acquired skills is limited by the frequency with which you provide reinforcement. How often you fly is more important than the duration. If you go through the entire regime of a dozen touch-and-goes will not provide the skill reinforcement of an inter-airport flight. Every flight should be a skills-reinforcement and development flight. Before you get into the aircraft write out the tolerances you expect to meet. Select an altitude tolerance of + 20 feet, a heading variation of + 5 degrees, and + 5 knots of airspeed over ever increasing lengths of time. Try starting at two minutes in climbs, level and descents. Stick these parameters on an oversized print out on the panel. When you bust a parameter, start over. Every skill of taxiing should be within one foot of a real or imaginary taxi line, Every stop should be + 10 degrees of selected heading and + 1 foot of a selected line. Takeoff should rotate to attitude that allows liftoff + 3 knots of recommended. Wind correction is applied immediately + 10 degrees margin for parallel runway. Runway check is made at 300 feet. Within 100 feet after takeoff aircraft is at Vy + 3 knots and trimmed hands off on heading + 5 degrees. Ball centered throughout. Initial level off is anticipated and acquired within + 50 feet and corrected for hands off within one minute. Heading throughout level-off is + 5 degrees. For VOR tracking, fly a pre-selected heading and fly it + 0 tolerance long enough to resolve next required heading. Altitude + 20 feet. Descents to pattern altitudes should begin early enough to allow retention of power at a reduced level. Base you selection of when to initiate your descent on time. The time will vary with your groundspeed so always figure in the effect of wind. Use the vertical speed indicator. (VSI). Landings are performed with pattern altitude + 20 feet and all speeds past the numbers + 3 knots and correcting. Trim setting always for hands-off. All power changes are reductions, all yoke movements are back. Touch down is always in the first third of the runway or for accuracy +200 past a point selected abeam the numbers. Written by Gene Whitt Flight Training Article Library | Back To 4VFR.COM