Flight Training - January/February 2020 - 8

AROUND THE PATCH BY JILL W. TALLMAN

Technical Editor JILL W. TALLMAN soloed at
age 40 in 18 hours in a Socata Tampico TB-9.
jill.tallman@aopa.org

GIVE YOURSELF A BREAK
Buckle up, student pilots, because I'm going to lecture you for a
few hundred words.

I have seen a lot of social media posts lately in which student pilots berate
themselves for not being good enough at flying.
I'm not talking about people who have been pounding away at flight lessons
for months, or even several weeks. I'm talking about people who, after two or
three lessons, don't understand why learning to fly is so hard. Is flying really for
them? Should they just quit?
Learning to fly is hard, for many of us. Flying is not what we were designed to
do. It takes us out of the comfort of operating on a two-dimensional axis, where
there's solid ground underfoot. Now we're in operating in three dimensions, usually a few thousand feet above the ground.
Of course it's not easy. Why would you think it would be easy? I equate learning to fly with learning to crawl, then walk, then run. It's done in stages and it
takes time. Did you learn to walk after only three tries? I wasn't there, but I can
assure you, you did not. So give yourself a break. You can do this.
Presolo students, this next part of the lecture is for you. Are you watching the
hours rack up and wondering why you haven't soloed? Or if you're ever going to
solo? Stop it.
Years ago, people soloed at seven, eight, or nine hours. I don't know how they
did it and I'm not sure they know how they did it. For some reason people think
this is the gold standard for soloing, and if you fall outside that parameter, somehow you are not good enough.
8 FLIGHT TRAINING JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2020

That's bunk. You are not competing
with the other students at your flight
school, or the pilots you watch on YouTube.
You are only competing with yourself.
When it comes to soloing, there are
so many variables that factor into when
you're ready. Let's look at a few.
Schedule: Are you flying regularly? If
you can fly two or three times a week, that
helps you to progress and solidifies what
you're learning without having to go back
and review as much. Most people try to fly
once a week, but stuff happens-weather
intervenes, airplanes break own, family
issues pop up. "Once a week" becomes a
few times a month or even once a month-
and that's detrimental to progress.
Weather: Low ceilings or a little
too much wind and that's it for your
planned solo. Be patient and know that
the weather is always changing, and it
will happen for you.
Age: You're never too old to learn to
fly, but a 40-year-old is not going to pick
it up as easily as a teenager might. It
may take a little longer to solo, but you
will solo. I believe in you.
I can hear you, by the way. "It's easy
for you to sit there behind your keyboard and tell me not to worry when
you're not the one paying for my flight
training." I get that. The Hobbs meter
keeps ticking and the money keeps
adding up. All I can say is, stressing
about how soon you will solo will not
make that day come any sooner or save
you any money. Here's what might:
chair flying and practicing your flows
and emergency checklists; thoroughly
debriefing and reviewing your lessons;
and practicing on a desktop simulator.
The Air Race Classic is an annual
event in which women pilots compete
on a 2,000-nautical-mile cross-country
course. Obviously when some people
are flying Cirruses and some people are
flying Cessna 172s and others are flying
Piper Comanches, the playing field isn't
equal. So the women don't race against
each other-they race against a handicap
set in advance of the event, trying to
beat that time using winds aloft.
That's how we should approach
flight training. We're not trying to be
better than other pilots-we're trying to
be the best pilot we can be. It might take
us a little longer than some to get across
the finish line, but at the end of the day
we're all winners. FT

Flight Training - January/February 2020

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