Originally Posted by
Douglas89
Like I mentioned in an earlier post, I didn’t know what I didn’t know about flying prior to starting. Even though I’m still as such a basic level, I can not believe how complicated flying is. All the things to be keeping in check, etc. I can’t believe that FO’s at regionals a few years back were only making 25k-28k per year starting off, given the training, skill and responsibility they have. I mean you could make that working at a fast food joint.
What really blows my mind is thinking about some young kids in WW1 learning to fly and then going off to war when man kind was still in infancy with aircrafts. Also, a young man training in WW2 to go off and fly in the pacific or Europe. Pretty unbelievable.
But I guess like with anything, practice will make you better. I am flying 3-4 days per week to try and not have too many gaps between flying.
Today was steep turns. My right hand steep turns were fairly decent for a noobie. I struggled to maintain altitude in my left hand steep turns. I was not using enough back pressure.
Douglas,
Aviation is like anything else; it seems complicated at first, but will quickly become familiar and comfortable. There's an old japanese saying that when one undertakes the study of a flower, at first it's just a flower. As one deepens the study, it becomes more than just a flower, but in the end as one masters it, it's just a flower again. This is true of anything, from riding a bicycle to flying an aircraft. What seems daunting now will become second nature for you soon enough.
Your instructor should have showed you that you can trim the airplane in a steep turn and it will practically fly the steep turn by itself. This is one of the "secrets" of aviation; airpalnes are stable and if flown properly often require little more than management from the pilot.
By the time you reach turbine equipment in an airline setting, should you choose to pursue it that far, you'll discover another "secret," which is that it gets easier and easier...there's actually less to do, and the aircraft are easier to fly, as you get bigger and faster into airline size airplanes. Like many here, I do several kinds of flying, but I operate big airplanes internationally, and frankly it's one of the easiest jobs one can have in aviation. We fly above weather, autopilots and autothrottles simplify, and though instrument flying will seem complicated to you when you're learning, it greatly simplifies most of what we do. In big airplanes, one hardly ever touches the rudder...true in most jet aircraft.
Every day of your flying career, from primary training through your retirement will be a learning experience, from new skills to new aircraft, but the same basic principles that you're learning now will be repeated in one form or another, and there's not a lot of difference between flying an 800,000 lb widebody airplane, and a Cessna or Piper. Just a bit more runway, a bit faster, a bit higher, and it becomes all energy and mass management...a big heavy tub.
What you're doing right now can seem daunting, and frustrating, but most anyone here will agree that some of the best times they remember in airplanes were learning to fly them, and every aviator will always remember the first true milestone, the first solo. These moments of frustration are learning experiences that you'll look back on with fondness and remember. We always go back to basics.
If you've driven a standard transmission, it may have seemed challenging at first, or riding a motorcycle. Or a bicycle. Or any of the other thousands of skills we might learn in life...they all present a challenge, but soon become second nature.
Those regional jobs paid a lot less just a few years ago...most were at or below the poverty line. Today regional new hires can be in turbine equipment shortly after their pilot training. When I started, it was years, and thousands of hours to get to a commuter airline, and fifteen years before I operated a turbine airplane. The wages you're seeing out there right now are a quantum leap from where they were not so long ago.