Private Pilot Training Status
I am currently working on my PPL and am hoping to be completed by the end of September. I wanted to make a post to give some info and timelines to prospective flight students as well as current PPL students.
I started training around mid-May (2019). Generally speaking I have been flying between 3-4 times per week. I fly at a 141 school.
So as of right now I have been training for about 3 months and have about 43 hours of flight time. If I finish by the end of September it will have taken me roughly 4.5 months to get my PPL.
The school I fly at uses king schools for a lot of the ground school. The program is pretty good but there are definitely holes/poor explanation on some topics. I definitely use a lot of YouTube videos from 8MA and some M0A. (YouTube CFI channels). I just finished my progress check today for my solo cross country flight. I signed up for the prog check almost 2 weeks ago. So technically I would of been around 36-37 hours when I signed up for the cross country prog. check.
The things that I have struggled with the most have been landings. For someone of my flight time I am pretty decent at all the other items (based on what I have been told). I could definitely be doing more ground school study at home, but between work, wife and life I have not been studying as much as I should.
I have spent about $9,400 so far on actual flight training. (Not including my kneeboard, flight bag, Bose A20’s, and other misc. items). I would recommend to any flight student to get a ANR headset. I flew a few times with passive headset from the school when I first started. The Bose does such a good job protecting your hearing from a noisy piston engine. Whenever I am take my headset off at shutdown, it always blows me away at just how loud the airplane is... and that is with the engine idle and no wind noise. Also, the radio communications are easier to understand.
When I first started my training, I thought I would struggle the most with the radios. I fly out of a class D airport. So I have been getting lots of experience talking to ATC. My radio work is actually pretty good for the most part. The plane I fly is a 1978 C172N. It has no GPS. Only navigation onboard is VOR.
By the time I finish my PPL, I am expecting to of spent $12,000-$13,000 on flight training alone.