There is a lot of serious (and very, very good) advice in this thread. My advice is a little bit different.

You'll take for granted going through the ratings and the motions. You'll take for granted the little moments of "I did it". Slow down, relax and enjoy where you're at... enjoy your current pilot privileges... enjoy flying... Don't get so much tunnel vision on the future of your career that you forget to enjoy what you have right now. The little milestones are just as important as the big ones. Celebrate that first solo and your private pilot checkride. Take your first passenger up the day after you legally can and enjoy that part of flight training. It's a heck of a ride, don't lose sight that it should be FUN too. I feel bad when someone comes to me and says their "timebuilding" days were filled with structured flights to one of the 5 airports ATP let them to go. Where is the fun in that? And what are you learning?

I remember very few milestones because there are so many.. the day I solo'd, the day I got my private (June 6th, 2012) and honestly that's about it. But what I remember most are the adventures I had, the trips I took and the people I met. Don't take those things for granted because you're too busy building time for the next great thing.

You won't always know, but ask a lot of questions while you're learning and use your own intuition about how he/she responds. I have a method in other circumstances that I don't necessarily recommend using on someone who you will have a longer term relationship with like your flight instructor, but ask a tough question that you already know the answer to and see how they respond. (If they find out you're quizzing them, it can lower trust in a longer term relationship setting). Car buying example: Car salesman brags about how great this truck is with all the features and I had him pop the hood. We didn't have the paperwork for the truck, but seeing as he is is such an expert, I asked him if the truck had a V6 or V8. He ran inside to get the paperwork (he should've been able to look at the engine and tell it was a V8). I knew and I was testing him. His response told me a lot about how much I should trust his expertise. I don't really recommend doing this with a flight instructor though. It could tick them off if they discovered you were testing them.

Another example: There's a part on the Piper Seminole nose gear mount that sort of looks like there could be a bolt that should be there. I asked my instructor (legitimately curious) if there was a bolt missing on the gear mount and he said that he never noticed that before. Red flag! It was perfectly normal, but if I'm a brand new student questioning things that the instructor never noticed that tells me my instructor is pretty greenhorn or doesn't have a naturally curious personality to always find answers. He was still a great instructor, I just knew then to not skimp on my preflights. I sought to study hard and be the expert of the plane.


As in most things life, "It Depends." My tire tread example earlier, I knew my instructor was thankful and it opened his eyes to not tell me that we're okay to go fly without having me complete a normally minor portion of the preflight. After all it's possible a prior student burned some rubber and rolled the plane to hide the spot out of embarrassment or fear that he'd have to pay for a new tire.

It depends on your relationship with them. If they self-reflect, leave it at that. If you joke with your instructor, tell them he/she's buying the next beer. I'd recommend to not make a big deal out of the simple example type things I gave. There's a lot of mistakes you'll make that the instructor will give you slack on. Just keep your guard up, like you said, there is a responsibility on the student as well to not overly mystify the instructor. That's not just brand new instructors, that includes 10,000+ hour ex-airline pilot instructors! I've had a 10k+ instructor misrepresent the amperage on the second alternator of the SR20, mistaking it for electrical system of the SR22. A very very minor thing, but if I didn't do my own home studying I could've been swayed into believing the second alternator would've powered more components than it really could (should the first alternator fail).

I've seen how you've responded to your other posts on APC and it seems like you handle things fine. You don't seem to jump to conclusions and you aren't confrontational. Same goes in life to handle situations well.


I've only had this happen once. You might find another post I made detailing an instructor who kept touching my flight controls and we ended up battling each other. Super scary and frustrating, especially on landing, but what sealed it for me was when he lied about it and tried to throw it back on me. That was the first and last time I flew with him. I think it'll be rare if you experience an instructor who lies.

Reading the remainder with great anticipation!


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Very helpful.


Wow!


Double Wow!


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So many pearls of wisdom.


Heck. I've never even heard of AC 43.13! This is great. I've got more homework:

https://monosnap.com/file/Fgj105D4yo...Lj4Spqce3y.png



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An abundance of thanks!


Big thanks.



Well, that was worth far more than the price of admission. You should write a book. I really do appreciate the attention to detail and for understanding the reason behind the OP. This is precisely the kind of thing I was hoping to find - a diamond in the rough so to speak on the things I should keep my eyes, ears and mind tuned for.

Thank you for offering a wealth real world issues that are important, often times overlooked or never even seen by some. I will make sure to keep my focus wide and deep and as you say, never take anything for granted.

Thank you very much for the valued contribution. :)

Indeed, and I do appreciate all of it. I thought it was a good question to ask before taking the plunge myself - especially given my goals. JohnBurke, just set me on fire, too.


Funny. I just got back from another local Flight Club and saw all the shredded shirts hanging from the wall. I thought to myself, that would be a bit too premature for me and my goals. However, you are right. It is important to savor that first solo, first passed check-ride, the arrival of the Private Pilots License and every stage in-between the very beginning and the ultimate goal itself, single pilot VLJ. I guess it makes no sense not to celebrate those things along the way.

I am very focused on what the net/net result will look like. I'm very anxious to get there, no doubt. But, I do think maybe I should pace it a little. Maybe slow it down a bit. This has been a lifetime in the making, so I've got a lot of energy flowing right now.



Ok, so that is one of the questions I was going to ask about. Is it really ok to take up passengers immediately after passing the Private exam with the DPE? Or, is that a bit too premature? I've always wondered whether I'd feel comfortable with "souls-on-board" other than my own at that point.



I used performance numbers from the Conquest II, which gives me a Time Building training radius that brings a good variety of airspace classifications into focus, including several Non-Towered airports as well. So, there will be a lot of airspace, terrain, weather, density altitude and night time options available as I increase skill sets and start taking on increasingly more challenging weather conditions while never exceeding my abilities or that of the aircraft (flying with a Mentor periodically as a sanity check).


No doubt. Thanks very much for the input! :)

I was ANG, went to an F-100 unit; good seat to learn survival instincts—single seat, Category E plane in the Northeast.

GF

That's one of the things that concerns me. Quizzing the Instructor should be fair game. The Instructor should not be beyond the need for individual vetting by a student or potential student. Else, the student or potential student can't have a viable way (method) for determining the quality of instruction he/she may or may not receive from said Instructor.

It is kind of like Ronald Reagan used to say: Doveryai, no proveryai. Trust, but verify. I don't know if I spelled that correctly or not, but you get my point. I think a good Instructor would welcome and even relish the opportunity to put all concerns aside by rendering their student's or potential student's question so thoroughly answered that he/she has no doubt in their mind as to the level of competency their Instructor has.

If I were an Instructor, I'd make it so crystal clear that my level of competency was well beyond that which was necessary to instruct the student, that no question or doubts about my competency would ever emerge during the course of conversation my student might have with another regarding how their flight training was progressing.


I want them to know their being tested. In fact, right up front, I'm going to get agreement that I need to know they have the ability to Teach within certain parameters that I know I can learn best. This gets into one of the reasons why our Public School Systems are doing so poorly today, but let me give you a small example. Each individual has a dominant neurological filtering sub-system through which they evaluate information within their environment and make decisions about how their interact with the world in which they live. This is very simple neuroscience used in a number of different places today.

There are essentially three (3) types of dominant filters. Most people have adapted one or the other as their primary filter for understanding the world around them. Some people split across two dominant filters, but most use one primary filter.:

- Auditory
- Visual
- Kinesthetic

Teach a Visual person through their Auditory filter and that person will never achieve optimal learning. Teach an Auditory person through their Visual filter and you will get the same lack of optimization in the learning experience. Teach a Kinesthetic through either their Auditory or Visual filters and optimal learning is impossible. This reality sits at the core of most failed educational systems in existence today. It is not that people are dumb, slow, stupid or suffer from severe ADD (in may cases ADD is incorrectly diagnoses when the "symptoms" were detected in school). The problem is that not everyone's brain is wired the exact same way, which has everything to do with Genetics and Early Childhood Inputs To The Brain (Parenting).

I've been studying this for about 25 years. I was split between Visual and Kinesthetic. My Auditory channel was severely unseated. This is what made me such a lousy Student in School. Yet, today, I have a PhD in Physics. What happened? I was classified as a "Slow Learner" as a child. They were wrong. The "System" put a "Teacher" in front of a blackboard and made that Teacher Audibly instruct their classroom with Visual references on the blackboard. So, my brain was receiving highly confusing inputs and that's what caused me to pick up on material slower than the rest.

Fast forward to later in Elementary School. A counselor knowing about neuroplasticity took me in and began arranging workshops (this was flat out experimentation back in those days) with me after school. I actually began enjoying the "Workshops" more than classroom instruction. What happened? They tested me and found my Dominant Filters. They then began "Teaching" me that exact same course material, but through my Dominant Filters. They found out that I was a Visual/Kinesthetic split and began instructing me that way.

First, they delivered the Visual instruction which was followed up immediately with some kind of hands on Kinesthetic experience modeling the original instruction. Boom! I took off and learning was now incredibly fun and amazingly easy - simple.

To this day, my Auditory channel sucks. You can imagine what this could mean while sitting in the cockpit trying to communicate with ATC and my Instructor. This is why I have purchased the "Say Again, Please: Guide To Radio Communications" and have been drilling that into my brain for a while now. Radio communications are purely Audible. Most flight instruction given will be Audible followed by Kinesthetic then Visual. That's backwards for optimal learning for me personally.

So, I'm going to have to sit down with a proposed Instructor who can understand this sufficient to gear or skew the training through a Visual/Kinesthetic/Auditory mode. Show me first, then let me experience it second, then tell me the details third. It may seem backwards to those who are purely Visual, but it is the correct channel for optimized learning for me personally.

Want to teach me how to do a power-on stall? Show me how its done first, then let me do it, THEN tell me all about it last. My brain will eat that up and you won't have to spend a billion instruction cycles trying to teach me something that jamming my brain.

Many years later, I learned how to use this in Business, but I remained ethical and moral. I learned how to pick up on an individuals Dominant Processing Filters in a first meeting. I could jam their brain, if I wanted to improve my business position and they would never know it was happening to them. But, again, I never did that (though I experimented with it outside of Business to confirm it). Instead, I helped people figure what they truly wanted, needed and desired by using their Dominant Filters without them knowing it - in a Counselors fashion.

I'm going to need a flexible Flight Instructor.




Very interesting, indeed.

Yesterday, I just got a text message back from a Flight Instructor at a local club nearby who said that he had "...no idea what a VLJ was...", but that he'd be more than happy to arrange an "Introductory Flight."

Question: Do I walk or run from this Instructor's call back? :D I think just politely moving on would be best.



Yes - that is scary. But, out of pure curiosity - was he 'touching' the controls in an attempt to speak to you through his actions? It would freak me out as well, but I'm just curious if whether or not this is a typical method that Instructors use when the see something the student is not doing right - rather than talk to the student, they simply nudge the controls a bit. Not sure if that's true or not.

Thanks for the contribution!

F-100. I read about its exploits in Vietnam back when I was reading everything I could about Fighters from WWI through Korea (at the time). It was one of the sexiest jet warbirds ever built - but that's just my opinion. The Phantom replaced it. Did you get a chance to transition to it through ANG?

Kind of off topic, but I've also thought about having a jet warbird some day. I know the L-39 community is probably one of the largest, or at least was. Some lucky SOB got two Su-27 Flankers out of Arizona, a few years back. I think they were asking $5mil for fully refurbished Flankers including IRAN, of course. I would not mind an L-59, but I've never seen one for sale in the US. There are still a lot of L-39s out there, however.

Pride Aircraft: Sukhoi SU-27 Flankers

Are you a fan of jet warbirds in the hands of us "Civilians?" I know some don't like the idea.

Yes, went through the last “A” course on the Hun in Tucson; flew it about 500 hours before going to the A-10. No, not a big fan, mostly because how do you keep the ejection seat maintenance up?

GF

I've seen that topic come up quite a bit on warbird forums in the past. It seems to be something of a hot topic. One camp basically says, don't need them. That if such a scenario ever developed, they'd take their chances with the aircraft than trying to survive the potential collision with the canopy. The other camps seems to swing in the exact opposite direction. They rather take their chances with getting clear of the canopy glass and frame on egress than hanging out to see what happens inside the seat.

The other factors seems to be how the aircraft has been certified, as to whether or not hot seats and/or the chute itself is even legal for use. I think most all of the L-39s are designed under "Experimental Exhibition" category here in the US and require FSDO approvals to fly beyond a certain distance from the aircraft's base (at least that's what I hear). But, I understand that many of the sets have been pinned and the pyro removed.

I guess I would favor pinning it. Let's say the pyro works and it ignites/fires. In the L-39, the pyrocartridge is supposed to activate the remainder of the cockpit canopy ejection system. Well, that's mechanical in nature, too. Since these warbirds have not been maintained by their original military units and certainly not under an aircraft manufacturer's maintenance contract, I'd be concerned about whether or not that canopy would break away correctly. And, you won't know until you need to use it. In other words, the crash may not kill you but the ejection could - it all depends. I'm not sure if it is a 50/50 proposition, however.

The Parts are available from reputable sources, but like you imply - it must be maintained by an equally reputable source. I'd deactivate it and go with the flow. It would be part of the acceptable risk of owning and operating a jet warbird, at least in my mind. Another reason to pick one with a relatively good Civilian Safety Record, I guess.

I've done some homework on it. Not 100% convinced. If I did, it would be the L-39. Plenty of parts and good support for it in the US. Though, I've seen a gorgeous ground-up full restoration of an A4 Skyhawk out there for sale. Restoration circa 2013.

Without the seat, it is unlikely for the crew to survive a forced landing. The canopy should be jettisoned as the first step in the ejection sequence, at least, it is modern seats. Aerobatics generally has the pilots wearing chutes and having made a silk letdown after a mid-air; I wouldn’t get in one of these jets without an operational seat and the associated training. Ya just never know.

PS: Yes, the canopy goes first, in my experience.

GF