Advice on completing PPL
 

Hello folks,

I have a full time and have begun my PPL training at a local club 4 years ago. I initially booked 1 - 2 flying lessons a week with a CFI. Weather conditions often meant that I would fly 3-4 times in a given month.

After about 7 months at this pace and about 45 hrs on my clock I was endorsed for solo. Over the following 8 months I went on to log 5 hours of solo and began cross country training. I was able to log about 10 hours of CC before adverse financial circumstances lead me to interrupt my training.

About 2 years later I resumed my training. Passed my written exam, logged another 10 hours with my CFI, saw my solo endorsement renewed and went on to train for CC again.

I now have 80hrs of flying and can't seem to see my PPL in sight, especially with winter around the corner, meaning less opportunity to fly. I fly in the San Francisco Bay Area, arguably not the easiest place to learn.

I would like to get your advice on the best way forward. I am considering taking a couple weeks off to go train full time in a place with more clement conditions. Once my PPL obtained, my plan is to fly recreationally, and take occasional lessons to improve specific skills.

Thanks for your help

Read: " I have a full time JOB"

Flying only once a week or less is why your PPL has taken so long. Try to find the time to fly at least 2 and ideally 3+ times per week and with your hours you'll get your PPL done in hardly any time. It ends up costing a lot more money to fly once a week than it does to fly 3-5 times per week in the long run as you've seen.

I was busy when I did my PPL training too. There's nothing wrong with flying at night. I was flying at 6pm most days after school or work. In the winters that meant logging lots of night time. It's still entirely possible to get it done and you can use your weekends or days off for solo flights and your checkride.

The ideal learning rate for most people is minimum 2 lessons per week and indeed you are violating the basic learning rate principle the way you are presently doing it. You may be a normal learner but you are throwing water on it with all those gaps. 3 lessons per week is better, more is overkill for most people. If you take less than 2 lessons a week you are barely retaining what you had, if not losing it. There is a momentum that gets established not only for you but for your instructor who may forget where your skills are.

There are several "pilot mills" offering rapid PPL training, I suggest you save up some cash and buy one of those courses. AllATPs, Sheebles, American Flyers, there are a bunch of these schools. The general idea is you go where they are for a week or two and leave your other life behind. When I have had conflicts in the past with long job hours and my flight training, I have made use of fast courses. The way to do it is to save up the money while you study using a self administered program for the written exam. Take the written, then schedule your flight work during your vacation. These courses are best viewed as concentrated finishing courses, so you should go to it up on your knowledge and ready to knock it out quickly. Showing up cool will make you end up having to buy extra hours at a steep rate.

ATP no longer offers just a PPL, only "singles" offered are Instrument, Multi-Engine add-on and CFI (be it FOI, FII, MEI).

Thank you for the feedback and recommendations.

Weather has been the biggest issue in increasing the # of flight/week. I now typically book 2-3 flights / week, but 1-2/week get cancelled due to poor weather. A full time job means I cannot jump into a plane as soon as the skies are clear.

It seems like a good approach would be to try and get a custom finish-up plan for my PPL with one of the "pilot mills" you are suggesting. American Flyers seems to offer such option, while others to MALB's point only have add-ons.
Do you guys have any recommendations?

Until I am able to take a week off to go to a "pilot mill" it might make sense to continue my current training, to at least maintain my skills.

On the topic of skills, it feels that a lot of my instructor feedback boils down to "It's not good enough, you need to practice more" which while it might be true does no point to specific ways to address my shortcomings.
Do you have any suggestions for a more targeted and focused training?

Thanks again for your advice

First off, you instructor is a tool, get a new one, who can tell you exactly WHY 'it's not good enough', and tell you how to fix it.

Second, so you spring $$$$ for a Pilot Mill, and you take a week off work, thinking you will fly every day....but then the weather is crap for that week and you don't fly at all... Then what? :rolleyes:

Third, what do you do after work and on the weekends? THAT's when you need to be at your local airport getting this done. You can fly more than once per day, yes? Fly after work and if the weather is good on Saturday, fly 3 times, and twice on Sunday or make that your cross country day.

If you want it bad enough, you can do anything, but you will have to put other after work and weekend activities on hold until you finish up. Once you get your PPL you can start taking your friends up for sight seeing rides and making them help pay for the airplane so you can fly and build time and experience.

AOPA has a list of flight schools, I am not sure where you are but if you run a thread asking for a "good flight school near (Kalamazoo)" you might get a good response from people here. The other poster said why go to a pilot mill like American Flyers if the weather can be crap during your stay, and if you choose a local school that may be true depending on where you are. This is why a lot of pilot mills have locations in Texas, Florida, So California and other sun zones. Go there.

Well I agree your instructor should do better than just say not good enough, but you may also be doing things that point to a lack of practice rather than any one bad habit you need to break. Sounds like that is the case, and I have had many students do the same thing usually for the same reason (too much work). They expect to make progress developing a difficult set of skills with 1-2 hours a week, not gonna happen. I am not sure I would even bother doing it at that ineffective rate, save some money and go to the pilot mill in sunny TX or wherever it is on your next vacation.

The subject of what to do with students who like flying but cannot devote the time to pass comes up occasionally. I discourage them from doing this. They usually get their solo signoff and want to fly around the patch or local airport indefinitely while developing all sorts of bad habits making no progress towards anything. They like the thrill of being half way there without the stress of actually getting there. It's a pitfall, don't do it. Any instructor who allows frivolous soloing without flight-by-flight targeting of student performance goals is wasting your time, even if they will allow it (and many do). There is no such thing as a perpetual student pilot, and the misuse of a solo signoff to allow screwing around by the student is just that, a misuse of the privilege.

Don't get caught up in the amount of hours you have, especially as someone who envisions the goal of flying recreationally. Since you are not a professional student in perfect geographic area, I feel that 100 hours or more is about right. I have been involved in a 141 school out of Teterboro,NJ. Your surrounding airspace and weather is not exactly the same as TEB, but similar. TEB may be slightly less conducive to blowing through your PPL then San Fran. Even though 141 says that a student could have been eligible for a PPL with 35 hours, it was very unrealistic in our part of the world. Our students with a similar lifestyle to yours averaged 80-100 hours easily. Like others have said, the more you fly the quicker you will finish, but don't get caught up in the rush to finish. Especially for a someone who will be flying recreationally, treat the process of learning to fly as a journey. Good luck.

Go to AZ. Or FL in the winter. SOCAL in the late summer/early fall is a safe bet too.

Clear skies exist if you're willing to travel.

I agree your instructor should probably give more detailed feedback than "you need to practice more", but he's probably right...you need to practice more often.

Very helpful feedback, much appreciated.

As cubdriver underlined, I now realize that a good portion of my flights where not clearly focused on acquiring new skills.
Many of my solo flights were spent going back and forth between small airports within the allowed 25nm radius around my home airport. While this definitely helped me get comfortable with my local airspace, it did not help much in building some of the skills needed for cross country. In the end, I was only able to have one or less x-country per week which is, to everyone's point, insufficient.

Following you guys advice I have done the following:
- met with my instructor to identify those skills I still need to acquire before my checkride
- agreed on how many flights / prep time I should need to acquire those skills. According to my instructor, I am around 7 x-country flights away from my checkride, which amounts to around 15 hrs flying + 15hrs prep time.
- defined clear objectives for each of my upcoming lessons
- identified things to study at home before each flight
- agreed to assess my progress after 4 flights to make sure I am still on track. If not, find why and modify plan accordingly

Finally, I have scheduled as many flights as my schedule and the plane availability at my club allows: 2 x 3hrs session per week-end. To timbo's point I could book 2 sessions / day on the week-end but this would not leave me time between flights to plan new x-country routes, revise procedures to practice in flight and do some chair flying.
Once I am cleared for solo x-country, I will book several 5 hrs blocks to complete the required 150nm, 3 airports flight.

Thanks again for all your advice. I will keep you guys updated on my progress. If the weather cooperates and all goes according to plan I should have my PPL by the end of January....at least that's the goal.

Sounds good, you are approaching it in a mature way. You'll be done soon then you can fly for fun without as much stress.

That's because I am 40 :D

Thanks for the kind words, I am looking forward to that day.

Hello Guys,

It's been a couple of months since I came to this forum for advice and I wanted to close the loop. Without further ado, I am proud to say that I am now a Private Pilot! and I want to thank you for your advice and support.

The process was not smooth and I thought I would share it here in case it can help someone else:
- after the meeting with my instructor things moved pretty fast and I got green lighted to take my club solo cross country checkride only 2 weeks later
- finding a club examiner within a week's notice proved challenging and I discovered that not all the club's CFI were equally friendly and helpful. With the help of my instructor and the club admin we found someone and I completed my checkride before christmas.
- after a 2 weeks hiatus for the holidays, I took 2 more lessons and begin flying solo cross country. After 2 weeks I was able to complete my long solo cross country flight and we begun looking for a DPE
- For some reason the bay area only had one DPE for a little while and there was a consensus among the CFIs that the situation was not healthy (this DPE was apparently not the fairest guy). They called upon a ex-DPE to come back into business and I for one called myself lucky that he agreed for he was not only insanely qualified but also great to fly with even in an exam situation.
- For my 1st appointment the weather was overcast and we had to cancel
- For my 2nd appointment, the weather looked clement and we completed the oral portion of the test. By the time we were done clouds had moved in and I judged the conditions unsafe. The DPE agreed and we rescheduled.
- For my 3rd appointment, the plane I had booked became non-op a day before. I booked another plane at the last minute and found out during the pre-flight that the tail light was non-op. I called the DPE to cancel.
- For my 4th appointment all went well until I messed up the recovery for unusual attitude with the foggles. The DPE failed me.
- I booked a lesson with instructor, went over the exercise without problem and he renewed my endorsement.
- I then booked my 5th and last appointment with the DPE and was able to complete the exercise with flying color. The flight lasted less than 20 min and the DPE looked baffled that someone who messed up the exercise so badly a week earlier suddenly completed it flawlessly :) He gave me my PPL!
- That same day I took my wife and we went for a San Francisco Bay Tour together for the first time. I flew through the B space with confidence and was rewarded with gorgeous views of Alcatraz and the Bay Bridge.

I am proud to say I am now a Private Pilot!
Thanks all for your help and support.

Cheers,

Just came upon this thread so cannot take credit for the prior guidance you received, but nonetheless I want to congratulate you on your achievement. A pilot's license is a rare privilege. Use it well and enjoy your hard-won freedoms!

Blue skies.

Congratulations!

Congrats 2strokes. Mission accomplished.
Now where does it go from here?
Anywhere?

Thanks for the kind words folks.
If you guys remembered, I had a deadline to complete my PPL. I never mentioned why :) but if you guys are curious, here is the answer: www.wolfandzebra.com