Solo

The progress is always slow. Each landing fine tunes the previous effort resulting in small but significant improvements. "You're slow. Go around!" Then, "You're too high", "Nose attitude controls airspeed, power controls rate of descent." Each circuit adds that little bit of experience. The pattern fits together like a chain, a weak link and it all falls apart. "Let's do it again." Slowly, overtime, the CFI becomes silent as the student makes corrections without being prompted. Typically, it takes from 10 to 30 hours of flight time before a pilot has the instinctive feel of an aircraft to be safe flying solo in other than perfect (no wind) weather. And typically, it takes an Instructor about that much time to trust a student to fly his airplane.

Bruce made good progress but just didn't see the roundout and flare. So I added a few exercises to our routine. We departed our home airport to try other venues (KZPH). We exercised. One circuit after another. "Let's try it again, this time hold the speed a little longer." Again....again...and then he saw it. We entered the pattern at home field and I stayed quiet. Nice landing. Again. Nice pattern, good corrections, safe landing.

Today we went out and I did the customary three circuits. It was perfect weather. He let me out on the ramp and went off on his own.

Nice job.

Reference: Flying

"But you will want to share the event with your friends and family afterwards. My biggest regret with my solo flight is that I didn’t get any pictures. And while the experience is still fresh in my mind, it would have been nice to be able to look back at that moment. Make sure that your first solo gets recorded. Pictures are great and video is even better."

Video Notes: Solo