I managed to complete my private pilots license at the end of May 2018. It’s been quite a journey, trying to fill my head with all that knowledge is not an easy task anymore now that I’m older. I can definitely tell I had to work much harder to memorize things.
I started the license back in about July 2016. I was finishing up the wing build and I was trying to figure out if I order the fuselage, or do I work on my license. I was coming up on a long weekend that was going to take me out of town and i knew that I would have lots of time on my hands. So i decided to sign up for online ground school and they provided me with a copy of the Aviation Textbook, “From the Ground Up”.
Fortunate for me the text book arrived just in time for me to leave. So i spend the entire long weekend reading. After that I dabbled in the ground school but never really gave it 100% effort. Soon winter was approaching and I know I needed buckle down. And that’s exactly what I did. By January I was halfway complete in the course (Helped by two full weeks holidays over Christmas). By May I was 80% complete.
At that point I figured it was a good time to start actually flying. At first I was booking two days a week for flying. Wednesday mornings and Saturday Mornings. Things went really well through the summer as the weather was often good. August 1, 2017 I wrote and passed my written PPL exam. August 29, 2017 was my first solo. It went by so quick that I barely remember it. The take off was nice, so was the circuit and final approach. But I bounced it a little on the landing. Not bad, but not perfect. After that I continued at that pace into fall but as soon as November hit, the weather was awful. Too poor visibility, too cold, wind shear, there was always something that made it not safe for flying. At one point over the Christmas holidays I had 20 bookings in a row that were cancelled. Finally February brought more favorable weather which allowed me to finally get back in the air and by March 7, I completed my short solo cross country. I took 4 weeks in there to go on a family vacation so it was a perfect time to study for the flight test.
May 7th I took my private pilot flight test and passed. All went pretty well, there’s a few things that I could have done better. The examiner hit me with a few tough questions. In the end I did ok, although my spiral dive recovery was a bit abrupt. I should have separated the recovery into three separate maneuvers (Power off, roll wings level, ease out of the dive) as I kind of blended the last two. I know this....when you screw up on something on your flight exam.....you will never forget it and never do it again.
Unfortunately I just had a few flights that I needed to complete in order to finish and get my license. The long cross country solo and I have 0.8 hours under the hood to finish. So after one particularly great weather weekend, I had knocked off the solo. And couple days later I had the 0.8 under the hood complete. May 25th I was a pilot!!
