RE: SOLO!!!!
newbtoRC,
congrats on the solo. I know how you feel. But just because you have soloed doesn't mean that your training is over. I see too many people do a solo flight and then think that they are completely trained. A lot of times they will move on to a second plane and find that they are in over their heads because the moved too fast. I am an instructor and just because the student soloed doesn't mean I am done with them, but rather the solo flight is just another step in their training. I still have things to teach them. Plus, plus on top of that there is a lot of practice the student needs to do before they move on. I tell my students that good way you can tell when you are ready to move to a second plane is to take off, climb, roll to inverted, fly a complete circuit of the field inverted, do a loop inverted, do a roll inverted, roll back to normal flight, climb to a couple of mistakes high, cut the engine, and then land dead stick on the runway. When you can do that you are more than ready to move to a second plane. With those skill under your belt you will find that you can really enjoy the next planes you get, instead of always feeling afraid that you are going to crash them. After about the 5th-6th flight a student makes they have about 90% of the skill that every pilot has, but what they are lacking in is practice.
IMHO a pilot is never done practicing. I know that I'm not. Every summer I set goals for myself and I keep practicing the current one I am working before I move onto the next. Right now my goals for this summer are (in order that I want to learn them), a GOOD 4 point roll, a knife edge loop, and a GOOD vertical 8. I say good on these because I can (kind of) do them right now, but they are ugly. I want to work on improving them
Ok, I'll get down off of my soap box now.
I hope this helps some out there