IRAW50,

Doesn't your club have a dedicated "Training Night"? If it doesn't you may want to find another club. If a club doesn't have a dedicated training time, then it probably isn't dedicated to bringing new members into the hobby in an effective fashion.

I started at our club's training night in May and it took me a good two months to really get comfortable. What I found was that although a lot of guys wanted to be "instructor pilots", most of them just weren't very good instructors. It wasn't really from a lack of trying or anything, its just that teaching is a skill itself.

There is more to training than just hooking up the buddy box and go fly. Sometimes you need detailed explanations, sometimes you need to review things, sometimes you want to "stretch your wings". A good instructor will try and give you what you need at that moment, rather than just spinning the prop and getting out of the way. In my case, I had soloed for about a month, but had a crisis of confidence due to a couple of minor crashes (involving a large pile of dirt that was blocking the end of the runway). I asked the "good" instructor if he would take off for me and keep an eye on me in case I had problems. He didn't give me a hard time about going "backwards", and after a lot of low approaches and a successful landing, I got over my mental issues.

As to your guy who didn't want to train you and made you wait for another guy, how good a pilot was he? What I mean is, he may have been wary of training you because he wasn't comfortable assuming the risk of bashing your trainer. One thing you have to do is make it clear that you accept the possibility that the instructor my wreck your plane as a going in position.

Bottom line is that it's a cool hobby and once you get over the hump and solo (and become self sufficient), you've got nowhere to go but up.

GB