Thanks so much for the detailed replies.
ORIGINAL: MinnFlyer
ORIGINAL: CloudSkipper
I did not think that it would be as structured as that.
There is definitely structure, but it's not as bad as it seems.
Here is some good perspective:
Imagine you lived WAAAAY out in the boonies all by yourself and taught yourself how to drive a car. You learned how to turn right and left, how to go fast, how to go slow, how to stop, etc. All in all, you can drive a car pretty well.
Now you move to a town and discover that they have ROADS to drive on. And you're not allowed to drive off them onto the sidewalks.....
<snip>
.....Now, you don't ALWAYS have to stay in the "Box" but if there should ever be a mishap, of if someone calls "Coming in" (Which means he's lining up to land) you'll want to get into the pattern to stay clear of whatever may be happening.
Great way of putting it
Actually my reaction to that is conversely that it sounds much more interesting that way. Didn't want to over-quote, but all the info there was great as to the whole cooperation between people flying and standard procedures that everyone follows. Sounds to me like that makes it more not less enjoyable and interesting. That's not to say that it isn't nice to get the air space to yourself now and then, but there's many aspects to it to enjoy and to be good at.
ORIGINAL: Rcpilot
I'm a volunteer instructor at our club. We have a great program that is semi-formal. During daylight savings time, we shut the field down at 4pm every Thursday. We fly until dark. During that time, only students and instructors are allowed to fly......
Thanks for detailed the account. I've been focusing a lot on how an instructor might want a session to go (and that has actually overlapped a lot with how I would want to maiden a new plane anyway; flying especially methodically and gradually testing). The detail you gave me will enable me to do that to much better effect now.
Couldn't quote everything but every reply added something and helps a lot.
I realize that the field is a shared resource that only works if people cooperate and know what to do at all times.
Taking things methodically is what I would do even if I had my very own private field (my impatience years earlier was partly due to some other factors; I had a LOT going on at the time). I'm generally very methodical about every new skill I learn, so working with the instructor will be right in line with that. These days I'm not at all in a rush to do anything that might not work out the way I expect.
Again thanks everyone. Great info
P.S. One specific question I have actually concerns the trimming. Trainers have a rather pronounced positive pitch tendency (let's call it PPT). In the sim and also flying years ago, that seemed like too much to me (
not flying at full throttle). I liked to trim the tendency down a fair bit... still clearly leaving some PPT but not so very much of it. Might an instructor be in agreement with that? I can still fly with the full PPT and as I said I want to do the instruction the accepted way, but in general, given a choice, I tend to prefer less PPT. No biggy, but would be interesting to know about that.
ORIGINAL: Rcpilot
Next year, or maybe the year after that--put in a season of flight instruction. Help somebody else learn to fly. Give something back to the club. I put in around 250--300hrs per year doing volunteer flight instruction. It's your turn. Give something back and nurture your hobby by helping somebody else become addicted.
I would love to do that someday