vtol_guy

just made my first landing on thursday and i was wondering approx. how many more flights till i go solo?

i know some of it will depend on how fast i learn ect but wud i be write in thinking maybe 3/4 more flights?

I'm very competent with flying around normally, the only thing i havent done before is a take off but im told it shudnt be too much of a problem with me as i've been flying for a lllooonnngg time

thanks for any input guys

Goinstraightup

My Feedback: (26)

Taking off is usually quite a bit easier than landing. Sounds like you are close. When you can go up and do 5 consecutive touch and go's with your instructor, I'd cut the cord.

vtol_guy

cord? what cord?!

hehe, im trained the traditional old fashioned way...mainly because i couldnt afford/ be bothered to buy a buddy cord :stupid:

oh well

JCaste

I don't really know what to tell you. I think it mostly depends on your age and skills. Most of the guys I fly with are in their forties and it has taken them a year or so and they still have serious trouble to keep their planes with the original shape after landings ! I learned in a month (about 6-8 flights) with a aileron-less trainer. You can bet I was nervous when I first took off my 2nd plane, a jupiter, that made like 2-3 rolls per sec!!!
ok, so to go solo you must be proficient in taking off and landing. In my case it was easier to land. I made low passes with throttle nearly idle to get used to the feeling, then lower and lower and soon started touch&going. If you can touch and go, you can land.
Taking off was bit difficult to me, mostly because the gear was bent and the plane, that took off in 10 m, turned 90º after speeindg up, which was in the 8-9th meter! To take off, the first thing is be confident you can do it. You go to the bottom of the toff road, give max throttle like in 2-3 sec and gently push your plane forward. It could happen that accelerating too fast stalled your engine if poorly tuned, and the push will help your plane start moving. Now you just have to keep it in a straight line correcting whatever it takes (of course, if you see it coming to boxes chop throttle and turn the other way!) and soon it will lift by itself. When that happens, pull the plane up very gently (10-25º, not more). In this case its better to let it climb if you can; making it climb too fast would lead to a dangerous stall.
After taking off some times, try to do it while standing in one side.
Good luck!

Goinstraightup

My Feedback: (26)

I learned without a cord, but I instruct with one. Heheee

Cactus.

My Feedback: (1)

we have a club poficienty test, which is loosely bassed on the BMFA A test, my student now gos all on his own with no lead, but i stand by him which is the club rule till you pass the test, a bit more stick time and he'll be there.
he needs to get a bit more precise in circuits and staying at one height, but i also feel hes just not had enough experiance of uneventful flights to leave alone. dont want a wing to fall off or anything, but he had an unexpect dead stick today, didnt go the right way, long walk, next time he'll do better, stuff like that.
then i say hes ready.
when i was taught i had to do ten take offs and landings on the patch in a row, then i went solo, hard, but dosnt teach much in the way of airmanship.

DBCherry

My Feedback: (4)

YIKES! I started when I was 43 and learned in about 5 weeks. Or more accurately, about 15 to 20 flights. And I didn't have a simulator at the time.

vtol-guy,
It's going to vary from club to club, and between different instructors. Have you done stall turns? (Which demonstrates some understanding of how the rudder works.) Can you loop and roll?

Once you've done some take-offs, and if your club and instructor are anything like mine, I'd guess your 3 to 4 more flights might be accurate if you said yes to the above. (And plant those landings each time. )
Dennis-

strato911

When I started, there were no simulators or trainer cords, so I learned with the "old-fashioned" method of passing the Tx to the instructor when you're in trouble.

My instructor felt I needed one more flight before trying for solo. I hadn't landed yet, that was the last lesson, but I had practised low passes 20 feet up to simulate landings. I lived on a farm in a rural area, so I cut my own runway, and with shaking knees soloed alone at 7 AM (so no-one would see it if I crashed). I've never looked back.

vtol_guy

i've been training since march 2002. Unfortunatly i wasnt at a particular newbie-friendly club. Nevertheless they still trained me i got 2 flights every time i went approx. 7 minutes control myself and i could only get down once every fortnight. For some reason, they refused to fly me if the wind was quite breezy even though people with trainers who had gone solo were.

anyways after i joined a new club (feb 2003) i have been making rapid progress, i sometimes can get down once a week now, this is mainly cos my mother works every other weekend and i see my dad on sundays.

The things that i can, and have done before are, loops, stall turns, severel low passes, quite a few 'dummy' approaches and flying around normally.

I have taken off (hand launched) and solo'd with an electric model before but in my opinion (and how i felt) this is so much easier than bigger I.C models. The landings i had with this electric model (graupner terry) were always very successful and very good but i wasnt really happy with it being so easy if you know what i mean so i chaned to I.C models again

FatCat

excuse my ignorance, but as a student I have a question that has been bugging me since I started reading these boards. What is a "stall turn"? I am a ATP rated commercial pilot with a few thousand hours in full scale airplanes, and not once in my training has the term stall turn ever come up. I am sure it was called something else, but I am curious as to what you guys are talking about so I can relate it to full scale flying... Thanks

strato911

I could be wrong, but this if so, I'm sure someone will correct me.

- Pull up into a vertical climb, then reduce throttle until the plane stalls.
- Apply a short burst of throttle to get airflow over the rudder, and apply full rudder to one side
- Neutralize the rudder when the plane is pointed straight down
- Once plane reaches sufficiant airspeed, pull out into level flight (prefferably before you reach the ground).

I think this is also called a hammerhead???

strato911

A quick search on Google found the following entry in an aviation glossary on CompuServe:

FatCat

Thanks guys.. No wonder why that term has never come up. I would hate to think I need to perform that maneuver in a passenger jet to get a type rating!

Jim C.

lol.. yeah man.. i dont think the passengers would like that move too much!!!!!

Lancair-RCU

So you never flew skydivers in your progression of jobs to the nice ATP huh I did. ... mmmmm come ta think of it maybe thats one reason why I never went to the airlines, cant do wing overs in a 737. My favorite was a spin entry to my descent after dropping the meat bombs. Once the jumpers were away, fly on for a minute holding 60kts, level at 12,000' in a C182, then pull the stick into your guts, plant one boot really hard, hold for a second or three while she rolls over and relax on both to pull out of the resulting vertical dive, all done in about 15-20secs, nothing over stressed, just some stress relief for the pilot, ME.

Lancair

FatCat

meat bombs! LOL Actually I went the other route, instructing and all night on demand charter! Man I didn't think I would ever make it!

jucava

What is the usual training, so far I flew only 2 times, but I'm landing already.

SkyDude

At my club (www.sccmas.org) you need to perform a takeoff, basic flight maneuvers, three downwind low passes at slow speeds, and three touch and go landings without killing the engine.

When I solo'd, it was a windy day. The downwind passes made me the most nervous, but it wasn't too bad. Landings were a little bouncy, but I never killed it or even nicked the prop. I got through all my training and first solo flight with the original wood prop on my Avistar.

Keep going at it. I've been solo rated for a couple weeks and have had about fifteen incident-free (knock on wood!) flights by myself since. It's much more fun now to go to the airfield knowing you don't need to ask around for someone to help.

Good luck!

DBCherry

My Feedback: (4)

It varies, between clubs and even between instructors. I was fortunate in having a good teacher, he made sure I knew how to do coordinated turns (rudder & ailerons), ovals and figure eights (both directions!)without any change in altitude, decent loops and rolls, good take-offs, landings and touch & go's. He also had me fly regardless of the wind and taught me to land with rudder in cross winds.

He just never taught me stall turns until my solo flight, didn't even know what they were until he explained. First one wasn't pretty, not sure it could even have been classified as a stall turn, second one was much better.

Now I'm trying to instruct the same way.
Dennis-

vtol_guy

the temptation to go fly my model now is overwhelming!

i cant get a lift down to the field until saturday so i have to wait!!!

i dont think i'm gonna be able to wait until saturday though and i dont want to risk my trainer, AAAARRGGGGHHHHHH!!! this is driving me nuts!!

jucava

I'm feeling the same, but having the instructor to my side is reasuring for now.

vtol_guy

hehe, i have just managed to get a small slope soarer with a motor on it so im flying tommorow!!

this way i dont risk my trainer and i get some flying done!!! yey!!

jucava

I live in south Florida, so no slopes here, everything is flat.