Just curious about how many flights till your instructor deemed you ready to solo?

I've seen a few people post here with some flight numbers, and a few complained their instructor held on to them for too long.

I think my instructor wants me to solo too soon - but I wanna see what others say in terms of time of instruction.

When your instructor says.

after a grand total of maybe 45 minutes. but honestly when you solo is your business, and the correct answer is none of your business, but it doesn't bother me telling people.

The amount of time it takes you to solo is completely irrelevant to everything...It means absolutely nothing.

Obviously everyone is going to be different. Instructors will be different, flying condition will be different, and the amount of time it takes for the beginner to grasp all the new things coming in to him will be different. Nothing is ever the same...

In full scale aircraft, there is no set amount of instruction time. You will continue with instructors and trainers until you are ready to go free. The instructor makes this decision and the FAA examiner confirms it...

So, what does this have to do with your question? I'm not sure...But the answer to it is not important!

If you really want to know though...My first flight was my solo.

Many guys out where I fly have been working on it for many months and are just now starting to get the hang of landings. Others get it in a couple days.... Don't rush it. If you're not ready, you better speak up and tell your intstructor. It never hurts to spend more time on the buddy box...

What makes you think he is wanting you to solo too soon?

It took me 5 seconds to solo, of course 10 seconds later my plane was destroyed. Actually I learned to fly on the old real flight & i've been flying pretty good for about 6 years now. If I would have had the option of someone to train me I would have soloed when the instructor said I was ready.

Gil

I know of an instructor who can give numbers and more than likely the student will learn to fly very skillfully within that time frame. Many have earned their solo wings with this instructor within a couple of hours (same day), but on the average, it takes around 6 hours (2-3 days). He teaches take offs and full down landings on the very first lesson, BTW.

nascarjoe

When you can take off, land, and fly the plane with out endanger your self or someone else.

Well, with my first plane, a Dynaflite BobCat, I never soloed. I always gave it to the more experienced guys to put it up for me, then I would take from there. Until 7 months later I crashed. I then bought a trainer and soloed on the second flight. That was about 1 year and a half ago. I stopped for a flying just after 4 or 5 flights after the solo (why, I don't know), and now I am starting again. Last friday I had my first flight after more than a year without flying. I flew without an instructor. And I was pretty surprised with myself.... I landed flawlessly....And after that I made some more 10 flights, also flawlessly. WOW

Borzak, where do you fly at in Texas?

BTW: for me my solo probably took longer than necessary because I just wasn't comfortable. I think that if your instructor is any good, if you just tell him that you aren't ready yet, then he'll be fine with that. When I was training my instructor kept telling me that he thought I was ready, but not to cut the cord until I thought I was ready. That's the only important thing. If you don't think you are ready, a crash is probably very near in your future.

it took me several months , now to explain that ? I was only able to fly every other sunday,due to the work schedule that I was on, so if you take two flights maybe 15 minutes total every other weekend 30 minutes a month for 6 months 180 minutes of actual flight time was required , maybe it is easier to see why time doesnt really matter , when looked at this way ?

what I did instead of fly? I built ,and by the time I soloed I not only had my second plane finished but also my third and fourth, I now have 9 planes that are always flight ready and continue to build , just finishing up another and will be starting a T/F gold 60 Corsair this fall , to me flying is only half the hobby.


Highlander

Well this is my story and Im sticking to it..

I joined my local club back in 1990 and back then our club only had 2 real active Instructors. Between my job and trying to get a flight time in with an instructor became very hard to achieve.
I bought the RealFlight Regular Sim when it came on the market and managed to get my eye & hand cordination going.

Well after not being able to get my Solo wings after four years due to work, family life and now I was elected as a club officer, I was running most of what went on in the club. I opted to pay for a flight Instructor and went to 1st US Flight School in the Middle of May 1995 and finally got to Solo.
I came back to my local club and soloed my 1st flight with my club instructor.
I was given a nice little solo certificate and have been flying on my own ever since.

And yes I might add I have returned to
Dave Scott at 1st US R/C Flight Schhol and this past summer. I completed & recieved my Intermediate Aerobatic flight status certificate and can fly a Cap232 Edge 540 60 to 90 size without a problem.

I do agree that a new comer can fly with in 6 hours of flight instruction. I have learned and seen that the younger the student the faster they learn and recieve there Solo status. With us older pilots it takes just a little bit longer depending on the person.
I guess in my opinion if someone is eger and dedicated to learn they will learn. Im not saying go out and pay loads of money to learn to fly (that is what I chose to do) but if you really want to learn, go to your instructor and work on a goal to when you can solo and work your tail feathers off getting there.
Don't be like some people and sit there and wish you can fly and envey the next person that takes off flys and lands on his own.

I have been with my local club for 14 yrs. now and have been everything from the club president all the way down to chief cook and bottle washer.This is called paying your dues sorta speak in the club. And in that time I have seen alot of people come and go. Some people join to learn to fly and leave, so join and have never learned to fly.

You need to have confidience in your self, and in your instructor , once you achieve that your battles half won.
Now when I go fly I set a goal for that day (for example: completeing a full manuver w/o incident) went I complete the manuver, I then move to the next manuver step by step. When I run into throuble with a manuver, I land and try to figure out what Im doing wrong.

So like I said before....Thats my story and Im sticking to it.

And yes I plane on going back to 1st US R/C Flight School next year and going for my Advanced Aerobatic statis. Im makes for a nice vacation, and what to do better on vacation is to fly RC

Well thats my story and Im sticking to it.
NEDYOB

I'm flying in LA now. I travel between the states in my profile. I have a place in East Texas near Nacogdoches where I stay a lot - but there's not a club (that I know of) plus once I learn I've got literally thousands of acres of open pasture to play with.

My instructor wanted me to solo after 3 flights, I haven't endangered the plane yet while flying (that I know of) but it seemed pretty fast compared to some people I talked to. I had to leave so we'll see next time I'm out there.

took me about a week, but not flying everyday so really is more like three or four days. About 6 flights per day...

As others have said, it varies with the person, the instructor, schedule, etc.

I had a student who was an experienced full scale pilot who spent some time on an RC simulator. He soloed after just a couple of trips to the field, and could have been sooner if there had been more time for him. His biggest "problem" was getting positioning right when doing a landing approach. After he had that down, he was on his own.

There is another student in my club who has been a student for a couple of years now.

And there are lots of folks in between. I've had students who I felt I had to "push" a little to get them to not stagnate on the buddy box and keep moving towards being solo. Guys who never would have started doing landing approaches until I basically told them it was time. And I've had students I had to tell, "yes, I know you want to do landing approaches, but you really aren't quite ready, let me see you do X,Y, and Z first, then we will landing approaches". And so it goes.

ytou shouldn't solo too fast. you are just trying to skip the unavoidable. the bad scenario. you need to learn to recover from them, and there is no better plane to do that on than a trainer. true, i could fly the plane around and do stuff in about 2 mins. i would have been fine soloing after 3 months. but i am glad i soloed after 6. by then, i was doing inverted passes over the runway ad 1/4 throttle. realflight did hel.p a lot, and i am glad i got that program. crashing is not a concern. however though, at my field, there is always dind, and because we are on top of a hill, there is always wind sucking us down or blowing us up as it crosses the runway.

or full scale next year i plan on taking a vacation to the Minneapolis area and renting a Seaplane for a day or two

About 18 months elapsed time..... Why? I joined the local club around September 2001, when I first started I averaged maybe one or two flights per day at the club on weekends. As I got discouraged over sitting around wasting a lot of time, I didn't go to the club much the following summer. Meanwhile, I bought a GWS Tiger Moth and flew at the local park. Later last year I graduated to a 3 channel glow plane and flew on my own when the field was either empty or the few people there didn't mind... Than I went back to my 4 channel trainer and started finding the trees. Finally, I bought a copy of G2 and a LT-40. I soloed the first time out on the LT-40 May this year.

While I have taken a long time to solo, I have gained a fair amount of flight experience during this time. This experience enabled me to successfully fly my new H9 Funtana yesterday. No looking back now!

I soloed my first glow plane (LT40) on it's 3rd (my 2nd) flight. Now granted I was on my second WINGO at the time. I was one of those fortunate one's that grabbed ahold of it easily. BUT I'm still known to have the occasional "hot unplanned landing".

I started from scratch with an electric trainer and a friend who handled initial takeoffs and landings. I was soloing after about 4 ten-minute flights, but having a borrowed simulator on my computer helped a lot.

Then I won a Hobbico Superstar 40 in a raffle and suddenly was into the glow-fuel world. After 4 buddy-box teaching sessions on that, I'm able to do a rudimentary solo without the buddy box. But the windy conditions where I'm flying make learning landings about twice as difficult to learn. After a couple more lessons, I think I'll get approval to use our AMA field on my own. I will admit to being somewhat cautious to avoid wrecking the lovely plane I won too early in the game.

I enjoy both the fuel and electric planes. The electric is a lot simpler-just charge the batteries and go, but the glow fuel plane seems more interesting and dynamic.

It took me 30 min (or 2 flights on one day) with my instructor to solo with my glow plane (3rd flight), before that, I tought myself how to fly (With T-Hawk then Sky Scooter then Mini Piper then Switchback then aspire) Didn't crash one of them!

-Nik

It took me 35 flights and I came out each day till soloing