Problem with CFI, need help, please.
Where do I start...
First, I hope this post isn't out of category or otherwise misplaced, but I feel I'm in trouble and need help. I'm a student pilot, 59 hours toward PPL, and I found and joined this forum for the sole purpose of asking for help. (Although it looks like a great place to learn and share, later.) I don't know how else to do this but to try to debrief openly to people who do this every day, and to try to gain insight from your observations and comments. This may be lengthy, let me say that I will be deeply appreciative for any light you guys can shed on this. I want to be a professional at this, and a very safe one.
I am 60 years old, male, passed the third class medical but could easily have breezed through first. I'm very blessed physically, very fit, mentally sharp. I've been memorizing scripts for 20+ years so my memory seems great. I've been studying the Sportys ground school for over a year, and could pass the written, easily. (I score routinely 98-100 on the practice tests) If I have a weakness it's with rapid mental math calculation. (To give you an idea of my approach to things, I've now reenrolled in university and am majoring in mathematics.) I have loved aviation all my life, but with family, career, the time for me to do this was never quite right, but the day finally came, and I began my training ten months ago. I am on my second flight instructor, and I'm trying to figure out if there's a problem with me, or with this process. Or, if perhaps this sort of is the process.
My first 40 hours were with a 23-year-old recent graduate from an aviation university. I felt I couldn't do better than someone with a bachelor's degree in this, and he was a great young man. The problem was however, I did not know this at the time but I was one of his first, if not his first student. ( I feel a little foolish that I never thought to ask. He was with a very established school in this area and I went with their reputation without doing much background into the instructor himself.) After my hours kept adding up and i wasnt soloing, I began to wonder if he was trying to sort of figure out the process with me. I absolutely do not hold that against him, we all have to start somewhere and I even held on a little while to try to help him out. But I began to recognize that there was a maturity mismatch and I simply lost confidence in him. He was having significant difficulty letting go of the yoke and letting me fly the airplane. I also need to add that he is on an ATP track and is building hours. Which again, I dont hold against him, we all are, but after $12,000+ and many flights, I added it up and I think I managed to land the airplane completely without him touching the yoke, twice. I should also add at this point that I have a flight simulator in my house and have been flying Microsoft Flight Sim for I think around 10 years. It's not a Red Bird but it's pretty darn good. So I had a gentle but final conversation with him, and began looking for another instructor.
I began looking for someone older and with more hours. I found someone 10 years older than I am , with 12,000 plus hours, 5,000 of which are as a flight instructor. ATP qualified, flew for United for a while. CFII, very well known, you just don't get more qualified than this guy. We hit it off extremely well, I like him very much, and it was an incredibly pleasant beginning. He assessed my ability very quickly, and the very first time we flew together, I landed the plane by myself nine times. I spent 20 hours with him and was about to solo the same week that the problem occurred. We actually became quite good friends, it seemed. And yet somehow at a certain point, there seemed to begin to be a type of competitiveness between us and It ultimately ended up with us having a disagreement in the air and I put the plane on the ground, and things are at a standstill. The kinds of comments that he made on the way out to the run up sort of made me feel like there was something kind of personal between us and I began to feel uncomfortable. He commented that I was listening to ATIS too much. (admittedly I do like to listen to it several times to make sure I have a good mental picture) I also had learned a practice from the first school I used, where we would lay the tie down chains facing aft on the ramp. It's very orderly and consistent. With this new instructor, he would simply drop the chains where they were, and on this particular flight, in doing my checklist, going around the entire airplane to the side that he had untied, I picked up the chain from where he had dropped it and laid it in place as I normally would on the other side. And I think it irritated him. I also am a big fan of the checklist. I just don't feel like I'm at the place where I have a natural flow and coming from one school to another school, things are different and I just don't feel comfortable being off the checklist yet. And the thing is, they often don't have checklists in the planes at all. I had to come up with my own. It makes me uncomfortable. I don't like it. I know transitioning from the checklist to a sort of "flow" is common, but i just dont feel comfortable with that yet. This guy has basically a million hours and I know has probably more experience that I'm ever going to have time in life left to accumulate, and the man is a freakin legend around here, and I truly like him a great deal as a personal friend, but I'm learning all of this stuff in my Sportys ground school, at the former school (which honestly I now regret leaving, sorely), and just general basic SOP from my time in the military that seems to conflict with what i see him doing. This man who has flown everything but a flying saucer makes me feel extremely uneasy.
There's more. A lot more. But am i just so green that I'm not getting it? I am someone who does complicated and challenging things well. But this whole thing just feels random and disorganized.
Anyway, so here I am, 59 hours, again yet to solo, i think i could land a 150 on a carrier with a good headwind, and yet I think I'm going to have start all over again.
I am completely open to any insights or critiques. I just want to get my wings, man.