practice on a PC
I had trouble with landing at the beginning of my PPL course. I was ready to go solo except for the rather crucial missing bit that I couldn’t land. My instructor kept on showing me how to do it, and lesson after lesson went by without success. We were both getting frustrated and I was seriously thinking about stopping because I thought I would never get it. Then I thought of a way to get as much practice as I wanted to, on Flight Simulator.
I already had MS Flight Sim 2002, but only a joystick, so no rudders (the rudder is done automatically if you have a joystick). I actually think part of the problem I had is that I simply wasn’t used to using rudder pedals because I had used the computer so much before I started to learn to fly. I invested in some proper pedals and a plane yoke with levers for the throttle and mixture etc. (cost about £180, less than 1.5 hrs lesson down here).
One Sunday night before a lesson on the Monday I sat at my PC and landed again and again (I think about 40 times). I went solo the next day at 15 hours.
I am not advocating the PC as the be all and end all, but it is a very useful way to “keep your eye in”. If you are going to an unfamiliar airfield it can be useful to see what it looks like before you get there for real, the ones I have tried all have the right taxiways and layouts. I still use it if I haven’t flown for a while, it saves me money in the air.
There is some sound advice in the other posts on this thread, and doing it on your PC would enable you to practice different methods for a relatively small one off outlay.
Steve