First days in the circuit
To the original poster. Dont worry Chap , the first circuit was a head flap for me also. I constantly felt behind the curve and pressured for time
- What checks you have been instructed to do , learn on the ground. I also found it useful to get out to the aircraft early and practice them as if I were flying before doing the pre-flight checks.
- Visualize each segment of the circuit also ( again practicing this in the plane before start helped me ) Ask questions in advance about power / attitude / trim / flap settings etc if your not clear .. doing that meant I spent less concentration on asking things like that on the fly.
- I found it helpful to pick out points to fly over especially when turning from one leg to the next. Where exactly you are and where you should be turning are things you can cross of the " worry list " fairly quickly.
- Dont expect too much of yourself. I seen many people , myself included get fustrated with slow progress and waste time and money bashing away when calling it a day might have been better. I think less time spread out is better than a higher condensed quantity. I think this is a place where more people throw away good money after bad. ( just my opinion )
- Somebody mentioned trim , the better you can do that the easier your life will be as you wont be chasing the plane about the sky as it wanders randomly.
- It took me a while to " sit back " and relax , I was leaning over the control collum , like i was driving round a hair pin at first.
Took a conscious effort from me at first.
Slowly but surely my experience was that you start to feel on top of things and have moments of joy when you nail it ( in my case quickly followed by a f### up to remind me to keep trying harder 
) .
Pretty much everything came for me with time and now circuits are what im looking forward to the most in my flying. Everybody finds em tough in the beginning as i could see and did.
Goes without saying , enjoy it , its all leading to many magic firsts..
Last edited by thirtysomething; 24th Dec 2007 at 01:09.