Hi guys and girls,
I'm hoping for a bit of reassurance / inspiration as I'm starting to get a bit frustrated with my PPL training!
I've been taking lessons since March 2009. I've been doing circuits since July 2009, and I'm starting to wonder whether I'm ever going to move on. Unfortunately, as I imagine is the case for a lot of people, I can't afford to fly every day, and I'm generally managing two lessons a month, occasionally three. Over the winter I had a lot cancelled due to the weather, and so overall my circuits have been pretty sporadic.
I totted up the hours in my log book this evening, and of my 25 hours so far, 16 have been spent flying circuits without yet having soloed. It's not that I'm worried per se about being "slower than average" or anything like that, but to be quite honest I'm just getting a bit bored and frustrated of flying around the same bit of airspace every time. So I suppose I have two questions:
1. Is that actually a fairly normal number of hours to be spending in the circuit before reaching solo, and it just feels like a long time because it's been spread out over the course of a year? I'm generally a quick learner and I'm fairly well co-ordinated (my other hobby is kart racing) so I wouldn't generally expect to take longer than average, but I suppose you never know what you are and aren't going to be good at!
2. Is it actually feasible to learn and make progress in such a sporadic fashion or do you really need a more concentrated period of time, and am I therefore just wasting money by having one lesson and then two or three weeks off? If so I'd be inclined to take a break, save up a few grand and then do one or two lessons a week for a while.
I appreciate that the monetary situation is going to have to get better if I want to do this as a long-term activity - fortunately I'm in a career where my salary should go up by a decent amount in the next few years (I'm a recently-qualified solicitor), so it's more a question of what I should do at this point. If the answer is go gliding for three years and come back to engines, then fair enough.
Any wisdom much appreciated! I'm going to talk to my CFI about it this weekend, but I always think the more points of view you have the better
EDIT oh, and I fly at a small airfield so no time to speak of hanging about waiting for a slot - I usually manage 5 or 6 circuits for an hour of logbook time.