Originally Posted by
Juno78
So, just to clarify, is 16 hours generally too long to have been doing circuits and not be ready to solo? Most of the replies seem to think that there is a problem so I assume that's the general consensus?
It really does "depend".
I'm in the middle of a licence upgrade at the moment, and chose do to it when available from the airfield I work on, rather than (say) taking 3 weeks off work and going off to Florida, where at least the weather is reasonably consistent.
Despite having lots (1000+) of hours flying, I've taken a lot more hours than I expected because it has stretched out over a similar period - lots of weather cancellations, and lots of gaps. This has all slowed up my personal learning curve and a 25 hour course will have ended up taking 35-40.
To be honest, I'm happy to be reasonably philosophical about the number of hours I've taken, but I've no doubt that if I'd just done the Florida thing, it would all have been done in far less hours (and thus rather cheaper). This sort of stretching is an inevitable extension of flying irregularly, which itself is a fairly inevitable consequence of trying to learn any aspect of flying in the UK.
G