My First Lesson Tomorrow
I just started my PPL about 10 weeks ago. I am lucky enough to be semi-retired so I take four afternoons a week to go to Fairoaks. About 25-30% of lessons get cancelled due to weather when instead it's groundschool.
So I have 26 hours under my belt now, and I went solo after 23 1/2 hours. There is a rule of thumb (not to be take too seriously) that the number of hours to solo is about half your age. So at 48 I pretty much made the grade!
The first lesson is typically a bimble around the countryside where you get your hands on the controls. It's as much seeing if you like it as it is the instructor seeing how you get on. After all, you may not like it at all!
Most important is to get a school where you have the same instructor as often as possible, or there'll be discontinuity in your learning. Also you need to be able to get on with your instructor. I have been lucky in this regard, I still have the same instructor and he puts up with me.
Definitely see if you can do fairly frequent lessons, or you'll spend a good proportion of each lesson refreshing yourself from one you took a couple of months ago and progress may be frustratingly slow.
Equally I find that sometimes four times a week can be quite hard, the old brain capacity ain't what it used to be. I would get frustrated because I'd forget to do something or other.
I often find that I get brain overload. Typically this is due to too many new things happening at the same time. Flying is like cooking. There are lots of recipes to learn, and you'll get some of them slightly wrong sometimes. But, usually you'll realise if you get something wrong and learn from that mistake. If not your instructor will tell you!
I did the medical very early on as I almost never go to the doctor, so I thought I'd better know sooner rather than later. In the end it was no big deal, in and out in an hour or so with a piece of paper to boot. You must have the medical before going solo.
I also did the air law exam before the solo, although it's not always required, seems to depend on the school. That was hard! I had not done any formal training or any exams for 27 years. Anyway, I purchased a set of Pooley's books by Trevor Thom, and worked through the Air Law part. Together with the Q&A book and the online AirQuiz and PPL Cruiser I managed 87%. Pass mark is 75%.
The only time I've felt remotely scared was when doing spin recovery, when the instructor tells you to close your eyes, do a steep turn, and then when you open ypur eyes all you get to see is a sea of green with the earth rapidly coming towards you.
There is so much going on there is little time to get anxious.
Cheers, Howard