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Old 20th May 2016, 07:38
  #36 (permalink)  
cbmatheson
 
Join Date: Apr 2014
Location: Birmingham
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It's worth remembering that training at Gloucester is hard, what with 6 different runways to get used to, different noise abatements on each, a complex airport layout, full ATC, very busy traffic, occasional long hold times, frequent requests to orbit/extend downwind/report before downwind/turn early to stay ahead of instrument traffic, and a lot of other pilots in the circuit who don't know the procedures as well as they should. You don't have to worry about all of this when you first go out as the tower will know you're a solo student, but it does mean there's a lot more to take in during training. Also, these old pprune threads with people bragging about solo-ing in 4 hours really don't help - I'm sure the people who take longer are in the majority but they don't tend to post to these threads!

I do think BackPacker's advice is brilliant - ask to go out and do something else for a bit and remind yourself why you're doing this whole flying thing. I did beat myself up a lot during the circuits stage but I wonder if I might have done better if I'd managed to relax some more. I think I may have trained at the same place as you and I flew with a few different instructors prior to going solo - they're all fantastic there and they all helped in slightly different ways. Circuits was hard for me but once you go solo the course really starts getting exciting, and having trained at Gloucester landing anywhere else will be a breeze!
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