I really don't know,

I find circuits boring as hell and a right pain and made it my mission to spend as little time doing them as possible.

Every single student I inherited who was having problems lacked the basic handling skills. In every case they had only spent less than an hour on S&L I/II and Effects of controls. Every single one of them was taken away from the circuit and those lessons revised. Then they usually got an hour of trimming and flying attitudes for different configurations which to be honest is equally boring for me but is more than worth it.

Then I got them flying the correct speeds.

And usually that was enough for another 1-2 hours doing circuits and then off solo. Which to be honest the majority of my own students used to do.

Its all in those first lessons which some seem to skip.

I know I shouldn't but with my day job line training I quite often have to do the same lessons on S&L and trimming for different configurations for new multicrew pilots. As they "get it" their work load drops off and then they improve leaps and bounds.

50 years of age, 9 hrs 45 min first solo Robinson R 22,not stopped smiling since!

Peter RB
Lancashire

MJ

That rings very true of my experience when I did the PPL. I rarely, if ever, felt I'd actually mastered anything before rushing on to the next stage. This was particularly true of stall recoveries and even simple trimming. I found this most frustrating. Even after the skill test, I still found myself fannying around with the trim for a long time during each flight.

While I understood the concepts in the briefing, it was always hard when doing it practically in the air.

The problem with not being having the knack of trim and S&L is that you become fixated on it and your workload is significantly increased as a result. That has a knock-on effect on learning the other stuff as you're not concentrating on what you're meant to be learning. Although there is some benefit in pushing your personal limits with an instructor, if you can't comfortably do the basics reasonably well already you're wasting a lot of flying hours IMHO.

Too many are not relaxed in the air, and still fighting the plane with clenched fists.

Instruction is another.

Continuity and the British weather can play havoc.

I remember spending too much time in the circuit pissing about with trimming & attitude, never enough time to get it right, then fighting the thing trying to land out of trim. The time taken along downwind is not long enough to learn to trim the thing, especially when they insist you fly at 90knots! Turn base, set 2stage flaps, trim for 65 etc.

I've had my a/c for 6yrs & if I don't fly for a month or more I've found the best thing is to take off, bugger about for 15mins chucking it about before landing/t&g. Trim for 60/55 in the downwind, half flaps etc. Otherwise the landing is utter crap. Once back in practice it can be flung at the ground sideways, final trim at threshold.

I read somewhere that if your divide your age by 2, that's the number of hours to ballpark for going solo.


Although I'm told the shoe size analogy is more accurate. At least I think it was shoe size.

Nah, reading some of the reports posted by some of the Willy Wavers here, I'm pretty much inclined to believe it's the size of your todger, in cm, which gives you hours to solo......

:p:p:p:p

Hows does that work with the girlies?

I shudder to think! :eek:


MJ:ok:

You know how it is..... two pilots discussing their feats of derring do.... with some more or less interested piece of totty looking on, in awe of the sky-gods discussing their courage and heroism?

Either way, the one who can claim the lower hours to solo will usually pull the girl but she'll end up disappointed because my experience in life is that anybody who needs to overstate themselves, be it with acheivements (as in "I soloed after only 17 seconds instruction, blindfolded with an arm and a leg tied behind my back") or with their choice of motor vehicle (as in "look at my Porsche 911 GT3 Carrera RS - it has a racing cage in it to give the car rigidity to allow me to reach higher speeds on track days) is usually overcompensating for something else he's missing....

... Now where did I leave the keys to my Citroen 2CV...... :cool:

You know apart from on here I have never heard anyone discussing how long it took them to go solo.

By far the biggest topic I have heard is people trying to out do each other with is how stupid they have been and how much they shat themselves at the time.

Could be the Scottish version of I solo'd in 2 hours mind.

Well the OP was 'average hours to first solo'. So I'm assuming someone is collating and getting an average amongst the replies.

I agree, I find the 'I shat myself' posts far more informative and amusing than average hours to first solo.

I nearly clobbered a buzzard climbing out from Gt Massingham yesterday, does that count?

A record
 

No one can beat my record. I went solo with no dual hours! I was only 13 years old. But of course there is tale to tell :)

I'm just about to go solo. I started my training on the parries in a k-21 and was feeling close to solo after 15 hours. The average flight was 25min. This year I switched to flying in the rocky mountains in a 2-33. It took some time to get used to the old ship and mountains. The big difference was each flight averaged about 1h45min.
This week if the weather is good I will solo after 40 hours. I was told it would just be a circuit. I said that I'm not sure if I want to solo if all I get to do is a circuit. So I was told they'd drop me by a common smaller mountain we use to get lift. I'm hoping I can do big soaring flights in my training. It costs $50 a flight no matter how long I stay up so I'd like my average flight to be at least 3 hours. Even if I can't go cross country, I can check out all the peaks in the vicinity of the airport.
I think it's a little longer in gliders because you don't pay much so there is more just flying for fun than serious working on technique. Then if you have flights averaging more than an hour but only one takeoff and landing you could have 40 hours of flight with just 20 landings.
I feel a bit like I'm bragging about how fantastic the soaring is at Invermere. Our 22 members that submit their flights to the olc have over double the points of the second highest club in Canada.

Buzzards do count
 

Thing. They do count and the so and sos don't dive like other birds. They know they own the skies, so we have to watch out. Had you had a good lunch at the Dabbling Duck?

The first solo should the safest flight you do, hence it is mostly a circuit and soaring kept brief, it is a thrilling experience regardless that leads onto many successes.

Respect what your instructors say, you are still under the supervision of the instructor when flying solo, they know what is best for you. Overconfidence has never done any inexperienced pilot any good, or impressed anyone.

There is absolutely no need to rush the early solo process, Gliding is done for fun but the skills test for the licence will look at serious technique like any other qualification.

September 1941, U.S. Army Air Corps, Florida. Never been off the ground before, aged 19 - soloed in a Stearman after 8 hours dual over 17 days. About average for my Course.

They had a novel idea - our (rear) cockpits had no ASIs. We were taught to fly our first 60 hrs by Feel and Attitude alone (no sweat, what you've never had, you never miss).

Very useful to me in later years.

I went solo in a microlight in 7 hours but I have an interesting tale about my lovely wife who went solo in a PA Warrior after something over 70 hours.

The instructors were sensible enough to realise that she was nervous so they skipped the solo bit and took her right up to cross country level before getting her to go solo.

She learned to fly to please me and I was very proud of her. It seemed a sensible thing to do at the time in case I was ever incapacitated when flying with her when she would be able to take control.

Unfortunately she never enjoyed flying but it was reassuring to know that she could, also understand everything I was talking about etc.

But in Jandakot, 1990...
 

About six hours but I was a Silver C converter so it doesn't really count. But on a full time CPL course down-under a worthy record holder was a certain AC from Malawi. His 99 hours to solo on his CPL course was certainly remarkable. He was not what you call a natural. Worse was a Mr. K from Singapore. We stopped ground school to watch him taxi. Cruel I know, but was amusing; as was the look of the instructors trying to help him. After ten hours or so it was apparent he was unteachable.

But the hours to solo are not that important. What matters is that you are enjoying the process.

PM

Well mine works quite well with the girlies, but I took 20 Hrs to solo. :ok:


I wish. :\

5:35 Victa Airtourer 100 which included a 20min ferry flight & 20min circuit bashing at a nearby GA airport (you were not allowed to do a "First Solo" back at the base airport due to it being a Capital city single runway domestic/international airport)
I did know a guy who spent a fortune and after around 50 hours they told him he will never do it they should have worked that out around 20 the problem being he would do a perfect circuit then the next one he would try a kill the instructor in the end they got a Civil Aviation FTO to check him out same problem his SPL was cancelled, poor guy welll he was after paying for all those hours.

My first solo at SEP flightschool
 

It was 1992, 26th of january when I was 30 years old, and it was my third flight. I had 3 hours and 10 minutes from the very first and the second flight before.
The french instructor was a retired military pilot and instructor. The plane was a Morane Saulnier MS880 B (that did not changed during the first 8 hours).

I have to say that from my 17th to 25th year I was flying sailplanes in Switzerland, and then just the season before beginning my PPL Flightschool I was making my microlight license on a stupid basic equipped Quicksilver II (twostroke Rotax engine with hanging cylinders- it was not only weather that decided you to go or not to go).

So I knew all about trafic pattern, radio (in french), and surrounding air navigation from about 50 hours of microlight.

The first solo flight in this airplane was unforgetable and consists in simply doing a traffic pattern. I remember me , the instructor says: "just hold here (at the junction of the runway with the taxyway) and wait for me , the engine running - I've forgotten something. Once out of the cabin and the door locked, he took a walky talky on the edge of the runway and says to me over the radio: " now do exactly the same as before (we came down from 3 to 4 pattern works).
I made all checkpoints by loud speaking to myself and made that very first landing solo on a SEP. I felt a kind of extasy behind. And the champagner came on my bill after in the club...

At this time, in France the usual curriculum for Pilots forseen first a restricted license (BB- brevet de base) with restricted radius and restrictions on type and model, but gives you the ability to fly with passengers earlier then with a PPL. I've got the tests for this BB at 8 hours and 45 minutes - exactly one month after starting the flight school. For that, I made the theory courses and the tests just two days before the test flight for BB. To achieve the PPL final exam, the legislation exepts 45 hours of flight plus radio license plus navigation exercises, including 5 hours flights under IMC conditions (partially simulated by wearing special glasses during flight). I made my testflight at 40 hours and 10 minutes exactly 4 months day by day from the start of the instructions.

The very first 'adventure' was a flight from central France to Hungary , that was the same year 1992 when I made my instruction, with 47 hours in total and from that 38H28 in solo on PPL. I asked a friend, owner of the PPL since 5 years with a few 100 hours in total to come with me. We rented a PA28 from Dijon, crossed Switzerland- Germany-Austria to finaly land at Siofok Kiliti in Hungary. In total we made 25 hours together- I logged 12 hours from this budget.
This adventure graved in my mind was the best I could get from flying as a fresh baked pilot and I will never miss it. I became a better pilot with only 65 hours in total at the end of my first year as private pilot.

I mean it is not the number of hours before first solo, but the way you do your training and later how you build up your experience as pilot in command.

Look out for a good friend having PPL and beeing experinenced, and fly with him. Do cross country flights, make all the prep works for all flights you do thogether including gather weather forecast and decicion making. You will learn faster, sustainable and will become a better pilot- I guarantee.

Sincerely Yours

Cosy

4hours 20 mins for me, C.150 G-AXJD. 17 years after being a Staff Cadet on 613 GS at Halton.
However, I ate, slept and breathed flying ever since that time. Wycombe Air Centre, Kevin Dearman was my instructor. [Brilliant man!!].
It came completely out of the blue, and I felt I wasn't really ready, but he said O.K? and I said O.K. and off I went!. Completed in 35 hours, stopped at 200 hours. [young family]. Regards to Dickie Bird if he reads this.

My 2 pence worth.
Went solo today at 14.6 HOURS. 32yoa..
4th circuit lesson.
Knackered the 1st landing as just too fast so decided to go around and got it next time round.
EGCJ and G-SACW

Quit after 17 hours dual after my instructor wrote "This man is dangerous!" on my last lesson notes. He said I'd never be safe to fly solo.

Fourteen months later I tried again at a different flight school, did 3 hours dual then my first solo at 20 hours TT.

Years later I have FAA CPL/IR, multi-engine, aerobatic and taildragger experience, Tanzanian CPL, CAA ATPL exams pass and commercial African bush-flying experience.

Just goes to show a bad instructor can break you, and a good one can make you.

Yes, always a fine culinary experience there.

Does this count as the longest ever time for answering a post? :)

Should I wait until January?
 

Thing. If I wait until January I'll exceed your reply time, but no doubt will have forgotten all about it since then, so will concede.......

Been down the pub, it was a lock in.:)

It took me about 14 hours, flying about once a week or so. We did a lot of "other stuff" before that like ground reference maneuvers, steep turns, stalls etc., not just pattern work.

It probably would have been sooner than that had 9/11 not happened. We were planning on it being that Saturday (just after my 17th birthday). Instead, since our airport was within an "enhanced Class B" area, I was delayed a few weeks and had to brush some rust off first.

I've read that it was the "generally accepted theory" that first solo was a confidence-builder, and doing it early was crucial in getting pilots to "stick with it" and finish the license. As you say, I think that was a self-induced problem.

After 3.5 hours total time, but in a glider which is arguably easier than powered. Aged 16!

Brave instructor...

Yes - there's no doubt about it. A first solo in a glider is the best and quickest way to get going.

I managed to be towed straight into lift on my first. What to do? I decided to carry straight on until out of it, but it made for a funny shaped circuit. And on my second, they towed me up into snow!

On my first powered solo (7 hours, if someone is taking averages) ATC said "continue" when I was on approach. Did that mean continue on approach, or continue round the circuit again? It was not in my radio vocab, so I went round again.

It's all a very long time ago, but the first solo always sticks in your memory.

Just soloed this afternoon after 22.7hrs TT :ok: