Thoughts of Your First Solo?

[RedOwlAirfield]

This thread caused me to look up the CFI that soloed me. Sadly I found out that he just died last month. RIP Bob Stringfellow. Great guy and what's more, taught me that a flight instructor could be a friend too. Kind of ruined me for other CFI's from then on. I have higher standards now. I demand my CFI's have a personality and social skills and not just a license from the FAA. Just because you have a certificate doesn't mean you're not an A**hole.

But to the point...

Greater Wilmington (Delaware) airport - 5 Mar 1978 - Aircraft was Cherokee 140 N5887U.

No surprises or nerves. I knew I was going to have to solo eventually and I knew I was doing well. We flew down to Summit Airpark and back. When we pulled up to the FBO he told me not to shut it off but go do 3 touch and goes and come back. I do remember that it was runway 32 and the landings were unremarkable - and no trouble from traffic. Easy peasy.

I wonder what percentage of folks learned and soloed at controlled fields (like me) versus uncontrolled (pilot controlled if you prefer) fields. I didn't appreciate it at the time but learning at a controlled field gave me a good degree of comfort with the radio. I have known a lot of pilots who hate talking on the radio so much. To each their own, but I wonder if location of ab initio training has any effect on that tendency.

 

[BC12D-4-85]

Talking on the radio has increased in my flying life. Hand mics, lack of headsets or intercoms, are now replaced with better equipment used by pilots and controllers that communicate when occupying the National Airspace System. No longer is it "cleared for takeoff" or "land the airplane". For the Children of the Magenta Line it's all they know.

Gary

 

[BC12D-4-85]

How to solo a Cub> https://home.adelphi.edu/~allendon/fly_a_cub.pdf

Not much else is really important unless you're a Child of the Magenta>

Gary

 

[hotrod180]

....I wonder what percentage of folks learned and soloed at controlled fields (like me) versus uncontrolled (pilot controlled if you prefer) fields. I didn't appreciate it at the time but learning at a controlled field gave me a good degree of comfort with the radio. I have known a lot of pilots who hate talking on the radio so much. To each their own, but I wonder if location of ab initio training has any effect on that tendency.

I learned at a non-towered airport, & I think it has a big effect.
I've never had too much trouble with radio work (although nowadays hearing loss gives me some),
but I know people who learned at non-towered airports who have terrible radio skills, or bad cases of "mike fright".
Of course, I can think of at least two retired airline captains I knew who were terrible on the radio too--
I guess they must have always had their FO do the talking.

 

[Cubus Maximus]

Beech Musketeer! In this case an underpowered Beech Sport (B-19), August 10th of 1987 at FCM. WOW, the airplane seemed empty after Rob Peterson jumped out on the taxiway! Okay, you can do this, you can do this...up and fit into the traffic flow on downwind, turning final, you can do this, you can do this...Flare? BOING! Boing, Boing, Boing, three point like a milk stool down the runway... What? this has never happened before? I barely recall the subsequent landings, only that they were "Boing" free because I actually flared... Rob said, "what was that?" sigh...

(this might have been the FBO's rental Sundowner (B-23), but it was in the "era")

 

[HorseDoc]

The aged instructor climbed out on the ramp after a couple of laps around the pattern and told me I was ready to do it on my own. I was supposed to make three touch and go landings. I had a whole 12 hours of instruction logged and was pretty sure of myself. When the little Piper Warrior lifted off there was a moment of panic, "What the heck are you doing? How are you going to get this thing back on the ground?" My life flashed before my eyes.... I swallowed the lump in my throat and made it around the pattern. Little to my knowledge, a front was coming through and a stiff cross wind had popped up since I lifted off. I was too busy with check lists, power management, knobs and gauges to glance at the wind sock. Fortunately, out here in West Texas we get lots of crosswind practice and I was not afraid of go-arounds. As I crossed the numbers at perfect speed and height something happened and the next thing I knew I was headed to the grass not the runway. In about a half a second I figured rightly that this was going to end badly and executed a perfect go-around. Panic set in again.... I glanced down at the old guy on the ramp and he gave me the "thumbs-up". Little did I know, he couldn't see the approach end from where he was standing. I don't remember much about the next three landings except that the crosswind technique apparently worked as advertised. When I finally shut it down he congratulated me on making an extra landing. After I explained what happened, he laughed a great big belly laugh at my near-death experience.

 

[HorseDoc]

Oh yeah, I had the same near-death panic, life flashing before my eyes experience the first time I made a gravel bar landing as a newly-minted tail wheel pilot. Luckily I had Steve Pierce talking me through it. That one went a lot better. Thanks Steve!

 

[WhiskeyMike]

On a cold November morning in 1959, a week before my 14th birthday, my Dad and I ferried our 85HP J-3 from the old Revere Mass airport to Tew-Mac a small grass field. I did 3 T.O's and landings and we have an old 8mm movie of it, now saved on a CD. I had flown my Dad’s Stearman with him for years by then, and later trained on stock J-3’s flying from the back, but our 85 was my mom’s banner plane, and we flew it from the front. Went like Gee-Whiz with just one kid in it. That winter we brought the J-3 into the farm field behind our home and operated on skis. You had to make a 45’ turn just as you touched down as the actual landing strip area was very short. Even though we were in the aerial ad business It was like farm life, operating machines at an early age. God Bless my Dad. He gave us priceless experiences. My older brother soloed after 5 &1/4 hours, but he'd spent his childhood riding around in the Stearman too.

 

[courierguy]

I learned the fly the old school way, self taught, in 1972, on the sand dunes near Monterey Bay. Didn't know squat, learned what a stall was the hard way, by eating sand, hang gliding. Then years later transitioned into some of the first powered hang gliders, which morphed into UL's, by the time I flew a real plane with 2 seats I had already been flying quite a while, so the first solo in a 152, as I worked on my ticket, was no biggie. The first flights of various homebuilts has always been much more emotional, something that's never flown before!

 

[tempdoug]

greasing that first solo landing really puts a lot of confidence in ya and for down the road, lets you know it can be done, and it really helped when pulling back up to the fbo and a ex fighter pilots standing there and says, nice one. that was a cool feeling. 172 1984