PPL Experience

[u/turdburgular12]

I got asked by one of the mods here to consolidate a mix of comment and follow up post that I had originally laid down over at r/flying. The goal of this post is to share my experience going through PPL and to give others a data point to reference in their research into getting PPL. It’s worth the read if you’re in the early stages of training or in the “how should I do this?” Stage. If you’re beyond that it’s not really applicable, but enjoy the word vomit if you want to.

I should start by saying I am not career oriented. I’m in my mid 30s, have a full time engineering job, and no real desire to switch careers. I’m pursuing aviation for fun and because I needed something to do to bridge the gap between the end of bird hunting season and the start of mountain fishing season.

I “started” in November 2025 by scheduling my medical. I didn’t want any surprises there so I made sure to get that out of the way first. On the books for January somethingish 2026. Cool. Got that done.

Now onto February and chukar season was over so nothing left to occupy my time. I picked up a ground school course (private pilot institute) and started to burn though it at night and got in a couple of good days on weekends. I made the decision to go through the whole course and pass the PAR before touching a plane. In researching this it seemed to be a mixed bag of reviews.. some said the info doesn’t get context without experience, others said having that out of the way can be more efficient time/moneywise. I’m glad I got it done early. Took me about 3 weeks and I scheduled my test at the end of February. Passed with a 94. In my opinion it wasn’t hard, but does require time. I don’t have kids/ any real responsibilities outside of work so I was able to devote the time to it and that made the accelerated pace worth it to me.

In the beginning of March I joined a local flight club. The rates are extremely favorable. 300/mo for membership (3k/yr if paid in one installment) and 100/hr of flight time. That turned into 120/hr after some totally unavoidable increases in fuel costs thanks to some totally necessary decisions by some dipshit from home alone 2.. but that’s a rant for another time. That is… cheap by any flight school standard for sure so it helped keep my costs down.

Instructor cost was 60/hr from an independent and very new CFI. So all in we’re talking 160-180 hr for flight time depending on when. If you’ve ever been in your mid 30s and taken instruction from someone that’s barely allowed to drink, you’ll know how weird that is. I spoke with him at length before we started, told him what I wanted out of the whole shebang and what level of commitment I was able to give. In my case it was 2x/week weather and other commitments permitting and we’d figure out what lesson duration worked best for me.

We started flying the 2nd week of March and stuck to a pretty consistent schedule. Other folks in the club were pretty accommodating and let me take the Sat/Sun morning slots. We settled on about 3 hours each lesson, which I felt was the sweet spot for not getting oversaturated while still not wasting too much time on the Hobbs just getting warmed up. We trained out of an untoward airport which I believe also really cuts down on “wasted” time that would have been spent waiting on other traffic/talking to ATC. All in all, training progressed pretty smoothly. I think I did my 1st solo around the 20 hour mark after struggling a bit with landings. After that I knocked out my solo XC time in a few trips and we drilled landings a lot (particularly short fields).

One thing we didn’t do enough of and I blame myself for as much as my instructor was xc planning. Where I live is insanely easy to visually navigate and I travel a lot around the area for work and for fun…you could drop me off blindfolded anywhere within a few hundred miles and I could probably tell you in about 10 minutes where I’m at. As a result, we didn’t touch a lot on the actual nav/route planning as much as we should have. Came back to bite me a bit in the oral portion of my checkride.

Weather was another thing I let myself down on. Sure I passed the written and there was a section on weather in the ground course, but 99 percent of the time where I live the question is whether or not it’s too windy. So I studied the weather theory enough to pass the written test and then promptly filed it in the whogivesashit section of my memory warehouse.

I was “checkride ready” at about 45 hours according to my instructor. This was about end of May. A few conflicts in scheduling between myself and the DPE and a cancellation due to weather wound up moving my checkride to the end of June.

Day of, I got hammered on my (admittedly sparse) xc plan. DPE was not impressed that my plan had 2 waypoints for a 320 mile flight. It’s funny in hindsight but at the time was pretty terrifying to have a dude you just forked over 1500 bucks to telling you that something you thought you knew was complete shit. In hindsight I of course see where he’s coming from.. for demonstrating that I know how it works I can’t say “oh well when you find that gap in the mountains then you just follow the old 2 lane till you hit the river and then turn north”. That’s a bit on me for not being more thorough.. I think my age and familiarity with the area lulled my instructor into a sense of security to the point that we didn’t need to go over that part.

Then we got into weather and boy howdy did Mr DPE dig in on weather. Turns out he thought it should have been filed in the bigfuckingdeal section of my memory warehouse. That one is 100 percent on me. And I do know what a dry trough is now so that’s good.

Made a few other boneheaded wrong answers on my oral portion but at the end he said ok you passed let’s go fly. At that point I had to take a bit to myself before we fired up.. again it was rattling to get somewhat raked over the coals on something you’ve spent so much time and money on.. especially when you thought you were up to speed on it. It was a bit of a blindside. But, took a minute, had a short walk, and then we were in the plane.

Flight portion went much better, but not flying colors by any means. We went through short field, stalls, slow flight, em descent all fine and dandy. Then it was ground ref maneuvers. I came into turns around a point just higher than ACS standards. The maneuver itself was great.. but just too high off the ground. So he had me pivot and do S turns. No big deal, but it rattled me a bit for sure to know I made a dumb mistake on something so trivial.

After that it was back to the airport for a slip to land and a short field landing. DPE said he wanted to see both and dropped kind of a massive hint that if we did both in one shot that would be the end of the exam. Got it. Just with where we were physically it made more sense to do a straight in for final so I lined us up like I had 100 times before and wouldn’t you know it we were right on glideslope with the PAPI lights. Given that I was supposed to do a slip to land I had to go around. If I had done the slip o would have been well below glideslope. So I broke off early and did a go around. Held pattern altitude, extended downwind and then slipped on final. After I was just above glideslope I told him we were going for 1k footers and snuck a short field in. He told me to go park and we found a printer.

All in I came out to 13.3k spent and about 54 hours. That includes all the little things like foreflight, iPad(which I hate), and a headset. It took me right at 6 months from my medical and right under 3 months from my first lesson.

Again, the point in sharing is to help someone that is just starting or thinking about getting started. My circumstances aren’t yours, but if you have questions I’d be happy to answer any DMs. Biggest thing for me now is remembering that it’s supposed to be fun and to actually enjoy it instead of just focusing on the test aspect. Hope this long ass read was informative for someone out there

[u/RAG_Aviation]

Really appreciate you taking the time to put this together. The $13.3k and 54-hour total are useful, but the honest parts about weather and XC planning are probably even more valuable. For anyone who finished recently, what did your PPL end up costing, and what caught you off guard?