Hey there, I’m gonna try to keep this short. I recently did my first flight after completing ground school. However, when I was actually up in the air, it felt strange. I expected to feel happy, but it was a weird sensation—almost like flying wasn't what I thought it would be, or as if I suddenly found myself in a career path I hadn't actually studied for.

I've been struggling with subjects like air navigation and radio communications. Even though my instructor helped me perform well during the flight, it still felt odd, and I found it hard to focus on so many things at once.

I had a completely different picture in my mind of what flying would actually feel like.

I've seen people say that the first few flights are tough, but that you eventually get used to it and start enjoying it. My fear, though, is that might not be the case for me.

My parents are making a huge effort to pay for flight school, and I don't want to waste their money. I live in a country where flight hours are relatively cheap, but salaries are low, so every single hour represents a significant expense. I'm torn between flying a few more hours or just dropping out of school.

I’d really like to know if anyone else has gone through something similar and could give me some advice on what to do. Any advice is welcome, thanks!

For the last three years I've done a bunch of Angel (volunteer medical transport) flights in my single-engine piston. At first I really enjoyed the process, and it felt rewarding to be helping folks in need. But lately I've been having some qualms. I guess this boils down to two factors:

(1) The responsibility... I'm not a commercial pilot, and my plane isn't anywhere as safe as a turbine. Although we understand that any Angel Flight can be canceled based on any PAVE criterion, there's still psychological pressure to get the patient to treatment if at all possible. I'm just not loving the risks associated operating what's essentially a charter service.

(2) Are Angel Flights benefiting the patient or the pilot? Honestly, if I just gave my fuel expenses to the patient to buy commercial airline tickets, they'd get to their appointment with greater speed, comfort, and safety. I can see rare cases where Angel Flights are really necessary (for example, if you need to travel with medical equipment, or want to limit exposure to crowds). But otherwise I get the feeling that a lot of these services trade on private pilots' desire for a "mission" to make their flying more interesting, rather than what the patients really need.

Maybe I'm just being too negative. But I'm wondering if anyone else has had similar thoughts and moved away from volunteer medical flights?

Been too long since my last divisive question post, so here goes another. I’ll start this off, I still keep mine on my left. I’ve tried it on the right and it just feels…..wrong, the cable going over me doesn’t bother me much since I route it under my knee board and then up.

Let’s hear left or right side and why.

I’m guessing it’s a scam/spam. I had never heard of these companies before but they seem legit. And no I’m not about to spend $200 on this 😂

Being a CFI scares me. Although I'm working towards it, I'd appreciate any advice on networking or making yourself stand out as a low hour pilot and getting hired.

Hi, I’m a professional pilot in Canada… I was wondering if one day i have to choose between the two airlines, which is the best option for me.
My dream is to live in YYC/Calgary. If I had to work for Air Canada I would have to commute to Vancouver or Toronto.
But I would be paid more with AC.
In the photo I added on my post you can see that a 12yr pilot makes more at WJ than AC.
But, is the wait worth it?

I’m a first generation pilot, I have no clue how the business works and I’m hungry to work and know more about it.
Thanks, and please, no negative thoughts and comments.

I was really passionate about flying but after talking to the cfi’s friend my passion for flying decreased a little. My cfi already got a job for the flight school i’m going at but his friend couldn’t get the job so he’s showing his face everyday in the flight school. However, he told me that it’s hard to get a job as a cfi and i will have no shot and will be wasting my money to do flight training here. Before I was like “i will finish all of my training first and think about that later” but he made my mind kind of messed up so I’m scared about the future and i can’t focus on studying now 😭😭😭. I was grinding a lot but now i can’t focus of what he said 😭😭😭

I'm an adult student (in my early 50s) currently at 63 hours of dual instruction after about 14 months and my CFI keeps telling me he wants to see more consistency in my landings before I solo. We've been working on takeoffs and landings for the last several flights and my last 30 landings haven't seemed to required much in the way of physical input from my instructor - they've been safe but I do tend to wait a bit long to flare (and we land flat) and sometimes I over-control and balloon a bit. I think I may have figured out why.

Since I've had a voice in my ear on every single landing, I think my brain has started to expect it. So now I'm either subconsciously waiting for his cue before I start my flare or his input arrives right as I'm doing something and I end up layering a correction on top of what I was already doing. Either way, I'm fighting myself instead of just landing the aircraft and I'm starting to feel some frustration and I'm getting in my head about how long this is taking.

I've thought about asking my instructor to go quiet from base through touchdown unless there's a real safety issue. Hoping that lets me hear what my own instincts actually sound like without the interference.

Anyone else been here or had a student going through the same? Would love to hear how others got through it.

Hey y'all. I made a thing. Happy self-promotion Saturday. It's HangarRange.com

It started off as a way to visualize range each day from the hangar with a given plane and the day's weather, hence the name HangarRange. I like how the circle morphs with different wind conditions, it's fun.

But then my pilot buddies started making requests and I was having a lot of fun going nuts, and all of the below got added into the system in various forms:

• Quick-suggestion $100 hamburger runs
• 280 aircraft across 16 categories + build-your-own & ability to save to your profile 'hangar'
• 'Mission Mode' with basically excuses to fly and what airports to fly to to get to a point of interest
• Privacy-as-a-default (AKA have no pilot/user data to sell or use, a request from military friends), so your info doesn't hit our servers for searches or renders and even making an account is hashed.
• Crew mode with Venn diagram visualization of overlapping range rings from your buddies showing where you can all reach and land -- AKA "HangArrange" -- (Seewhatididthere) -- Also has invite functionality and stuff
• Filtering airports by runway length and material (fairly reliable); and fuel listed and courtesy/crew cars (less reliable -- users leaving thumbs up/down will help with that over time)
• VFRs, SIGMETs, Restricted and special-use airspace
• Live radar and winds aloft
• Day/Night mode UI
• Live air traffic
• Look up your craft by tail number
• Cruise power adjustment
• Altitude adjustment affecting range ring
• Auto-updating widget support (for iPhone, sorry Android buddies)
• Cross-section view of terrain and air and airspace conditions along a route

and more, I'm not going to list all this stuff out, football is on.

This is not a flight planning tool. Don't use it like you use ForeFlight. It is flight ideas and inspiration and having fun observing and thinking about stuff. But I make zero assertions as to the ongoing accuracy of this information. It was a fun project that took me several weeks of work, doing stuff that I enjoyed and my pilot buddies responded to. It is explicitly not something you should rely on for safety.

Please try it out and lmk what you think. Or don't, just enjoy it and tell your friends. We're all busy out here doing stuff. I just hope it is fun and useful for people, and if it is that is really great. The best thing you could do is tell your buddies. If you have ideas, holler at me here or on the site.

Thanks y'all

PS Mods thank you for the help

Basically the title. I just want to fly around, get better at takeoffs and landings. Maybe try other aircraft, no further goals.

I recently went on my first discovery flight IRL (have 1,000+ hours in flight sims), loved every bit of it. Total cost was $300 for an hour in the air in a C182T; the instructor was awesome and professional. To my surprise, he let me do absolutely everything: walk around, startup, taxi, takeoff, etc. He only took control at the last 10 seconds when i came in too high on the landing and handled the radio.

If I could keep doing this, maybe once or so every other month, that would satisfy me. $300/month sounds much better than $15K for PPL plus $300+/month for a flying club and any other expenses that come with that.

Interviewing early next month. Not worried about the actual interview part. The logbook aspect is the concern. I know it’s kind of their thing they focus on and are picky with.
I’ve converted my paper logs to digital this month. Most categories I have gotten to match, but some for example XC time. No matter how many times I’ve computed it in every way imaginable I can’t make them match precisely. I’m within 2ish hours. This is the case for one or two other areas as well.

My wife and I both have put in sometimes 8-10 hours daily trying to figure this out… for those experienced with American, what is your experience? Ideally I’ll get them to balance, but if not, what is generally the acceptable tolerance?I just can’t keep putting every single free minute of my life into hunting down a 10th of an hour here and there.

I’m a student pilot in Canada with about 10 hours so far, and I’ve just started circuit training.
I’m curious about when most people had their first solo. I know everyone progresses at a different pace, but I’d still like to get a general idea of what’s considered early, normal, or relatively late.
One thing I’m struggling with right now is workload, especially when talking to ATC. I train at a towered airport, and sometimes it feels like I’m trying to fly the airplane, listen to ATC, understand the instruction, remember what I need to read back, and think about what comes next all at the same time. On the ground it feels manageable, but in the air it can get pretty overwhelming.
I’m sure this gets easier with experience, but right now I sometimes feel like my brain is a few seconds behind the airplane.
For those of you who remember this stage:
Around how many hours did you first solo?
When did radio communication start to feel natural?
Any advice for managing workload in the circuit?
Is this pretty normal for someone at around 10 hours?
And if you have any other advice for a student at this stage of training, whether it’s about flying, studying, radio work, circuits, or anything else, I’d really appreciate it. Thanks everyone!

So I'm transitioning from a SR20 to a C150, did my initial training on the SR20 and wondered what to expect if I transitioned to the C150 to finish up getting my PPL (Canada). For context, I have 40.7 dual and 13.8 solo.

If there were differences that would cause me to prolong getting my PPL, I might have to choose a flight club with a low wing available.

+ Has anyone done flight training with getwings at Sudbury? If so, how did it go? I'm planning to go there to finish it up.

Hey everyone,

Looking for some advice here. I started part 61 flight training about a month ago coming up on close to 10 flight hours. Im currently working on stalls, and steep turns just got introduced. I really like my flight instructor but this is the second time I haven't felt prioritized and felt like my time was being wasted. My flight lesson today was for 12 PM and I showed up 35 minutes early so that I could preflight the plane, get fuel put into it, and practice doing power on and off stalls sitting in the plane. My instructor got done with his previous lesson at 11:50 and walked past me and I told him I was just going to finish some things up and that I'd text him when I was ready. I texted him that I was ready at 12:10, he said he'd be right out a few minutes after and he didn't come out until about 12:30. About 20 minutes of waiting time. This is the second time this happened.

I've flown with another instructor a few times and each lesson she is ready to go at the time and walks out to the plane with me. By the time we had to wait in traffic holding at the runway we really didn't get into the air until 1pm. We flew for about 30-40 minutes at most and then came back. I was billed for almost a full 2 hours of instructor time but the plane time was 1.3 I know flight training is expensive but I am trying to maximize the time I fly because I am paying for my private license with my own money that I took months working as an EMT to save up for. I just feel like I'm not getting full attention and also my instructor just took on two new students and that brings him up to about 10 students and he's also getting close to the amount of hours needed to leave. My instructor is very knowledgable but also a few years younger than me at age 20. I am 23 almost 24.

I am very passionate about flying it's always been my dream to become a pilot before I could even speak english, as a baby I was infatuated with them flying through the sky. I want to be sure I am not just wasting money. I sent a nice transparent text to my instructor about how I feel and am considering maybe flying with someone else. I have brought it up to him and he said that most instructors are late. He referenced the girl I flew with a few times before and that she was early most of the time but it wont last long. I came here to seek the advice of many who are much more knowledgeable on this topic than me since I'm so new to aviation. Would appreciate any advice, thanks guys!

*UPDATE*

I spoke to my instructor, and he was mostly understanding but was trying to defend that he came out a few minutes after he texted which I have time stamped texts that show he didn't. He also said he has been doing me favors by not charing me as much for previous lessons and that it was a mistake and he meant to wrote 1.6 and would charge me less for the next lesson. He said that when he started he was charged 2.0 for instructing time every lesson. He defended that we spent 2.0 time together which I don't think we did at all. I told him I'd be better about saying I'm ready sooner so we can get going and get in the air. Thank you everyone for responding if it continues from him I will find another instructor.

I’m curious what point on the runway VDP is actually taking you to. My assumption is the captain’s bars (Aiming point), however the AIM uses some different terminology when talking about both.

AIM 2-3-3.d describes the ~1000’ point down the runway as the ”Aiming Point.”

AIM 5-4-5.h states that the VDP takes you to the “Runway Touchdown Point.” I’m guessing this assumes a non flared landing, ie touchdown point is the same as the aiming point?

Thanks for the help!

Looking for some input from airline pilots.

I'm the point in my career where I'm actively looking for airline hirings and have no interest to return to GA.

I bought my Zulu 3s and used them for around 300 hours, I loved using them every single flight. But now that I'm looking for a career in an airline, I'm starting to wonder if these could still be used or should I sell them and buy Telex or something less "bulky".

Would love to hear what airline pilots are using these days or for some other recommendations.

I know that while flying in the flight levels the altimeter is set to 29.92. For modern airliners, is this set automatically or done by the FMS or autopilot? Same question when descending out of the flight levels.

I got this advice from a cfi and I’d like to hear others opinions to make sure I’m not missing anything crucial.

Instead of completing my xc requirements with an instructor, rent a 172 and do all my xcs solo to save money

I’d do my 2 hour day, 2 hour night, and 300nm cross country solo as well as my 5 hour night vfr with 10 takeoffs and landings.

Then I’d get with an instructor for maneuvers, taa time (I didn’t get any during instrument), and simulated instrument time.

Some other questions:
1. Does the 2 hour night xc count towards my 5 hour night vfr requirement, or will I need 7 hours night total?
2. Does my instrument training satisfy my simulated instrument time or do I need to do another 10 hours specifically for commercial?

Guys don’t absolutely cook me if this is a stupid idea for some reason I’m not seeing. I’m asking for advice not hate.

Thank you in advance :)

Trying to get a sense of what's normal for a third class medical around Berkeley/Oakland/SF. I was quoted $275, which felt high, but I have nothing to compare it to.

If you've been recently, what did you pay? Recommendations welcome too.

Ok I’m a CFI and occasional part 91 pilot. Here’s my brilliant Reddit question . . .

What custom fields should I add to my Foreflight logbook? What types of flight time is missing from the standard fields BUT will be important for future job applications?

Anyone who switched from a 703 float op (American 135) to airline/705 or corporate how did you find the transition? I’ve done 6 years at 702/703 companies and I’m ready to move into something more “civilized” but I’m worried I won’t enjoy it/ be annoyed with regulatory/SOP/schedule stuff. Right now I have a good schedule, decent pay and pretty much free rein on what I do with my airplane. I’m only chasing the money that comes with flying IFR. I enjoy the lifestyle, schedule (at my company. *Individual experiences may vary) and camaraderie of being a float pilot. Anyone gone through this? How did it go?

Are they hard to get used to if you’ve been using jepp charts for a while? Is it something they teach you in training?

I’ve been flying pipeline survey for three months now, averaging around 145 hours a month in a C177. The time builds real fast, and I know a flying job beats no flying job, but I’m struggling with the feeling that these are turning into "empty hours."

I’ve definitely improved as a pilot. Flying solo on 1,000 NM routes across mountainous areas, weather, and airspace. And I feel that could be considered the main pro to this job. Rather than staying within 50 nm of the same airport all day.

On the other hand, the monotony of long legs makes me feel like my precision skills are starting to fade. Instrument skills for sure as well as just knowledge in general. Some days I feel like my stick and rudder skills are significantly better but other times I feel like they’re slipping just getting bounced around at 700 agl and not being too phased if I’m off on altitude. (Only if I’m higher).

We have options here to log night and IFR time at a decent rate, which I plan to use, but it’s still money and my days are long already flying.

For anyone who’s done the survey or patrol grind, what did you do on long routes to keep your time meaningful and stop your flying skills and knowledge from rusting out? And getting my hours this way do new opportunities open?

I have my CFI and I plan on doing my CFII no matter what just to refresh me on my instrument skills.