Any pilots here?

[dalparadise]

I'm in the process of obtaining my private pilot's certificate. I'm finding it to be incredibly therapeutic and offering the unexpected benefit of focusing my mental energy very finely on the tasks at hand. As you all may suspect -- I'm not a very disciplined person by nature. This pursuit has really tapped a new side of me. I am going for this with discipline, patience and persistence. It's a great stress reliever!

I have a little over 8 hours in the plane and 6 hours in ground school. So, I'm really just getting going. But, I'd love to share some experiences with people here, if anyone is interested.

[Houston1stWordOnTheMoon]

Good luck and much success to you. Make sure you just do it as a hobby, dont go commercial. That wouldnt be good for your blood pressure.

[dalparadise]

Good luck and much success to you. Make sure you just do it as a hobby, dont go commercial. That wouldnt be good for your blood pressure.

Yeah -- I'm probably getting too old to go commercial anyway. I'd be forced into retirement before I got enough hours.

For me, it's just a hobby. I'll get my instrument rating, then buy a 30-year old Cessna and have fun on the weekends. My goal is to spend a summer flying to watch the Astros play in all the NL parks.

[MidtownCoog]

I have my Private Pilot SEL rating. 300 hours.

All I do nowadays is fly the Texas coast out of EFD, T41 and GLS.

Edited November 8, 2006 by MidtownCoog

[TJones]

I've played Flight Simulator 3. It is friggin tough.

[wendyps]

I grew up with a pilot father and active in an organization that did a lot of flying. I don't have any formal hours, but lots and lots of informal training. However, its been many years since I've been up in a cessna

I would LOVE to get my license... where are you taking lessons?

[dalparadise]

I grew up with a pilot father and active in an organization that did a lot of flying. I don't have any formal hours, but lots and lots of informal training. However, its been many years since I've been up in a cessna

I would LOVE to get my license... where are you taking lessons?

I'm flying out of AXH -- Houston Southwest Airport. It's a nice private field with a 5000' runway and no tower. Makes it easy to screw up and not endanger very many others, or look like a total idiot. So far, I haven't had any real major mishaps. the one quirk with AXH is their runway alignment -- East - West. That means 9 out of 10 times I'm landing in a crosswind. I like it for the practice it gives me. For really windy days we've gone down to Brazoria County to practice landings on their 7000' North-South runway.

I'm flying a refurbished Civil Air Patrol Cessna 172 with a 180hp conversion. It is a sweet plane that flies beautifully and climbs like a rocket (relatively speaking, I know). Last weekend, I scored my first really excellent landing. I put it down just as the stall warning chirped at the end of my flare -- a nice greaser, by my inexperienced standards.

Two weeks before, I was overshooting the runway with full flaps and decided to do a go-around at about 100 feet off the deck. To my instructor's dismay, I reached over and took out all the flaps at once WHILE I WAS STILL AT ENGINE IDLE. The plane didn't dive too much and my instructor was able to quickly drop the flaps, but he made me read up on slow flight procedures, power-off stalls and some other stuff that night

I learned my lesson.