"No, I don't thank you for the fish at all" (notindetroit)
09/09/2015 at 12:23 • Filed to: Planelopnik, How to Fly, Flight Lessons
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"No, I don't thank you for the fish at all" (notindetroit)
09/09/2015 at 12:23 • Filed to: Planelopnik, How to Fly, Flight Lessons | 4
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Becoming a member of the flying community also means becoming a member of an exclusive club. Like how two motorcyclists wave a hand when passing each other, certain traditions almost magically impose themselves onto new members. Other traditions might seem bizarre to a fresh initiate going through the process for the first time. Here’s three things you might not be aware lies in store for you when you pay up for your first flight lessons.
When You Do Your First Solo Flight, Wear a Shirt You’re Prepared to Throw Away
You might be tempted to dress fancy to commemorate your first solo flight, but doing so could be a pricey mistake. It’s perhaps the most bizarre yet symbolic tradition of all of flight training - taking a pair of scissors to the very shirt on your back. !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! has this explainer on their Flight Training website:
A tradition in aviation requires that, after a fledgling aviator solos for the first time, the flight instructor take a pair of scissors to the student pilot’s clothing and cut off the shirttails. Often the piece of fabric is decorated with a drawing of the event or a caricature of the pilot. The artwork can be very elaborate and is limited only by the creativity (or schedule) of the flight instructor or other artistic talent in the airport community.
The decorated shirttail usually is displayed in the flight school or FBO, where dozens may be thumbtacked to the walls. It may be returned to the student when he or she earns a pilot certificate, although some are displayed until the artwork fades and the fabric begins to deteriorate. (It’s been speculated that some students take that long to earn a private pilot certificate, which is not true — although sometimes it may feel that way.)
The reasons how and why this tradition started are varied, but the most popular historic theories all involve a means of warning experienced airmen that “fresh bait” is about to hit the sky, whether by tying the cut shirttail onto the plane or the pilot’s own person, or allowing the dismembered shirt itself to serve as a “warning.” Most flight instructors today will probably tell you it’s to symbolize breaking the bounds of the Earth, or something else suitably poetic. What exactly qualifies as a “shirttail” is equally under interpretation - a Certified Flight Instructor might just snip around the small of your back while another might come at you with a fistful of scissors, Micheal Meyers from
Halloween-
style, and slice the whole front of your shirt open. Oh, and you typically don’t get to keep it - as explained above by AOPA, typically your shirt is up on display for all to see, after it’s been attacked again by colored markers and you get to relive being in 2nd grade again.
Either way, my recommendation is to maybe rummage around your rag pile when the date of your first solo comes up.
You Never Get to Land a Plane By Yourself on Your First Flight - But You Almost Always get to Take Off by Yourself
Taking off isn’t the hard part - the hard part is the landing.
It’s probably going to be a few flights at least before you can land a plane even with the assistance of your flight instructor, but it’s equally likely that said instructor will just give gentle or light guidance on the controls and let you take the plane into the sky even on your first trip up. Landing a plane is a procedure in trying to bring something that wants to naturally keep flying back down - taking off is just letting it do what it wants to do already. Proper landing procedure involves airspeed management, angle of attack management and not freaking out when it looks like you’re going to nose-smack into the middle of the runway. Proper take-off management involves just keeping the plane tracking straight and pushing the throttle all the way forward in a steady manner.
If you can manage that in a car, you can manage that much in a plane.Which is why as a confidence booster most flight instructors will make a big deal of letting the new student handle the take-off all by him or herself without much of a fuss, especially if there’s a parent or other relative or friend present during the flight. It’s a cheap, easy and effective way of building and demonstrating skills and putting hands on to how flying is done right from the beginning with little risk to plane or person.
A Lot of it is Important - But Boring - Time Building
Remember when you got your learner’s permit and it took a million hours with your Mom or Dad driving everywhere? When you do flight training, you’re going to be spending hours treating the pilot’s seat as a practical classroom - learning how to do basic and then relatively advanced maneuvers, how to actually land, how to integrate into other flight traffic safely - and then you’ll reach a certain point where your skills plateau and you’ve achieved proficiency in safe flight, but now you’re just racking up hours towards the next license or rating qualification with or without an instructor besides you. And now all of a sudden flying gets very, very boring and tedious, especially fresh after solo when most of your time is spent circling around an airport’s traffic pattern.
Once you get unstuck from perpetual pattern work but not yet cleared for cross-country flight, the best means to break up the monotony is to probably take it out to the designated practice area - most general aviation airports will have one. They’re out of the way so it usually takes a good while to get there, but once you’re there you’re free to safely and responsibly fly around as you wish. Keep in mind that you’re confined to an invisible box so you can’t exactly explore the world on your own, but you might discover places or interesting features you never noticed before.
And then it starts getting boring again. Just hang in there!
MonkeePuzzle
> No, I don't thank you for the fish at all
09/09/2015 at 13:53 |
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what kind of flying do you do? and in what sort of plane/s?
sunnydaysam
> No, I don't thank you for the fish at all
09/10/2015 at 09:05 |
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My second instructor didn’t believe in giving his students any warning of the solo. One morning he just had me stop by the runway, got out and said, ‘I’m going for a cup of coffee. Take ‘er around three times. Remember, it’ll climb a lot faster without me. Good luck.’ that was it.
Also, I’ve never been bored for a second in any airplane all these years. Flying in any airport pattern, especially an uncontrolled one like my home airport, demands a lot of vigilance if one wants to remain among the living. My first instructor and his student were killed in a mid-air collision on base leg and I never forgot that. I think of him every time I turn base at any airport.