Gary G wrote:

I'm really frustrated today and haven't even booked another flight
because I'm pretty underconfident at the moment.

It's just your slow spell -- I think everyone goes through that.

The problem with flying lessons is that you end up trying to please
your instructor, mostly doing drills that have little in common with
the kind of flying you'll be doing after you get your license. It's
definitely important to be able to land the plane, and you'll get
better with practice (just as you probably did driving a car), but in
real life, approach and landing is a couple of minutes of a 3-4 hour
cross-country leg, and you don't always have the priviledge of flying a
textbook pattern -- in fact, since I fly mainly into towered or MF
airports, I very rarely do. Just try to get the plane down and stopped
without leaving any parts on the runway.

The most important things about flying are weather, airspace, weather,
weather, weather, airspace, and weather. Weather is *way* more
complicated than the simple intro in ground school lets on, and it's
going to keep surprising you for at least your first 450 hours (that's
where I am now). I worry far more about understanding the weather now
than I do about where I flare or how I fly my base leg (aside from not
hitting anyone or anything on the way down).


Best of luck, and don't let the little details discourage you,


David