First Solo and Total Hours Flown

I'm going to take the opposite from the prevailing oppinion on this...

There absolutley should be a minimum amount of hours to solo (15-20),
as flying through the pattern a few times here and there is nowhere
sufficient for a pilot to solo (especially out of anything with a
tower... and forget about it in less than a certain amount of hours in
class B), this minimum shoul dbe there for the same reason that we have
a "minimum" amount of hours to get a Private, to get your instrument
rating to get a CPL. There is an amount of time that a person just
needs to be sitting behind the controls of a plane to be able to fly a
plane with reasonable ability, as they are not even proficient in
operation at that point.

An instructor that sends out a student with 3 hours or less is
definitley being reckless and endangering his students and fellow
pilots.

Taxiing out to the runway say 3 times (once every hour), having done 3
run ups (maybe), is not sufficient enough to prepare anyone for the
complex situations that may arise in the air.

I'm going to take the opposite from the prevailing oppinion on this...

There absolutley should be a minimum amount of hours to solo (15-20),
as flying through the pattern a few times here and there is nowhere
sufficient for a pilot to solo (especially out of anything with a
tower... and forget about it in less than a certain amount of hours in
class B), this minimum shoul dbe there for the same reason that we have
a "minimum" amount of hours to get a Private, to get your instrument
rating to get a CPL. There is an amount of time that a person just
needs to be sitting behind the controls of a plane to be able to fly a
plane with reasonable ability, as they are not even proficient in
operation at that point.

An instructor that sends out a student with 3 hours or less is
definitley being reckless and endangering his students and fellow
pilots.

Taxiing out to the runway say 3 times (once every hour), having done 3
run ups (maybe), is not sufficient enough to prepare anyone for the
complex situations that may arise in the air.

It took me 40 hours until solo... I was a one trip a week student and
had a couple of off times during this time...

On 30 Nov 2006 11:37:17 -0800, "george" wrote:


Greengears wrote:

Every pilot out there will never forget their first Solo. But there has
always been this nagging questions as to should there be a minimum
amount of hours flown before a pilot can be allowed to Solo. I have
seen pilots solo in as little as 9 hours and as high as 75 hours.
I know most of you will say that it should vary from pilot to pilot.
But should there be a minimum amount of hours flown?

It should be left to the discretion of the instructor,
I soloed under 5 hours and know of others who were sent off at 3
hours...
If any-one takes more than 20 hours to solo they should take another
look at becoming a pilot.. IMHO


Mike Alexander
PP-ASEL
Temecula, CA
See my online aerial photo album at
http://flying.4alexanders.com

This is exactly the type of comments that makes me sad to hear from
pilots - 'not everyone is cut out to be a pilot'. This attempts to make
the point that pilots are some kind of superior being.

As you very well know, flying is only 10% motor skills and 90%
attitude. You can even teach a monkey the motor skills required to fly
an airplane. But you can't teach attitude.

Solo is all about motor skills. It is like teaching a monkey. It is a
big jump from there to becoming a pilot, unless of course someone is
under the illusion that flying is all about pushing buttons and moving
the yoke.

Quality of instruction is a big factor that affects solo time. It is
pretty lame when instructors start bailing out by claiming that 'not
everyone is cut out to be a pilot'.

Under the GI bill, there might have been some financial interest in
making these claims. In addition, since someone else was paying for
their flying, there might have been some students whose heart was not
in it.

If someone said they took 75 hours for solo, I will start by first
asking questions about their instructor.

Albert Einstein didn't speak until he was four years old and wasn't
fluent until at least age eight. I suppose you would claim that he was
not cut out to be an intelligent person.




karl gruber wrote:
"Andrew Sarangan" wrote in message
ups.com...
birdog wrote:


While this is a rediculuous question, it fits right in with our current
political environment, in that the federal gov't. should dictate the
number
of hours it SHALL take us to be competent to solo. I've known licensed
pilots with 300 hours that I wouldn't fly with, and others who have
solo'd
in 6 hours. 75 hours to solo? Why was he EVER allowed to solo?

Are you saying that someone who took 75 hours to solo must have had
some serious problems, and therefore should not be allowed to solo?


Yes. Very serious problems. I know here on RAP it is popular to encourage
high time pre soloers to continue. But I think they are simply not cut out
for aviation.

I KNOW that during the GI bill time that lasted until 1978, we instructors
had to regularly advise all sorts of perspective commercial pilots to think
about buying a boat instead.

Not everyone is cut out to be a pilot.

Karl
"Curator" N185KG

"Andrew Sarangan" wrote:

This is exactly the type of comments that makes me sad to hear from
pilots - 'not everyone is cut out to be a pilot'. This attempts to make
the point that pilots are some kind of superior being.

Actually it is a correct statement. I am not cut out to be a doctor,
basketball player, jockey, lawyer, etc. Such is life. It does not
mean that people who are those professions are superior than me.

Ron Lee

I would love to see the 3-hour guy's logbook for all the 15 items
required by the FAR for solo. In fact, I would love to see the 5-hour
guy's logbook too.



george wrote:
Greengears wrote:

Every pilot out there will never forget their first Solo. But there has
always been this nagging questions as to should there be a minimum
amount of hours flown before a pilot can be allowed to Solo. I have
seen pilots solo in as little as 9 hours and as high as 75 hours.
I know most of you will say that it should vary from pilot to pilot.
But should there be a minimum amount of hours flown?

It should be left to the discretion of the instructor,
I soloed under 5 hours and know of others who were sent off at 3
hours...
If any-one takes more than 20 hours to solo they should take another
look at becoming a pilot.. IMHO

FWIW: I soloed with 1.5 hours logged.

How many NOT logged?

;-)
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

"Andrew Sarangan" wrote in message
ps.com...
This is exactly the type of comments that makes me sad to hear from
pilots - 'not everyone is cut out to be a pilot'. This attempts to make
the point that pilots are some kind of superior being.

Well, for better or for worse, the point is valid, even if the justification
here is not.

I tend to agree with you that time to solo is much more indicative of issues
related to the instruction. Either a problem with the instructor himself,
or perhaps related to stretching the flying out way too infrequently (I
actually made two attempts to learn to fly...in the first, I flew 17 hours
over the span of five months, and never did solo by the end of that time).

However, I also believe that it is true that "not everyone is cut out to be
a pilot". Of course, I also hold the radical view that not everyone is cut
out to drive a motor vehicle or operate a personal computer connected to the
Internet, to name a couple of things that as a society we take as a right
rather than a privilege, even though that "right" carries great potential
for harm to others.

As you correctly point out, the bulk of being a pilot has to do with
judgment and factual knowledge, rather than motor skills (especially with
current aircraft design...this wasn't always true, IMHO). And frankly, not
everyone is capable of exercising the judgment, nor of learning the factual
knowledge, required to be a pilot.

In some cases, this impairment is due to some real physiological issue,
though in most cases it's simply due to a basic lack of motivation and
responsibility on the applicant's part. Either way, you're left with the
fact that there are people out there who simply will never be able to become
a pilot.

Pete

In article .com,
"Andrew Sarangan" wrote:

I would love to see the 3-hour guy's logbook for all the 15 items
required by the FAR for solo. In fact, I would love to see the 5-hour
guy's logbook too.

Why? 61.87 doesn't have *that* much stuff to go over. Are there
other requirements for solo flight?

If someone learns at a relatively quiet field with a good practice area
really close, is able to have lots of frequent short lessons, and
flies a reasonably fast trainer, why should solo at 5 hours be
so unbelievable?

--
Bob Noel
Looking for a sig the
lawyers will hate

If someone said they took 75 hours for solo, I will start by first
asking questions about their instructor.


I'd start asking questions about their therapist. 75 hours is a waste of
everyone's time.

Some people just don't cut it. Easy to blame the instructor, but that's just
trying rationalize their own lack of ability.


Karl