Good feeling landing / 200th hour

not at all, depends on how fast you want to do it.
I finished my private in 3 months, then it took me 6 months to finish my
instument, the reason for the long time was me just sitting down and getting
the written out of the way. So far, I have slowly been getting ready for the
commericial, been working at it for 3 months now...If I just sit down and do
it, I can be done in a week.

Robert Simpson wrote:

"A Lieberman" wrote in message
...
: On my 200th hour, I had my best feel good landing. Been interesting
to
: look back on my log book and see how much I have learned / experienced
: in the past 2+ years / 200 hours. Summary as shown below
:
: 09/29/2001 First flight!
: 06/30/2002 First Solo
: 09/29/2002 First Duel Cross Country
: 10/14/2002 First Solo Cross Country
: 01/26/2003 Passed Check Ride
: 01/27/2003 First passenger taken
: 02/02/2003 Checkout ride in my Beech Sundowner
: 02/24/2003 Night landing, no landing light
: 02/23/2003 First passenger taken on a cross country trip
: 03/09/2003 First night cross country solo
: 04/11/2003 First full stop at a controlled airport
: 04/18/2003 Caught VFR on top, diverted to another airport
: 04/19/2003 2nd Diversion due to strong headwinds for fuel
: 05/18/2003 Vacuum pump failure during night flight
: 07/19/2003 Engine failure - declared inflight emergency to ATC
: 09/22/2003 Test flight for engine break in
: 11/12/2003 Electrical fire (no flames, just burning wires and smoke)
: 12/11/2003 Runway closure, landed on taxiway
:

This is a newbe question from someone who is thinking about beginning
flight training.

I see it took about 9 months from first flight to solo, 7 more months to
the check ride and about 26 months total to accumulate 200 hours and
begin IFR instruction. Is this pretty close to the time it usually takes
to get to these milestones?

Robert Simpson wrote:
[...]
I see it took about 9 months from first flight to solo, 7 more months
to the check ride and about 26 months total to accumulate 200 hours
and begin IFR instruction. Is this pretty close to the time it
usually takes to get to these milestones?

Well, there are flying schools which offer a Private Pilot course including
the check ride within 2 weeks.
And they actually deliver what they promise!
However, while you may have a license after those 2 weeks, you still don't
know how to fly.

Just compare the US legal minumum of 35 hours with the US national average
of somewhere around 65 hours for the Private. There are many reasons why
people need longer:
- many people take a break and come back months later
- many people cannot afford(financially or time-wise) to fly more often then
once a week or even less then that. But that means that in the meantime your
mind and your body forgot about what you had learned the lesson before and
you will spent half of the next lesson just re-learning what you did last
time.
If you can fly every other day then you will need much less actual flying
time because you will forget less between lessons.

Personally I started in September, flying pretty much every other day. Then
I had to take a break for 2 months. And now I have some hopes to maybe solo
between the years or shortly after, weather permitting.

jue

"Jürgen Exner" wrote in message .. .
Robert Simpson wrote:
[...]
I see it took about 9 months from first flight to solo, 7 more months
to the check ride and about 26 months total to accumulate 200 hours
and begin IFR instruction. Is this pretty close to the time it
usually takes to get to these milestones?

Well, there are flying schools which offer a Private Pilot course including
the check ride within 2 weeks.
And they actually deliver what they promise!
However, while you may have a license after those 2 weeks, you still don't
know how to fly.

I could argue either side of that. I would say that as a CFI about 25%
of the cockpit time I spend with students is going over what they
missed when family took them out of town, etc and they didn't fly for
2 weeks. If you can cram an entire private in 2 weeks, the student
probably doesn't have to do much relearning. I've never worked at such
an outfit but I imagine it works well. Now, the weekend instrument
rating, I'm not sure about. I don't think I'm putting my Grandmother
in a plane with a pilot about to launch IMC with a weekend IFR ticket
but I may well with a 2 week private.
-Robert CFI