When do Student Sport Pilots usually make their first solo?

[Helen]

Tecanm Flyer, grab me in the office some day. I'll show you the statistical plot I've run of age vs. time to graduation. There's obviously a lot of factors that go into time to solo but the age graph is pretty interesting. The good news is that older pilots like yourself tend to really enjoy the flight training process since older fliers don't have all of the external pressures of a new career and family to deal with and probably get more out of it as they train through multiple seasons and gain he experience that that brings.

Congrats on the solo!

N918KT, just fly as often as you can and you'll get there. I did my PPL during grad school so I can totally commiserate. It takes longer and isn't as efficient training while you are in school, but you'll get there.

Helen

[bryancobb]

You are right my friends,

I will concede, that my quick success I had (post #7 this thread) in getting my private license in minimum time, was due a lot to how often I flew.

I was in the Air Force and stationed in Tampa, FL at the time. I was working 2nd shift. I was free from morning until 3:30 every day.

I understood that the cheapest and quickest way was to eliminate the "money hurdle" so I got a $2,800 loan from the credit union.

I told my CFI to schedule me every day that weather was suitable, for a 10:00 A.M. flight.

For those who "just don't have the time," I encourage you to use that VERY EARLY hour at sunrise. Ask your instructor to meet you at the airport 1/2 hour before you can legally takeoff. Have your preflight done in the dark and be sitting at the end of the runway with runup complete, just as it becomes legal for sport pilots.

You will experience dead calm, or ungusty (not a word) conditions and your flying will be on rails.

[eidolon45]

Helen, I will take you up on that offer to look at your chart showing the effects of aging on flight learning, although It probably will be depressing! And yes, I am enjoying the flight experience even more than I dared imagine. Being able to learn something this mentally and physically challenging at my stage of life yields real joy and exhilaration.

A retired Navy friend of mine provided the final encouragement that helped me overcome my fear and pay my first visit to our little flying schoolhouse. My Navy friend is a Cessna pilot and he said: " Jim, it's just like driving a car. If you can drive a car, you can fly - no huge problem".

It wasn't until awhile later that I learned Bill got his Pilot license when he was 16 - before he even could drive a car! I doubt he even remembers how difficult it was.

After a few of my initial lessons, I again heard him telling another friend how easy flying is. At this point I had to challenge him a bit:

"Bill", I said, "I concur that learning to fly a plane is probably a lot like learning to drive a car - ALL OVER AGAIN! But my comparison would have to stop there. First of all, I don't drive my car with my FEET. Second, when I turn the steering wheel, it doesn't turn up on its side. And most important, when I want to park it, I don't start that process by diving at the pavement at 70 MILES PER HOUR! Other than that, yeah I guess it's like driving a car - except a lot more FUN!"

[eidolon45]

Helen, I will take you up on that offer to look at your chart showing the effects of aging on flight learning, although It probably will be depressing! And yes, I am enjoying the flight experience even more than I dared imagine. Being able to learn something this mentally and physically challenging at my stage of life yields real joy and exhilaration.

A retired Navy friend of mine provided the final encouragement that helped me overcome my fear and pay my first visit to our little flying schoolhouse. My Navy friend is a Cessna pilot and he said: " Jim, it's just like driving a car. If you can drive a car, you can fly - no huge problem".

It wasn't until awhile later that I learned Bill got his Pilot license when he was 16 - before he even could drive a car! I doubt he even remembers how difficult it was.

After a few of my initial lessons, I again heard him telling another friend how easy flying is. At this point I had to challenge him a bit:

"Bill", I said, "I concur that learning to fly a plane is probably a lot like learning to drive a car - ALL OVER AGAIN! But my comparison would have to stop there. First of all, I don't drive my car with my FEET. Second, when I turn the steering wheel, it doesn't turn up on its side. And most important, when I want to park it, I don't start that process by diving at the pavement at 70 MILES PER HOUR! Other than that, yeah I guess it's like driving a car - except a lot more FUN!"

[NismoRR]

I'm currently in training with 11.9 hrs in ten lessons and with all my pre-solo reqs complete. (Student certificate, CFI pre-solo knowledge test) My solo can happen any time know, I think. I've been focused on the pattern/landings for the last six lessons ~60 landings, and have been making good progress, for the most part. So now it's up to the CFI, who I happen to like and trust a great deal. The way I look at it is kind of two fold. One part of me wants to get it done and move on. The other part is that more practice and pattern work can't hurt. With that said, if I don't solo by 15 hours, I'm sure I'll be a little more antsy about it. I'm trying to be patient with all aspects of training, which unfortunately has never been one of my strong points. LOL

[Helen]

Tecnam Flyer, I wouldn't ever compare learning to fly to learning to drive. I think a much better analogy is learning a new language. Easy for the young folks to do, a bit more challenging for the older folks. Requires a lot of home study and regular practice, but very rewarding in the end!

[drseti]

I concur that learning to fly a plane is probably a lot like learning to drive a car

Jim, ignoring for just a moment your rather clever alogy (reciprocal of an analogy), I'd have to say that flying is a lot more like driving a motorcycle than a car. My students who are bikers (especially those who have taken the Motorcycle Safety Foundation's basic rider course) tend to learn flying more quickly. They are comfortable in banks, understand the relationship between bank angle, turning radius, and velocity, and pretty much get the hang of coordinated turns straightaway.

I do use the tag line "If you can drive, you can fly" in my ads. This doesn't mean flying is as easy as driving, only that (1) for sport pilots, if you have a current driver's license, you've met the flying medical requirements, and (2) if you were able to learn driving skills, you'll also be capable of learning flying skills.

That said, I'm sure all my students will agree with your comment about steering with your feet, and parking by diving at 70 mph!

[Hambone]

IMHO, continuity is one of the primary factors in the effectiveness of not just flying training, but any training. The sporadic hour here and there is not as effective as a concentrated 2-3 weeks of intensive training, and will therefore require more flying hours for most students.

My plans on starting up a sport pilot training operation are modelled on the military flying training system I'm familiar with. And yes, not all prospective students will have the time and/or money to do a short, intensive course.

Helen - I'd also be interested in seeing the correlation between age and hours to solo. But it can be statistically misleading without considering other factors, such as continuity of training.

[designrs]

drseti, I concur that there are a lot of similarities between motorcycling and flying. Besides the coordination and physics, there are similar risk factors, extreme consequences for mistakes, and the issue of facing fear by doing something that most people would not do.

Statistically, I read that motorcycling and flying have similar risk factors, the main difference being that in motorcycling the greatest risks are other motorists (cars that don't look or see you) where in flying the risk is mostly related to your own skills & judgement. A much better proposition!

Facing fear by relying on your skills to stay alive while experiencing something exciting is a common denominator of both flying & motorcycling. There is a strong and common mental and psychological process that needs to be in place to face fear while being effective while performing challenging tasks and making decisions.

[SportCubJim]

Your CFI will send you on a solo when they are sure you are ready and can also safely complete the solo even if some emergency occurs.

As my wise CFI often said, and I have learned to fully understand, "it is better to be on the ground wishing you were in the air rather than in the air wishing you could be on the ground.

[Super Cub]

I have always felt that if you have operated a bulldozer, you can fly.
The dozer blade control is up and down. Left and right is tilt. And you steer with your feet. Equipment operators make good pilots.

[eidolon45]

actually, super cub, I do own a dozer with most of those features, except pedal steering (mine has leavers!). It's also a good bit slower than the Tecnam.

[drseti]

There's been past discussion on this forum about the influence of age on flight hours to first solo. The conventional wisdom has been that younger students learn faster, and solo sooner, than older learners. I decided to do a preliminary data analysis to see if experience bears this out. In order to normalize for other variables, I decided to do a correlation analysis for students all training in the same aircraft, at the same flight school, with the same instructor.

Using my own students over the past year, in the Evektor SportStar, as a convenience sample, I drew a small data set of five students. (For all you statisticians out there, I freely admit that this is too small a sample size to draw statistically significant conclusions -- please consider this merely a pilot study, to be followed up with a larger data set later.) I find a very strong positive correlation between age and hours to solo. My five data points fit a second order polynomial to greater than a 99% confidence level.

OK, so age and hours are related -- but, why? This preliminary study doesn't address that larger question, but several possibilities suggest themselves:

(1) Older students learn new skills more slowly (the old dog, new tricks hypothesis)

(2) Older students tend toward perfectionism, and don't want to solo until they are sure of their skills.

(3) The older student has more free time, so is under less scheduling pressure to solo earlier.

(4) The older student has more disposable income, thus is under less financial pressure to solo earlier.

(5) The flight instructor is, for whatever reason, more hesitant to send the older pilot out solo than he or she is a younger student.

(6) Younger students have a greater dropout rate, for whatever reason, thus some of them never solo, skewing the results.

I'm not yet prepared to speculate on the above; more research is called for. But, I believe that I will eventually be able to publish a simple polynomial equation which will allow students accurately to predict (within specified error limits) their expected hours to solo, based solely on age.

[deltafox]

Very interesting analysis. As a "more experienced" aviator I would be interested if you could expound somewhat on point #5. Why?

[drseti]

I would be interested if you could expound somewhat on point #5.

This is purely speculation, of course, but I do have some ideas about this. I had posted:

(5) The flight instructor is, for whatever reason, more hesitant to send the older pilot out solo than he or she is a younger student.

One thing I've noticed is that we flight instructors tend to be more deferential to our older students. With a youngster, when we feel the student is ready to solo, we say "pull over and shut down over there on the ramp, so I can get out." The shell-shocked student complies, because he or she is probably afraid to talk back to us! With more mature students, we're more likely to ask, "so, do you think you're ready to try this by yourself?" More often than that, the student's answer is, "Not really -- I'm in no hurry. I'd rather have a few more lessons with you first." And, we instructors respect the older student's wishes, which delays their first solo just a bit.

I'm sure there are some testable hypotheses in there somewhere, but (as my PhD adviser wisely informed me, decades back), "it's probably best to leave something for the next grad student."