Honest Self Assessments

I have been nagging my instructor a bit about flying in windy days rather than the perfect days. The point is simple really. There is always wind and, when I earn my private pilot certificate, I want to be able to fly in those conditions confidently. This week's flight was supposed to be another solo flight in the pattern, but as luck would have it, winds where up to 15 knots with gusts up to 20 knots. These conditions exceed the constraints placed by my instructor upon solo flights. I got my wish. My instructor and I flew the pattern for 6 landings. The lesson was gift!

My landings were not perfect. Two were on the center line. The rest were not. I overcompensated for the wind in most cases. The wind kept shifting. The average wind direction was about 10 degrees to the right of the runway center line. The aircraft never once was in an uncrontrolled dangerous state. Safety over beauty first. I flew the plane to the runway. I never gave up control. So, in the end, both my instructor and I were pleased with the entire lesson.

After ever lesson, my instructor and I discuss my performance, the good, the bad and the ugly (not much of those thankfully). These discussions sound a bit odd at times. My instructor is very cautious to provide an honest well-rounded assessment. The point is to not discourage a student, but to clearly point out areas of improvement. I generally find myself walking away from these discussions a bit frustrated. It is no different from the way my son feels when we talk about his performance in Tae Kwon Do. The lesson can be good but there is always areas that need improvement. These assessments are critical to understanding a pilots skills and limitations. There is no place for over-confidence or a boosted ego in the cockpit.

Some of discussion with my instructor, both before and after the flight lesson, focused around future flights. I wanted to jump into night flights since I have completed two cross country flights. I wanted the next two or three cross country flights to be night, with and without foggles. Following similar lines of thought with flying windy conditions, I wanted to make sure I had sufficient skill to fly at night so I can start going on longer trips after attaining the private pilot certificate. For example, I may want to leave after work and fly to Connecticut to see my parents for the week-end. See the trend here? I want to make sure I have sufficient skills to do any kind of VFR flying within the contiguous United States as a private pilot. My instructor kindly tried to point out the error in my thinking.

The key word in my goal statement is 'sufficient'. When a 16 year old American earns his driver's license for a car, the kid simply cannot have the skills to drive in every situation. It is this reason that good parents and guardians do not just hand over car keys without restrictions. For example, I did very little night driving in the first month of my license. When I wanted to take my friends to a concert in Hartford, my father and I drove the route first. I needed to buid up some experience and familiarity with the surroudings. At 16, I was good driver. My father gave me many opportunities to drive under supervision, like driving to New York to visit his brother, or up to Massachusetts to see my grand parents. I even drove in snowy conditions, rainy conditions, and congested conditions. Even with all that practice, as a newly license driver, I simply did not have all skills to manage the workload all the time.

My Kung Fu instructor states that any skill requires ten thousand hours to become a master. I probably have close to that in drums. I know I have that in driving a car on the street. I definitely have that in my profession. So, a 50 hour pilot is by no means a 'skilled' pilot and very far from a master.

So what does a private pilot license gain someone? Sure, from my perspective the regulations are pretty open. There is a lot of space below 18000 MSL. However, just like a licensed car driver, regulations have some general statements concerning placing people and property in harms way. The private pilot license gives one the freedom to expand their skills. When the ink is wet on my license, will I have sufficient skills to fly at night to an airport over 300 NM from my home base, around some very busy airspace? Not by my definition of sufficient. Sufficient to me means that, unless the conditions are unusual harsh and completely outside my control, there is no chance of me harming person or property as PIC. A clear weather flight to uncharted territory at night carries quite a bit of risk for a new pilot.

It is this point that honest self assessment of skill is critical to survival. Baby steps are required, allowing the pilot to expand skills incrementally to deal with increased work load encountered in new environments. Case in point, night flying is only three to four hours of training. That is not much training. Best to do a trip several times during the day prior to attempting at night.

In the end, my windy conditions flying felt great. I suprised myself on how well I did. I also was pleasantly humbled on how far I need to go. I look forward to the journey.