For those that have come back after taking time off

Posted by Hot-Fox-8797@reddit | flying | View on Reddit | 10 comments

Where did you feel most rusty? I’m a somewhat low time PPL coming back after 6 months off. I’m not as worried about stick and rudder skill but moreso maybe some procedures/other things that have faded from memory over time. What are your thoughts? I plan to go up with instructor first time to get rust off

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10 Comments

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noahhl@reddit

I took 17 years off, post-solo and pre-PPL. I forgot basically all of the tactile skills. I took a year off, post-PPL with a little under 200 hours. That time, the tactile skills came back immediately. The thing that fades the fastest for me? Seeing other traffic. When I've been flying 3-5 times/week, picking up traffic at 5 miles within a couple thousand feet vertically is doable. If it's been a couple weeks since I've flown and traffic to follow should be right there? Negative contact, still looking, maybe tower can call my base.

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DonWop1@reddit

Preflight action. I work with a good amount of rusty pilots and I notice that a lot of the little things like wx knowledge, flight planning and general checks of their flying environment (like knowing if the airport your flying to has right traffic for a runway)… also emergency procedures and stall recoveries are usually very rusty and need to be worked over and over to get back to a level where the individual is proficient again. Landings…

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Prestocito@reddit

Hey man I’m in the same boat as you except it’s been about 1 year. I’m coming back next week

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dynamic_fluid@reddit

There is a strong relationship between how much experience you have with something and how long you can go without doing it before having a significant degradation of skill. If you have thousands of hours in an airframe you can probably go for a year without flying it and be good after a quick training flight. If you only have hundreds or tens of hours in something then you might need significant training after a much shorter break. This is also true with the various skills, like dealing with emergencies, night flying, flying without the autopilot, manual performance calculations, etc. and why it’s important to practice all these types of things even if we are flying regularly. tl;dr “rust” = time since doing the thing / experience doing the thing. Put another way: Proficiency = recency X total experience

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flyingron@reddit

I have a ten year hole in my logbook due to me switching jobs and moving twice. Found a good instructor who suggested I grab an AIM and my original text and read up. We did about three lessons before she'd sign a BFR for me.

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TheGacAttack@reddit

I would recommend extra attention on emergency procedures. Even if you're not rusty feeling for normal operations, it's the emergency procedures that really need to be sharp again.

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Ok_Method_2790@reddit

i took a year and some change off from flying, i began flying again in january and took my checkride this month. moving into instrument. like the other guy said flying wasn’t really hard to get back into but atc work took a hit for sure

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ForgotTheLandingGear@reddit

Mental maths for sure, the spare capacity I was using for that went into actually flying

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riptrixie@reddit

Give yourself 5-10 hours to knock off the rust. You’ll be surprised how much you remember. But chair flying/ sim before is a good way to ease yourself back into flying. And live ATC!!!

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rFlyingTower@reddit

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