6 lessons into PPL training, feeling a bit discouraged

Posted by WorkingOnPPL@reddit | flying | View on Reddit | 49 comments

Hi, I was wondering if anybody here wouldn’t mind reading about my situation and telling me if you think what I’m experiencing is normal? I have wanted to get my private pilot’s license for a long time, and I am finally taking lessons to hopefully achieve that goal. What’s concerning me is that I flew today with my instructor, and it was definitely my worst flight so far in terms of my actual performance behind the controls. At a certain point, it felt like I couldn’t even think and focus on what my instructor was telling me to do. Almost like my brain wasn’t working properly. I think this might be because I am so focused on other things like not missing things on the preflight checklist, remembering what to do on each part of the checklist, etc. So it almost feels like information overload and by the time I get to the air. Almost feeling burnt out or something. And then you couple this with me hearing everything going on on the radio and how fast people are talking and everything, and it makes me really question if I can actually do this. On today’s flight, the problem started on the ground before the flight even started. As we were taxiing to the runway, I could feel anxiety building within me. I think I’m experiencing anxiety for a couple of reasons…. Firstly, because I am doing the takeoffs myself now, and it feels to me like a lot of things occur very fast during them and I worry that I’m gonna screw something up and put a wing into the ground or stall the plane or something. Also, I’ve been reading a lot, and I think a lot of the flying literature really does a great job in conveying how dangerous/fatal flying can be if you do not know how to quickly recover the aircraft. So now all of a sudden, I’m thinking about all this lurking danger in my head. My instructor is a a freshly-minted CFI, and while I do think he’s good, I wonder if he may not be conveying information to me the best way? Like for example when I screw up, his response will be something like “whoa!” And then he grabs the controls, and takes over the aircraft. Maybe a more experienced instructor would’ve said something like “left rudder now” and I would’ve recovered the aircraft? But then again, at 2000 AGL in an aircraft, seconds can mean life or death, so perhaps this is the correct mindset to have and I need to be hyper-vigilant/responsive? I mean we are not learning how to drive kayaks here. Anyway, I realize this getting a bit long-winded… I guess I was just curious to those that have gotten their PPL, did you go through feelings like this?

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shereth78@reddit

I'm at a pretty similar point to you in my training. About 12 hours in, just finished lesson 7 spread over 11 sessions. Lesson 6 actually felt great for me. Flight was fantastic, had a random person on the CTAF compliment one of my landings. Felt kind of invincible for the moment and I was reading to tackle anything. My first session for lesson 7 was not so great. Nothing specific really changed but for some reason I was forgetting a ton of stuff. I was rotating late on takeoff. I was forgetting to run over the checklist at key points during the flight. My mind was blanking out getting set up for maneuvers and had to be coached through all of them start to finish. I couldn't hold my altitude or heading worth crap. A couple of times I felt like asking to end the session early but managed to push through it to the end, though I didn't feel so great afterward. My instructor gave me plenty to think about and told me to take a little time to do some chair flying and just reviewing checklists and procedures. My next session got cancelled due to weather and I spent that time at home just thinking about what I needed to go over. I made myself some flash cards to go over maneuvers and emergency situations. Yesterday was another session for lesson 7 and it was so much better. Weather was a little marginal at first but everything went so good. Takeoffs were a breeze and I just about nailed all of my maneuvers. Did some hood time and was on my headings and altitudes like it was on autopilot. It felt great, other than a little rough landing at the end. The only thing that was different is I skipped a session and had a chance to reset my mind. At this stage in our training we're having a LOT thrown at us. Regulations, acronyms out the wazoo, maneuvers, controls, you name it. It's natural for your mind to seize up from time to time in that kind of environment. Depending on your training schedule, consider taking a week or so off to reset. Spend a little time in a low stress environment doing some chair flying and review. Let your mind cool down a bit and then jump back in the pilot's seat. One last thing - you're right we aren't paddling kayaks here, but trainer aircraft are pretty forgiving. Taking your hand off the yoke or making a bad input isn't going to kill you, especially with a CFI at your side. You don't need to be of the mindset that you're one tiny mistake and two seconds away from death. Yeah you want to be vigilant but it sounds like you might be stressing yourself out. Take a deep breath and realize you'll be ok, you can do this!

49 Comments

Zealousideal-Aioli43@reddit

Dude, PPL is hard and can definitely be discouraging at times. You'll have lessons where everything seems to click, followed by ones where it feels like you shouldn't be allowed to fly a paper plane. Stuff happens. Biggest piece of advice was from another pilot who just simply told me to never give up. I listened, now finishing up instrument myself.

Peso-Washers@reddit

Find another student and ask if you can ride in the back while they do a lesson. I did this with my students all the time. Being an observer will let you see things that you can’t when you’re the flying pilot. Another thing to try is to film your lessons with a GoPro. You can watch them after the flight. This will really help make things add up. Your mind can only take in so much while you’re flying so it will be very overwhelming at first but it will become easier. Think back to learning to ride a bicycle. It was hard but soon became second nature to you.

Kai-ni@reddit

Try out a different CFI if you don't jive with this one, but you're six lessons in. I'm 3x that and just now getting comfortable and not constantly overwhelmed. Flying is a LOT. This is normal. Every other lesson I think oh God I'm so bad at this why am I doing this lol. Just keep practicing.

Consistent-Trick2987@reddit

Every other lesson I think oh God I'm so bad at this why am I doing this lol. Ugh I thought it was just me. I ask myself this all the time 😭

ashtranscends@reddit

You are far from the only one! I’m happy to have a CFI that gives me lots of positive feedback (in addition to critiques as needed, ofc). Because otherwise I would feel like a complete and total fuckup after every lesson 😹

It's universal 😂

RuralKingPatron@reddit

Learning is ugly. It can kinda suck in the moment sometimes but that’s just how it goes. The stuff you get wrong now is the stuff you won’t miss again. Try and keep a positive attitude and understand you can’t be perfect (no matter how much experience). Try out new CFIs if you want as well. Also 2000’ in a 172 is a little more than a few seconds but still

HighVelocitySloth@reddit

6 lessons. Breath.

autumn8jade@reddit

At around 11 hours, something clicked and I didn’t feel dread and overwhelmed as much. I’m at 14 hours now and I’m now looking forward to my lessons. I even do my homework now! Hang in there. You’ll get there.😊💪

jgermanguy@reddit

I’m early into my training too. I felt the same way after a couple bad lessons. Literally as you explained it, there was one time I felt like I couldn’t concentrate or get anything right when we were finally in the air. It was defeating. When you feel that way, just go to the airport and watch the planes on the next nice day. That’ll reinvigorate you. I was able to get past that piece that way… though now I’m struggling with motion sickness and feel defeated by that 🤣 Point is — you’re not alone. This is normal. It’s a ton to remember and learn and is very draining. Find ways to get excited about it again. Good luck!

Quiet_Dimensions@reddit

Everyone sucks at lesson 6. You're gonna suck at lesson 7, and 8 and 9 and 10. Just a teeny bit less. Then you're gonna really suck on lesson 11 and then not as much on lesson 12. Its fine. Stop over analyzing it.

F1shermanIvan@reddit

Go take 6 piano lessons and tell us how you feel about playing the piano. Dude, you're NEW. You'll be new for a while.

AlbiMappaMundi@reddit

Hey now, if you put in 40 degrees of flaps, 60 degrees bank, and slip it down, you might have a few seconds!

ThomasShults@reddit

At that point I think it is only right the CFI grab the controls...but that might just be me.

cazzipropri@reddit

You are definitely overthinking it.

mtr75@reddit

As soon as I got to here: "What’s concerning me is that I flew today with my instructor, and it was definitely my worst flight so far in terms of my actual performance behind the controls. " ...I knew the answer to your question: perfectly normal.

EntroperZero@reddit

This is kinda how it is sometimes. Not all the time, but training is a series of big highs and big lows. Just when you feel like you've got things figured out, it gets harder. But that's how it's supposed to be -- you start learning something, you suck, you start to get good at it, then you start learning the next thing and suck again. Keep at it, and eventually the plateaus between spikes get longer and the enjoyment lasts longer.

throwaway642246@reddit

Just about to pass the 300hr mark and I get discouraged most landings lol

kaseywd@reddit

This is very real and very normal. I ended a lesson after 20 minutes one time because my head just wasn’t in it and I couldn’t correct the errors I was making over and over again. It’s about what you do on the ground though to fix it. Chair fly, reflect on where you’re fumbling, and then bring that into your next flight. Your CFI has 2 jobs 1) teach you how to fly 2) keep you both alive - so cut him a little slack while you’re still trying to learn the plane. I’ll finish off with something I said to my CFII literally this morning after not flying for a month. “It’s crazy how much of this has become second nature and I just …do it… without thinking. That’s your goal. Get to where you know the plane and controls so well that your focus can be on spotting problems before they happen. You’ll get there! Keep your head up, study up, and go into your next flight with a positive attitude ready to fix the things that went wrong in the last flight! You’ll get there!

chili_dippin_it@reddit

Embrace the suck and learn from it. Went into my rotorcraft rating with thousands of hours in everything from Super Cubs to turbine Air Tractors to King Airs and Jets. Very humbling, very quickly. Some days just aren't your best days and your current best days will be the laughing stock of your future self. Get back in and keep after it.

Top-Reply9954@reddit

Advise from an elder: Look, the only difference between a pilot and a non-pilot is training. Training, my friend is built on the foundation of making mistakes, learning from them, making more mistakes, learning more, ….you get the idea. You can not absorb everything at once. Just like Legos, one at a time and before you know it your a PPL!

Murph1908@reddit

From my experience, the first few lessons, you learn a few new things. Then in the next few kessons, you learn more things, but don't forget those first things you learned. Then in the next few, here's a few more things. Now do this while doing those other things that you just learned. I think this is the most difficult time. You've been hit with a fire hose of training, and you're not good at any one aspect of it yet because you've only been doing it for a dozen hours. But you are trying to do it all. Because eventually you have to do it all. But you'll get better at each individual task, and it'll be easier to do them all together as you go along.

somerndmnumbers@reddit

You have about eleventybillion flights ahead of you, don't get discouraged by number six!

N703ND@reddit

You might want to come back when you have like 100 hours or so.

Remarkable-Blood-919@reddit

Don't be too hard on your CFI. He might be new, but if you're at the edge of a stall on approach and you're not correcting, he's doing you both a favor.

isflyingapersonality@reddit

I relevant perspective I've heard is that learning to fly is different from other skills because learning to fly requires you to make attempts and fail over and over again - until one day, you don't. With other skills, you can learn bit-by-bit without feeling a definitive sense of failure. You can learn a few notes on an instrument and work your way up to more complex pieces, but that learning experience doesn't require you to fail, you're usually succeeding at your existing skills and playing increasingly more complex music. 6 lessons in is right about the exact point where I would expect student pilots to fail the most. You've been introduced to all the things that you'll need to do and know, but haven't had the repetitions you need to actually accomplish any of it. tl;dr, it gets easier. What feels like 100 individual tiny things to do just between start-up and take-off, will eventually start to feel like just the 3-4 steps that it actually is. > I think a lot of the flying literature really does a great job in conveying how dangerous/fatal flying can be if you do not know how to quickly recover the aircraft That's technically true but that's why your CFI is there with you. Very few mistakes in an airplane are immediately dangerous or fatal, you can see things like airspeed trending too slow well in advance of it becoming an issue. Remember that your instructor is nowhere near as overwhelmed as you and will let you know when it's time to correct out of a risky situation.

DBond2062@reddit

Just a thought, but maybe have your instructor take you up to three or four thousand feet and pull the power. Get it trimmed for best glide, then start a stopwatch and see how long you really have. It is A LOT of seconds. Totally changed my anxiety level, and you need to practice it anyway. Two thousand feet is really quite a lot of altitude for a typical training aircraft, and as long as you haven’t lost a wing, you should at least be able to run a checklist and get set up for a controlled landing.

8349932@reddit

Do you have an ipad with foreflight? If so, you can make a checklist from the plane's POH so that you can touch the item to "mark" it vs having to remember which line of the paper checklist you're on. And do not feel it necessary to memorize the checklist. That's a common mistake by new students.

Rough-Aioli-9622@reddit

My brother in Christ, you’re 6 lessons in. You’re gonna be fine. And try out different CFIs if you want to.

OptFire@reddit

As a new CFI, we are also learning and have smaller safety bubbles than experienced instructors. Telling students to move on because an instructor grabbed the controls doesn’t help that student or the instructor. Just like the student will gain confidence, so will the CFI with more time.

No_Manufacturer6456@reddit

The student is paying for competent instruction. They deserve the best CFI available for their money. OP should defo find a new CFI. I went through 2 CFIs before I found the right match with my 3rd whose confidence and experience meant I sailed through PPL after struggling.

Grabbing the controls is not incompetent, it’s nervousness and can be fixed with more exposure to training/confidence in their own ability. How did your experienced instructor become experienced? Through time and flights with students. I’m sure your CFI made mistakes when they were first learning to teach. I struggled through my PPL as well, with an instructor with over 5000 hours of dual given. It truly is not as simple as, go find another CFI with more time.

The student is the customer. It’s not a co-learning activity. @WorkingOnPPL please look for alternatives. It’s expensive enough to get your license, you should get the best instruction for your money.

OwlKing23@reddit

This is true, but a student pilot is paying a ton of money for training, and they should be 100% focused on developing themselves instead of helping develop CFIs.

Oddly enough, when I'd have a stretch of bad landings, before my next time up I'd tell my CFI, "I've got good vibes about today. I'm going to stick these landings". And every time I said that, I did that. Confidence counts for something!

Fulcrum58@reddit

Dude I’m also about 6-7 lessons in, it is a lot but it will get better as you learn. Go over the checklist on your own in your free time, where there’s no rush to finish the checklist and no pressure if you fuck up.

riskyjbell@reddit

This is what I love about flying.. there is never an end to the times when you suck and feel like a beginner. Once you master the basics, it's on to IFR and then different planes.. on and on..

Colder_Heavens@reddit

You are dealing with task saturation. When you are task saturated you lose your hearing and comprehension first. That's why you aren't able to listen to your instructor. It's a valuable lesson on what happens to your brain if there is too much going on. It may happen to you after you get you PPL if you find yourself in a challenging or demanding flying situation. This is while you'll want to brief passengers on not talking to you during takeoff and landing. The best way to get out of task saturation mode in your training is to study and chair fly. Memorize the things you need to do in different phases of flight. Know the checklists and flows inside and out and practice at home until they are second nature, like you can just reach for the things you need to address any situation without thinking. Chair fly after a lesson, then chair fly some more. Chair fly the night before a lesson and then the morning in advance of the lesson. Keep studying and chair flying. Things will get easier.

X-T3PO@reddit

1. You need to try a different instructor to see if that is or is not the problem. 2. You sound like you're hyperfixiating, hypervigilent, and possibly experiencing anxiety in a way that is not normal. If working with a new instructor doesn't fix this, then maybe you need to exercise the judgement to not continue. 3. You don't have the experience, the information, the context, and the judgment, to make assessments about 'lurking danger' 'seconds can mean life or death', etc. You need to learn those things based on reality, and it seems right now you are carrying with you a lot of problems and concerns that you have made up in your head. Again, try a different instructor and let go of the mental baggage that you're bringing on every flight.

LechugaDelDiablos@reddit

you dont even need a highschool education to get a cpl literally any idiot can do it. are you better than any idiot? you will be fine

nolandscape193@reddit

Hey, this is totally common. I felt really stupid from about hour 8 to about hour 20. I was discouraged and had anxiety as well. Not all CFIs are a great fit, and even if they are a good CFI, they may not be able to help with the headwork. Feel free to DM.

carsgobeepbeep@reddit

I look forward to you looking back on this moment and laughing 10 or 15 lessons from now.

I told someone "I don't know why I suck at landing!" on my 3rd flight lmao

You're going to hear "More right rudder" from every CFI you try. Also, I hope you weren't using left rudder on takeoff. You need right rudder to counter the left-turning tendencies. It might really help you feel less overwhelmed to study as much as you can on the ground, chair-fly, and ask any questions you have about operation of the flight or takeoff specifically prior to the flight. You will not learn very well in the air. It is super common. Flight training is multiple stages of feeling overwhelmed: landing is initially stressful, then maneuvers, then more radio work, then emergency scenarios, then your solo cross countries, etc. Each stage eventually becomes less stressful.

Darth_Hamburger@reddit

Sucking at something is the first step toward being sorta good at something. Good instruction helps. Having a natural aptitude? Some have it more than others. Reps are really all it’s about, ultimately.

Don’t be so hard on yourself. Flying is hard. Everything seems like it’s happening so fast in the beginning but after a while it becomes routine and you don’t have to think so much about it. I’m at 50ish hours now and I didn’t start feeling confident in doing all the checklists, start up, taxing, run up, take off, radio calls etc all by myself until I was a good 25-30 hours in. And my landings STILL suck lol. It take time but I’ll get easier.

HeroOfTheDay545@reddit

Burned out after 6 lessons? No, dude. You're a student pilot. You're going to suck, a lot. That's fine, with time you will suck less and be able to take more info in.

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