Wow, talk about challenges! I stopped flying at the end of January and only recently picked it up again. This is because at the beginning of the year I had a school/work crunch and was trying to finish up the semester online while working full time hours. I probably still could have squeezed a few flights in, but as I was just about to solo what I really needed to do was spend 10 hours a week studying - time I didn't have at that point. Then in March I tried to get into ROTC at Seattle University, a process which took several months and didn't pan out. Now I'm flying again, but out of BFI airport, just a fifteen minute drive (or 30 min bike ride!) from my house. This enables me to fly 3 or 4 times a week, as I'm still working part time hours and can pull it all off.
I've had a really great experience with my new instructor so far. (There's a good chance she's going to read this post so I can't complain!) I've been a lot less stressed before my flights compared to the other school, but I haven't yet been able to pinpoint why. I'm enjoying it, even though I'm flying a new ship and have to re-wire my brain. The R22 is more sensitive to control inputs, but also more streamlined and easier to preflight. Everything is zip-tied down! She's a cute ship and fun to fly, plus my arm isn't sore at the end of a flight. The old 300 required a lot of upper body strength to maneuver the cyclic.
There are a number of factors that are also encouraging. My new instructor has been able to tell me how to study, not just what material I need to cover. She's all about self-study too, so I don't have to waste a bunch of money to hear her lecture the same material I could read on my own. She's had several tips and useful ideas for how I can commit various topics to memory, and how I can become more familiar with airport operations between flights. I was really struggling before with how to get the ground study done, and now I have a better idea of what is expected of me.
Right now we've been focusing on flying to a local airport in Auburn that is less busy and practicing patterns there. I had to re-learn how to hover, and I almost have that down now. I'm still adjusting to the new ship, but I'm confident that in a few more flights I'll have a better idea of how to control it. The beautiful weather has made flying pretty enjoyable, too. Today I finally bought myself a headset, something that I wouldn't let myself do before as I hadn't "earned" it yet. I figure once you sink a few hundred dollars into equipment, you'd better be pretty serious about your intentions!
I'm just trying to mentally focus on getting through this first rating, as thinking about everything I need to do before becoming a marketable pilot is just too overwhelming. I also am not giving myself a set-in-stone timeline for my training, as it seems to be that in the past that mindset has only proven to unravel all my efforts. I want to be focused, but I also don't want to be so concerned about a specific completion date that I wear myself out. I'd like to have my rating done by late fall, but I'm also not going to freak out if it takes longer than I anticipated. Students at my new school tend to get their rating with about 20 or so more hours than those at my old school, but I don't see that as a problem since my intention is to get multiple ratings. Time is time and you can't instruct in a Robinson aircraft unless you have 200 total hours, so how they are divvied up between the ratings doesn't matter so much. This also is one helluva expensive hobby, so I wouldn't want to just stop at one rating I could never afford to use, anyway! In case you're curious, it costs $230/hour to rent the ship, before tax. That's not really how I'd spend my leisure time on the weekends - I'm doing this because I want to make it a career.
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