Until now, your training was focused on a single goal: mastery of your training airplane in the local environment for your flying. If that environment was a tower-controlled airport, solo prep included interacting with air traffic control. If your first-solo field did not have a tower, you learned and practiced a different set of operations, including announcing your position on the unicom or CTAF and proper pattern entries. In either case, your horizons will soon broaden, and you'll see how the other half does things, because your post-solo training will be divided into two very different, but parallel, branches: gaining experience flying alone in your local area; and dual flights with your CFI to new ports of call, tackling flight planning and en route navigation, and taking a more advanced look at flight maneuvers and maximum performance takeoffs and landings. Incidentally, these max-performance procedures may be routine operating methods at some of the more constrained fields you visit. Sampling these will be an education in itself.
Success in pursuing these parallel paths leads to the next big training milestone - the solo cross-countries that are required before you become eligible for the flight test. But even more significantly, the post-solo phase is the time when you will unite all of the piloting arts that will form the backbone of your future flying as a certificated pilot.
Explained from that perspective - as when a nonpilot wants to know why a student pilot has to fly alone before receiving a private pilot certificate - first solo can reinvigorate a training program rather than bring it to a halt. Those solo short-distance flights on which you will now embark won't be short on learning. The truth is that even a flight that never gets out of sight of the departure airport can be spiced with unexpected twists and turns, demanding your best efforts. Don't use those early local solos merely to build time and relive that glorious first flight alone. Rather, subdivide that branch of your flight-training tree into sessions practicing the individual tasks that will take your flying skills to a new level and challenge you on your solo cross-countries.
Once your CFI knows that you are comfortable flying alone, he or she will help you to draw up a personalized program for local solos. Although you probably won't cover any new material during these next few supervised solo rides, they are still likely to contain new twists. Perhaps the second solo will occur at that other nearby airport where you regularly practiced takeoffs and landings in your pre-solo days. Or maybe the wind is different today, and you will be flying from the other runway-the one you have used only a handful of times. Local traffic may be more or less of a factor than last time. And don't underestimate the impact of the sun if you happen to be flying at dawn or dusk from an east- or west-facing runway.
Once the supervised solo ritual is duly mastered and recorded and you have earned the right to solo at will - given wind and weather limits your instructor or training institution has set forth - local solo can get downright interesting. If a suitable airport is located near enough to qualify as an alternate destination for landings and takeoffs, you may (with the proper logbook endorsement) elect to go there at your discretion. This is an excellent opportunity to make your en route flight segment more challenging. During your preflight planning, select an altitude and performance profile - percent of power, fuel consumption rate, and true airspeed - for the brief trip, and fly the profile as best you can. Locate that difficult-to-find landmark along the way, and if it is suitable, use it for a ground-reference maneuver or two. Visualize entering the traffic pattern to various runways from various directions. Practice both the visualization and the actual performance of the entry. This will be a big help later on when you find yourself approaching an unfamiliar field for the first time.
You've had enough emergency training to know what to do if you suddenly find that your cockpit is no noisier than the public library. Develop the habit - even on these short legs - of locating places where an engine-out landing would be least inhospitably received by Mother Earth. This includes visualizing the approach you would fly in consideration of today's wind speed and direction. Remember where those havens are located. You may be back in the area soon.
Watch carefully for other traffic, and if receiving radar traffic advisories, make note of how many called aircraft you do not see. One of the most vexing radio calls I ever received was a request from air traffic control to "confirm you are a flight of two." I wasn't, and soon the other aircraft passed directly overhead, overtaking me from behind. So watch out for the other guy.
Now a word about the dual cross-countries you will fly with your CFI before earning the privilege of embarking on those kinds of flights on your own. Generally, the method of introduction and practice is similar to that employed for soloing in general. It is common to start out on fairly brief flights - perhaps out to a single destination and back - and follow up later with journeys to more distant places or multiple airports, requiring you to plan several flight legs. On these longer flights you will learn that the more time you spend en route, the less reliable will be the weather briefing you used for preflight planning and the greater the chance that you will have to replan some trip segments based on changing weather or groundspeed estimates. Can you determine on the sectional chart, and make use of, the available facilities for updating weather while en route? When you travel a long way, a diversion to an alternate destination becomes a real possibility. You may also venture far enough away from your home base to be flying for the first time over an unfamiliar type of terrain, perhaps at higher altitudes than before. What are the performance implications of these higher altitudes - both for you and your aircraft?
By now it should be obvious that the first solo is a beginning, not an end, but a tale from the tarmac underlines the idea. From a CFI's point of view, it is an anecdote for the ages. A long-ago student pilot set out on what she planned to be an extraordinarily brief, relaxing session of takeoffs and landings before going to work one morning. In a few short minutes, a wind blew up, a runway change went into effect, and several large, wake-turbulence-generating military aircraft arrived on the scene, also to practice in the local pattern. This was enough to cause the student to abbreviate her flight even more - but it wasn't that simple. Her request to the tower to call it a day was granted, but not before she was required to fly sequencing vectors out of the pattern, vectors back in, a 360-degree spacing turn on the long downwind leg, a keep-your-speed-up final approach, and a touchdown planned with an aim-point to ensure avoiding wake turbulence. All while looking for, finding, and reporting, the opposing traffic. On landing came a request for a minimum-delay-on-the-runway turnoff at the first possible taxiway - consistent with safety, not with the blowout resistance of the Cessna's tires.
Her instructor (an aviation writer who recalls the events vividly as he sits before his keyboard) could only stand on the ramp, listen on a handheld radio, and observe. And not be particularly surprised that the student carried it all off without as much as a minor hitch. After all, hadn't many of our dual flights ended with precisely the same kinds of antics? Probably her landing was a little better than usual without me aboard to make her nervous. Her voice on the radio was calm; her words spare and precise. And the job she did of complying with the request for a minimum-delay runway clearance brought an admiring "thank you" from the fellow pilot in the tower. Later, in the coffee shop, we joked about how exciting flying can be without straying as much as two miles from the field! And nowadays, it is her heavy airplane that frequently arrives on the scene and challenges the mettle of some other student pilot who may be wondering, "I've soloed...now what?"
Related Articles
