Preflight

I knew that I'd solo one day, but the moment still came as a surprise. The go-around on the last approach - "There's a cow on the runway! What are you going to do?" - should have been a clue; I'd never seen a cow anywhere near Triple W Airpark, southeast of Raleigh, North Carolina.

"Give me three landings to a full stop, and taxi back." With a slam of the door, Ralph was gone, and I sat alone in the Cessna 152.

Flight training had been fun, but it was challenging. I, too, wrestled with the bear called landings. At the same time I was struggling to master landings, my 1-year-old daughter was learning to walk. I'd watch her in the evenings, and philosophically compare her progress to my own. For both of us, two steps forward and one step back was frequently the rule of the day - and occasionally it was one step forward and two steps back. I willed her to succeed in her tentative steps across the floor, but I'm not sure she understood my words of encouragement: "Line up with the extended centerline...airspeed...flare, flare!"

One day, all the pieces of the landing puzzle dropped into place, and my touchdowns were suddenly consistent - and more like landings than controlled crashes.

Wednesday, November 1, 1989, dawned a brilliant fall day. The sun radiated through the plexiglass; I could feel its warmth on my face. Without Ralph on board, the little Cessna climbed like a relative rocket - much to my surprise, I was at pattern altitude before turning crosswind. Downwind abeam the numbers, it was carb heat on, throttle to idle, first notch of flaps. I'd practiced the routine many times.

Turning final, alignment and altitude looked good. That's when I heard Ralph's voice: "Airspeed." I looked to the right and saw only an empty seat. Then I looked at the airspeed indicator, and I was about 5 knots fast. Makes sense; the voice was conversational in tone, and during my training Ralph - who didn't believe in headsets - would speak louder as my excursions increased. A little nose-up trim, flare, flare, squeak-squeak.

Two more landings and one shirttail later, I was a pilot. "Normal patterns - initial solo!" reads the notation in my logbook. Six dual landings and three solo, for nine-tenths of an hour. I'd soloed after 13 hours of instruction.

And Jennifer, my daughter? She soloed about the same time and never looked back, either. Jenn's a teenager now, and although she's not yet expressed interest in learning to fly, she's a great passenger, with a fondness for steep turns and touch and goes.

���

These first steps - your first solo - bring you to the threshold of all that aviation has to offer. In this annual "Learn to Fly" issue we've devoted our feature articles to the subject of learning to fly. Dozens of you responded to our request to share your own solo experiences.

Among a new student pilot's first questions is "How long will it take me to learn to fly?" That's always been a tough one to answer. The federal aviation regulations stipulate a minimum of 40 hours' flight time for a private pilot (or 35 hours for a student enrolled in an FAR Part 141 flight school).

But the average is higher than that, and it appears to be increasing. According to the FAA, the average student pilot now requires 60 to 75 flight hours to earn a private pilot certificate. An informal survey of AOPA members who visited AOPA Online or called the Pilot Assistance Hotline recently seems to confirm that trend; pilots who earned their private certificates after 1990 required an average of 68.2 hours. Prior to 1960, however, the same unscientific poll indicated that a pilot on average took only 49.8 hours to learn to fly.

Increasing complexity of the regulations and airspace, required instruction on ground operations and collision avoidance, the need to learn additional navigation systems, and other additions to the private pilot curriculum clearly have contributed to this increase in training time. Age can be a factor, with older students generally requiring a little more time than younger pilots. Other factors can influence this figure as well.

One thing that hasn't changed is the thrill that you'll experience when you take off alone in an airplane for the first time. There will be other milestones in your flying, of course - cross-countries; passing your checkride; the first trip with your family; maybe a first flight as captain of an airliner, if that's your goal. But none will compare with, or would be possible without, that first solo.