Who wants to start the First Solo stories?
I’m pretty sure you just volunteered, pal. 
And I’m 5’10".
Thank you, Broomstick. Baby steps. 
Oh, also, I’m curious about how many other female pilots you run across. The flight school that I’m visiting next week has pictures up of the most recent people to get their licenses, and I believe that two out of about 20 were female. I wonder if that’s about the same ratio in general.
I’m 5’ 11", and you look taller than I am in that photo.
First solo
07/17/83. Cessna 172K, N84573. Instructor: (the late) Jim Graves. We’d stayed in the pattern and did three touch-and-goes. On the fourth landing I was instructed to make a full stop and taxi clear of the taxiway. I wondered why the lesson was so short. When I stopped, Jim got out and said, ‘Take it up and make a few landings.’ I said, ’ :eek: ’ Then I taxied down to the departure end. The Skyhawk took to the air with alacrity without the added weight. I actually reached over and felt the empty seat to make sure I was alone. Oh, it was nice! Jim said ‘make a few’ landings, so I assumed he meant three. Afterward I kicked myself for not staying up all day.
Unfortunately, I make up for that in girth. Part of the reason I’m going to a different school is because I’m above their weight limit for all the appropriate training planes that the El Monte flight school has. Not by much, and I intend to fix that, but I wanted to get back up sooner rather than later. The school I’m going to has mostly Cessnas for training, and the instructor I spoke to said that my weight would not be an issue other than it would make climbs a little slower.
So, even though my coming lesson isn’t until Wednesday, I’m thinking about heading up there tomorrow to see the place, maybe meet an instructor or two, and just to watch some planes. Does anyone think this is a good idea? Bad idea? Am I just loony?
Here’s a first solo story - but not about me. This is about the first student I soloed as an instructor.
Kevin had been taking lessons with another CFI. Although he had around 30 hours, he hadn’t soloed. He felt things weren’t clicking and blamed himself. His instructor moved on and Kevin asked me to fly with him with an eye toward deciding if perhaps aviation wasn’t for him.
I had been working as a CFI for a few months, but hadn’t had the chance to solo anyone yet. From what Kevin had told me, I suspected he might have some real issues. But it turned out he was excellent in the airplane. He had some strange habits that were instilled by the other CFI, but his flying was really good and I told him so. We flew again the next day, and I quickly realized it was no fluke. This guy could fly well, and he was consistent. I signed his book then and there and watched him shoot several solo patterns. I had always thought I would feel nervous at this moment, but I was perfectly at ease. This was a good student, he satisfied all the requirements and there was no point in holding him back another minute.
This turned out to be Kevin’s turning point. He told me he felt his previous CFI had no confidence in him, and this in turn made him think he didn’t have the chops for it. After flying with some of his other students it became clear that the other CFI wasn’t doing right by his clients - stringing them along without soloing. And although he apparently could teach flight skills, he gave them some very unnecessary, non-standard habits. Bad way to teach.
Kevin eventually got his license, bought an airplane and got recurrent training with me for years. He was one of the very best students I’ve ever had, and it still galls me that he nearly gave it up because of a bad CFI. I would have soloed him on our FIRST flight together if we’d had the paperwork in order.
Last I heard,15-20% of pilots in the US are women.
Your 2 out of 20 is slightly lower than that, but not by much. Aviation is still very much dominated by men, although as a woman in aviation I have to say I’ve experienced much less gender bias there than in many other areas of life.
I had been a pilot 8 or 9 years and had several hundred hours before I shared a cockpit with another woman pilot. I hadn’t been avoiding them, but since I hadn’t been seeking them out, either, it just didn’t happen before then. I was certainly aware of other women pilots, knew a few, just didn’t happen to fly with any of them before then. Probably because I find gender irrelevant in choosing who to fly with, I use other criteria, and since the pool of pilots is 80% men, well, 80-90% of the time that’s been what my co-pilot is.
(It didn’t help I started with ultralights and homebuilts - depending on whose figures you use, that’s between 50:1 and 200:1 men to women.)
As of 2010, the overall percentage is 6.73%
2.92% of Airline Transport rated pilots, and 12.40% of student pilots (a FAA medical examination is a student pilot certificate) are female pilots.
The population in the airline is low enough that when I pass another female pilot in the concourse, there is the inevitable “in-the-club” nod of recognition. =)
Women in Aviation International http://www.wai.org/resources/waistats.cfm
So I saw this plane fly overhead yesterday. Two engine pusher prop with canard.
What could it have been?
These days, anything with a canard and a pusher has a high probability of being a Burt Rutan design. Can you give us any more information?
The Beech Starship matched that description, but there are very few left. (Yes, it’s a Rutan design.)
Very few left??? Are they falling out of the sky with frightening regularity?
Naw… it’s normal for a pilot. Lots of times I’ve headed out to the airport with no intention of flying, just wanted to hang around other flying people and watch airplanes.
Right now you need to meet a bunch of different instructors so you can better the odds of finding a really great one that you mesh with. Trying a couple different airplanes before making the real knuckle-down commitment to learning isn’t a bad idea either.
Being a pilot can give you an incentive to keep your weight under control. Meanwhile, Cessnas are great airplanes to learn in. It’s not because they’re perfect - they aren’t - but because there are so many, they’re pretty forgiving, and yes, they do accommodate the uh, um,… heftier pilot.
But yeah, losing weight will improve your weight of climb. I mentioned that to my instructor that at my first solo I noticed that the sudden loss of 200 pounds really improved the climb 
Nope. But…well, it’s a bit involved. The short version is that Beechcraft scrapped and incinerated all of them it could get its hands on. There are currently nine registered survivors still flying, and a few more being used for parts.
When SpaceShipOne made its first proper space ascent, they one of the camera planes for the descent was a Starship. A nice touch, I thought.
So, question, brought on by a random lunch discussion (as I sit at work and wait for my SW upgrade to kick in): What are the rules for flying over a metropolitan area like Los Angeles? A colleague swore that the airspace is reserved for law enforcement, which obviously isn’t true - news helicopters and business helicopters abound.
But if someone felt like checking out the Library Tower in a Beechcraft, would they be allowed to? (Let’s assume that the the hypothetical pilot is my neighbor Rick, who flies Airbus for a living and whose Beechcraft is bristling with transponders and radios and whatnot. But the flight itself would be for no other purpose than the recreational aspect.)
I’m betting it was a Piaggio P.180 Avanti.
FAR 91.119(b)
Except when necessary for takeoff or landing, no person may operate an aircraft below the following altitudes:
<snip>
(b) Over congested areas. Over any congested area of a city, town, or settlement, or over any open air assembly of persons, an altitude of 1,000 feet above the highest obstacle within a horizontal radius of 2,000 feet of the aircraft.
You’re also inside Class B airspace there, meaning you need ATC permission to fly there, and you have to be in communication with them and follow their instructions. They WILL make sure you keep out of the way of LAX traffic.
Class A airspace, to anticipate the question, is above 18,000 feet in the US - no airports up there to get in the way, but it’s all IFR.
With approximately 600,000 licensed and active pilots in the US, that comes to about 40.000 women - out of a total of about 150 million in the female population, or only about 1 in 7500. For men, it comes to about 1 in 500.
No, a lot of the fun of the flying hobby does not involve actual flying. Just hanging out at the airport, talking with like-minded people and learning from them, just enjoying the environment, that’s a huge part of it too. By all means go there, all you can.
Congrats on soloing from me too, btw! Opinions differ, but to some that’s the point at which you formally become a pilot. ISTM it’s a continuing process that starts as soon as you get interested in aviation, and should never stop, but it’s certainly a major milestone. I hope you got the shirt-tail treatment too - mine’s hanging on the wall.
I recall a thread in the AOPA Forums once where a startling number of people admitted to *singing *during their first solos, or at least having a song run through their heads. Well, I did too, I’ll admit - something trite. I was humming “The Air Force Hymn”, but at least it was with the original, bloodyminded lyrics , not the current official ones.
How about the rest of y’all? Did you sing when you soloed, too?
Yes, sure, you can do that - a lot of it is Class B (I’ll let those who fly in it a lot give the details on it) so you’ll need a transponder and a working radio and you’ll need to be in “positive” contact with ATC, but you can go sight-seeing over Los Angeles.
As a general rule, ATC will try to find a way to let you do what you want to do. If they say “no” it’s usually a matter of safety, such as keeping small planes out of the way of big, commercial jets.
It’s not Los Angeles, but even as a student I was allowed to fly over pretty much all of Chicago which is also pretty congested airspace and groundspace, including in close proximity to O’Hare international. I just had to have certain equipment on board, follow the rules, and obey ATC when they told me to do something. As it happens, O’Hare itself is off limits to students and sport pilots, though private pilots can and do fly in and out of it, even in small airplanes.
A lot of private pilots avoid congested airspace, though, simply because flying through such airspace isn’t always a lot of fun, particularly in a small plane. Sometimes it’s as crowded as a rush hour freeway up there, and sometimes ATC has you fly circuitous routes to get somewhere because of everyone else flying around the same airspace. Flying outside such areas is a much more relaxed affair, and many find it more enjoyable.
I know of one ultralight club that worked with ATC to receive permission to fly through Chicago airspace to attend an event at Meigs field, back when it was still in business. Normally, ultralights are not permitted over cities, much less nicking airspace like Midway’s or O’Hare’s, but they asked in advance, had solid plans for what to do in the event of something like an engine failure, and received permission to make the flight. One guy in the group had to have a radio transceiver (which he did) so ATC could get real-time updates as the group flew in and out, but that was the only requirement as far as radio equipment was concerned. It all happened quite uneventfully. It’s an illustration that if you’re willing to work with them they’ll grant even unusual requests if they can do so.
I don’t recall singing but I was sure gibbering with excitement. And let off a YEEEEEHA! over the radio.