"Bubba" wrote in message
...
Hello everyone,

I'm sure you probably read at least 50 "newbie" messages a week and I
apologize in advance for this one. But as the subject reads, I'm a new
pilot in training. I've only been flying for about a month now, but I
only fly once a week, so really, I've only been up four times now. I
feel comfortable with my instructor and confident in his knowledge and
experience, but I have to admit, learning to fly is much more difficult
than it sounds/looks.

So far, I feel confident in my ability to pre-flight the aircraft, taxi
on the taxi-ways, and take offs. I feel pretty good about those three
things. In other words, I can get myself in the air and establish a
steady altitude and fly (which I really enjoy). However, my instructor
is now showing me "stalls." These scare the living hell out of me!!
We've done power-off stalls for two sessions now and I know what they
feel like and can recover from them ok, but I really, really don't like
these.

Also, last session, my instructor introduced me to landings. Now, my
log book only has about four hours of flight time in it, so you can only
imagine how this went. I'm really surprised the Skyhawks landing gear
held up to my abuse. Plus, for my first attempt, I was trying to land
with an unbelievable cross-wind. The wind was blowing from right to
left and from what I can tell, my instructor had the right rudder pedal
pressed all the way down. Again, this was scary as hell. I'm still
amazed we didn't crash.

So I guess my question would be this: Can any of you guys offer some
advice on how to get through stall training and landings because right
now my confidence is shot.

Thanks in advance,
Terry

Just think back and realize how cool it was that you were up there flying
while the rest of this planet was stuck on the ground. Then realize that it
takes everyone several hours before they get the hang of it and stick with
it. Don't give up. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it, and if
everyone was doing it, we'd have alot of stupid pilots up there flying
planes scaring the crap out of the rest of us.

Relax and enjoy it, you'll get it with time. You don't even have enough
hours yet to wipe your ass, don't worry about your landings.....