Private Pilot in 10 days

Gilan ) wrote:
: I just started flying at a school that offers Private Pilot in 10 days. I
: plan on taking a bit longer then 10 days but wondered how long the average
: person takes to complete their PPL?
:
: Private Pilot in 10 days
: http://www.perfectplanes.com/index.html
:
10 days is going to be 4 hrs of flying a day. That is going to be
very intense and I would worry about mental fatigue. After about
10 hrs, most students get into over controlling the plane (read the
posts on "why are my landings getting worse" over the past decade)
and thouse flights are will take quite a bit out of you. I never
did two lessons in one day but sometimes it took a few days to get
over it and I'm used to marathon hacking sessions which involve
complex mental concentration for ten or more hours for days on end.

FWIW, my scuba class was 126 hrs of class room time and 126 hrs of
pool time before the open water tests over 3 months. Compare that
to the about 50 hrs of flight time to get my PPL and less than 10
hrs of class room time. 10 days is 240 hrs if you don't waste any
of sleeping. I don't think thats enough time to absorb what you
need to know. When I dive, I see the lack of training in others
all the time but most of them went to 3 hr resort classes. Both
diving and flying are very unforgiving of mistakes.

As far as Jim's idea, if the school was run that way and your good
at learing that way, it might be ok. I don't like the idea of here
are the books, pass the test and then we will show you the airplane.
I don't care how many times a student reads the book, the idea that
the rudder pedals are connected to the steering doesn't get through
till they are in the plane. Thats an example of 10 seconds in the
plane is worth more than months in the book. Weather on the other
hand is better from the book unless you live in an area that
demonstrates all the different varieties but that takes nearly a
year. You don't want to see a wall cloud up close and books have
nice pictures of them. If you do see one up close in a small plane,
I suspect it will be one of the last things you ever see. I think
Jim's school would do much better if his 14 days were preceeded by
2 days of classroom training and intro to the plane, then the book
study (for at least a month) and then the 14 days.

A 1/2 century ago there were a group of pilots that trained in about
two weeks. They were called Shimpu while training and depending
on how you look at it, things didn't go well for them. I think
that more time for training is better upto a point but I would be
interested in hear more from people that have trained in very short
times. I could see where getting your PPL in 10 days and then
flying with an instructor frequenly after that could be a good thing
for people flying 15 hrs a month.

-tim
http://web.abnormal.com