A quick recap from my previous article: early 2025 I started attending flight school out of curiosity and have been continuing my training since then. I didn’t have any end goal or childhood dream to fulfill, it was mostly chaotic turns of events and decisions.
As of writing this I have logged in 44 hours of flight time, and am getting quite closer to my PPL license. What started like a challenge to overcoming physical limitations (like nausea) turned into managing mental challenges. I did expect flying to be complicated, but I didn’t expect it to challenge me to a point where I don’t even have the capability to realize I am tired in the cockpit. I realize only after landing and going to the car to drive back.
The last months of my training were mostly geared around working on smoothing out the mental model and workload management. Nowadays I am working on reminding myself to not fixate on additional tasks and proper priority management when operating. For example when I started flying long cross-country (XC) routes I found myself dangling with my notes, map and instruments while the plane started veering off course, climbing or descending. I had controls, but I wasn’t flying when I was also trying to figure out what’s my next waypoint, where am I on the map, calculate estimates, talk with ATC and listen. My strategy was to put flying into autopilot mode in my brain while it hasn’t developed yet. You know when driving a car you stop consciously pressing pedals and driving; instead your body kind of merges with the car and the reactions happen naturally. You still have focus (hopefully), but you don’t think about the intermediate steps. My next challenge was getting there, so that instead of fiddling with the stick, my brain would automagically keep the plane level while I’m doing the calculations.
Radio communications were also a pressing concern at the start. My previous training had been done in an uncontrolled airspace - which meant I only had to give position reports and listen for others. Still considerable workload, but I got used to it. Now with XC flying, we were using Flight Information Services frequency which is busier and controlled far more aircraft across the entire country. It meant most of the communications would be irrelevant to me since the plane cruising at the northern border of the country is not a concern for me if I’m cruising around the southern border. Additionally there was a new sort of communication that my ear hasn’t gotten used to. We usually listen for specific keywords to prioritize communications, to get more alert about what we should listen to and what we can pay less attention. Getting used to a new set of keywords I heard as a part of the new procedures took some time to get used to. During my first two XC flights, my instructors helped a lot to repeat what’s said on the radio. On my first XC flight I couldn’t even request a proper flight activation, or understand what the controller was saying when they were providing us with the regional QNH (reference pressure used for altitude measurement) and SQUAWK (4 digit code used for identifying planes on the radar screen). Over time I got more used to it and can now act more autonomously. On my latest flight I managed to do almost all of the flight procedures without any comment from my instructor, except when we arrived at our destination airfield.
During training we use privately owned airfields rather than more standardized but bigger airports. It both costs way less (planes have to pay landing and handling fee) and is more general aviation friendly in every aspect. That said their published procedures may not always be up to date or reflect reality. There’s a specific pattern you need to fly near the airfields if you’re intending to land there and it’s usually published in the national aviation manuals (either AIP or VFR manuals). I found out that the actual procedures local planes execute at the airfields do have some minor nuances that are not provided in the manuals. Stuff like “turn right when you’re about to reach residential buildings after passing the road, follow the road on your right and turn to final around the roundabout”. I still haven’t figured out how I’m going to figure stuff like that on my own if I were to fly more foreign airfields in the future.
It’s all becoming more manageable as I continue flying. As I get more relaxed, I am starting to wander around and just enjoy seeing beautiful landscapes from up above. Pity I haven’t captured any POV photographs to share here, but it’s on my mind as well. In fact getting into aerial photography sounds like a fun adventure that I can possibly gear towards after finishing my current training. I get excited just thinking about it. I don’t even plan selling the photos, just using it as an excuse to get into good spots where I can see the landscape on my own, the photos would be just a bonus on top, a memento to remember the past.
So far so good; I am still enjoying flying and willing to continue. It fulfills my need for learning to get excited about new stuff, which used to be only new software libraries that I can play with, now it’s also new experiences.