Mike Bulcock

A member of the Philip Greenspun's Homepage community since July 10, 2003

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July 28, 2003, on Learning to Fly:
I learnt to fly in San Diego in 1997. It took my 25 hours and 119 landings to go solo, and 55 hours total until I took my test over a period of 5 months. From talking to other people this is about average. I wrote down everything on spent on learning to fly in the back of my logbook, and the total came to $4650. In term of planes I would tend to recommend the 172 or Cherokee. They both cost a bit more than the 152 or Tomahawk, but are more stable, and more comfortable which helps keep the hours down. Later I learnt alpine flying ;while working in Switzerland; in a Katana and would thoroughly recommend the Katana. The visibility from the cockpit and the improved performance and feel over a Cessna 152/172 made flying more enjoyable for me. I would recommend using several instructors and different airfields, pay per hour, and never block buy hours. You can stick with a good instructor until you come up against a block in your learning, but then it is best to switch staight away. These...