A Frustrating Day...

Today was a frustrating day.

Learning something new is like that.  The learning curve is not a smooth, linear line that goes up and to the right.  Rather, it goes up steeply, levels off, drops down, goes up steeply, levels off, goes down, etc...  Today it dropped down for me.



My 14 year old son, Alex and I joined our instructor, Matt for a joint lesson.  We headed out early in the morning amidst a lingering marine layer bound for Byron airport to do some landing practice.  Livermore is blessed with a bunch of uncontrolled, lightly used airports only a few minutes flying time away.  Byron airport is just on the east side of the Altamont pass where the Pacific westerlies roll over the ridges and create some interesting turbulence.

I couldn't seem to get ahead of the airplane in the pattern and the combination of that, the turbulence and the narrow, short runway added up to some pretty horrid landings on my part.  Nothing dangerous to aircraft or occupants, but nothing you'd want your mom to see.

The Buddha said that the root of human suffering is wanting things to be different than they are.  My "suffering" today (if there can be such a thing as suffering when you are flying around on a beautiful California summer day in a small plane) was me expecting my learning curve to be like it has been to date.  It wasn't.

We decide to move further east to Lodi where the wind would smooth out and did a series of landing sthere.  Better, but still a struggle.  I just didn't feel confident.

On the ground in Lodi, I swapped seats with Alex and he flew us home and did so beautifully.  His approach and landing into Livermore was smooth and effortless.

What did I learn?  I learned you can have too many teachers.  I've been flying with several instructors and managing my own training syllabus.  Consequently, I think I convinced my instructor(s) I was further up the learning curve than I really was.  I learned it's time to settle down and pick a primary instructor and collaborate closely with them on my training agenda.

So, it's settled.  I've chosen a school, and a primary and backup instructor (both from the same school so they can compare notes on my progress).  I've closed this phase of my flight training experience -- choosing a school and instructor -- and I am moving on to the next phase -- learning to fly.