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Need input RE: flight instructor

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dwalker

Well-Known Member
Supporting Member
Joined
Mar 6, 2021
Messages
1,746
Location
Tennessee
Has anyone switched flight instructors prior to solo? I really like my instructor as a person but I have gotten the feeling lately he is very very focused on the next phase of his career towards an ATP. I totally get that, it is the next move for him and a very important step in his career. At the same time, I am not paying to have a chaparoned practice session, which is what I feel my last 10 hours has devolved into.
To help understand where I am at, I have about 40 hours in a Cherokee Warrior. Initially my progress was very fast, mostly due to the approx 20 hours of instruction I had around 30 years ago coming back. Everything was pretty good and razor focused until we got to a few things. The first was landings. I have had trouble consistently getting smooth, nice landings. I read the POH and followed it to the letter and had a day of pretty much excellent landings. Then I had a day of bleh landings, the result of too much speed on final, which is the speed the instructor has told me to land at, with the flaps set as instructed. As a result the plane floats a loooong way down the runway, which tends to lead to a balloon or too high a flare and a rough landing. In my instructors words, I stick the landing, but its not pretty or smooth.
The second thing is I chose to not use thier Cessna ground school program, instead using Sportys and ASA ground school/test prep, so our ground schools have been mostly a Q&A session with almost no ground school. That has been OK so far, but I feel like the instructor is annoyed by it.
The week before I was supposed to leave for Oshkosh I had a typical practice day of 2 good landings, 1 bleh and one ugly balloon landing. When we landed back at my home airport he seemed exasperated with me and said he would be glad to fly with me anytime, I was safe and just needed to practice more and I would get it. I left feeling fairly frustrated, because in general I try very hard not to make the same mistakes over and over.
I had a week off in the Quarantine with the wife, so I did a lot of study and spent some time on my simulator.

Last week I had a conversation with an older pilot that I have a huge amount of respect for already, and when I told him how I was struggling with my landings and gave him the speed on final he laughed and told me I was too fast and I needed to slow it down. The next day I had a stage check with a senior instructor, and that instructor really chewed me out for trying to land as fast as I was, and gave me the correct airspeed, which is the same as shown in the POH. I greased that landing right in, no issues. The stage check instructor told me that landing at the speed I was he would have a hard time getting a good landing, and to slowdown and follow the POH. He said he would have a conversation with my instructor as to the landing procedure in the Cherokee, and why he was having me at 85 on final instead of the 65 specified.
Ok, so I thought about all this over the weekend and was hoping to just sort of start fresh with todays lesson. But my instructor canceled on me citing weather, building clouds and crosswinds. I deferred to his experience, but I had looked at the weather and to me it looked like the anticipated afternoon clouds and rain were not going to materialize, which is exactly what happened. 5 minutes of hard rain an hour before my scheduled time, then scattered clouds, lots of sunshine and almost no wind. We have flown in much worse, and at the minimum we could have flown out to one of the practice airports that were very clear for the hour and a half.
And honestly the landing thing is annoying but now that I have confirmation I will just land at the appropriate speeds and the instructor can talk all he wants.

Yet here I am, thinking I need to find a new flight school and instructor. The problem is I honestly have no pilot friends to sit down and hash this out with, and noone to tell me if I am completely wrong and to tighten up and lock it down.
I am not upset about this, I get that the flight school I am at is training mostly college kids headed to ATP, not old guys like me that just want to goof off. I also get that my instructor has a lot on his plate preparing for his next position and probably is pretty stressed about meeting the terms of his CJO.
I get ALL of that.
But I am paying the going rate...

Very interested in hearing all opinions, input, and suggestions.
 
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