Training Tip: Can you fly again tomorrow?

Strictly speaking, you could show up at the designated pilot examiner’s place of business and explain that this arrangement complied with the recency of aeronautical experience requirement for a private pilot certificate. But it would be a bad idea based on bad advice, creating a very bad impression with the DPE.

This is perhaps an extreme way of saying it’s better throughout flight training to schedule flight lessons that profit from your progress by avoiding pauses and gaps—and the associated backtracking—however possible.

Once you have the right pace established, it helps to look ahead on the flight schedule for your aircraft to the time when stepping things up will be productive, such as shortly before solo.

When you’re getting close, don’t be surprised if your CFI asks you, “Can you fly again tomorrow?” instead of writing you into the book in your usual spot three days from now, especially if you’re really on a roll. Keep it up as you take on the various types of solo flight you must log, such as cross-country and takeoffs and landings at an airport with an operating control tower.

For every rule there are exceptions. Sometimes taking a short break is in order if you have hit a learning plateau and nothing else seems to be helping. Then get back to work refreshed.

Returning to the subject of test prep, it’s true that you must have at least “3 hours of flight training with an authorized instructor in a single-engine airplane in preparation for the practical test, which must have been performed within the preceding 2 calendar months from the month of the test.”

But the emphasis is on “at least.” Better would be to slip an extra practice flight or two into your regular flying schedule as you prepare. Just don’t overdo it and fatigue yourself for test day.

Throughout your future flying, you will have to track recency-of-experience compliance to keep on the sunny side of regulations.

But that’s a minimum standard. You’ll hear pilots who barely manage to meet the requirements say they would prefer to be proficient than simply current—a maxim that applies equally to flight training.