Training and Safety Tip: Recapture your confidence
Unstable summer weather during July forced me to call off planned flights at short notice several times, and each cancellation knocked my confidence level down a notch.
The summer has been hot and muggy out here in the mid-Atlantic. A typical weather pattern goes like this: Morning fog burns off, the temperature and humidity rise to insufferable, and afternoon thunderstorms dump all of that excess moisture and energy back to Earth. I’ve repeatedly missed the window of perfect flying conditions and once came troublingly close to my personal minimum currency.
I have been a certificated pilot for almost 25 years, but I got to the point where I felt like I had forgotten how to pilot.
The “damn the torpedoes, full-speed-ahead” school of thought may be useful for getting out of some thorny conundrums, but when it comes to aviation, I believe in a more, shall we say, nuanced approach to navigating such exasperating—if wildly absurd—mental roadblocks.
I called up an instructor friend. The first thing he said was, “I know that you know how to fly this airplane, and you know that you know, too.”
Next, he got into the airplane with me. He sat silently next to me as I completed the tasks: I taxied to the runway, handled the radios, and set myself up for a flight just like I had every time for the past 24 and a half years. And when I hesitated on a radio call or a checklist item, he gave me time and space to figure it out on my own, without allowing anything to become dangerous.
Whenever I fly after an extended pause, I always wonder what has taken me so long. Things fall into place, and muscle memory quickly returns. As the runway drops away below my airplane, I know where I am, why I’m here, and most importantly—how I got here in the first place.
Insecurities and doubts can always creep in, and they happen to everyone, no matter how many hours you have in your logbook. Don’t ignore them or diminish them. Accept them, deal with them rationally, and most importantly, embrace them as a new opportunity to learn.
Aeronautical decision making can be complex at the best of times, and even more so when your ADM is covered in a fine layer of rust. Breaking up even a simple task into smaller pieces is one way to begin to shake that rust off. Another is grabbing an instructor or a safety pilot, and with them sitting next to you, prove to yourself once again that you are indeed worthy of the pilot certificate that you have earned.
After we returned from our flight, the most significant piece of feedback my instructor had was that some of my landings were slightly left of centerline.
“You’re a safe pilot, and you know that,” he told me.
And that’s exactly what I needed to hear.
