Flight Training: A Real Program

July 30th 1990. That was my first day of flight training at a real flight school. I was determined to get my private pilots certificate within five or six months and move on to my commercial certificate. Knowing that I had to start over (I had already soloed a few times) but this wasn't some FBO doing the training anymore. It was an accredited flight school with sixty or so flight instructors, about eighty aircraft and a syllabus to follow. The only thing that could slow me down was weather, availability of airplanes or just taking too long to learn. Oh, I forgot about internal politics and CYA at the flight school. I'll get into that later.
I was now flying a Cessna 152 instead of the Piper Cherokee so it took some getting used to in the transition. The first few flights were tougher than I had expected because the flight instructors standards were higher than the guys at the FBO. We practiced the standard basic maneuvers and stall recovery. We started getting into short and soft field take offs and landings which was something that the FBO never told me about. I also learned that there were different types of stalls. An approach to landing stall and an accelerated stall. All news to me. We really focused on slow flight and stall recovery more than anything else. I started learning crosswind correction. We would request a runway that had a crosswind, and shoot touch and goes.
I was flying almost every day now and felt like I was really moving along. Some days when I would show up for my flight, the plane that I was assigned would be down so I would have to hang around on a "standby" list to get a plane. More often then not, I would end up going home without flying that day. It started happening pretty often.
When we did start flying again at a steady pace we concentrated mostly on take offs and landings, slow flight and stalls. I was getting ready for my second "first solo".
On September 10th 1990, I flew my first solo in the Cessna 152. I had some good training and wasn't nearly as nervous as the last time. My skill level and confidence were building.