How long to solo for students

[rwanttaja]

For me it was about ten hours to solo...but of course, the Earth spun faster back then. :-)

IIRC, I had 72 hours when I went for my Private flight test...not (just) because I was slow, but because I had a lot of free flying hours coming. I soloed four months after my 16th birthday, and had about eight months to build time. Our CAP cadet squadron was located in the same town as the Wing headquarters, and senior members at work didn't want to do janitorial work. So they offered a free hour in the CAP Citabria for each week a cadet cleaned the headquarters. I had been doing the work for about two years, which gave me a hundred free flying hours. I'd received a 15-hour CAP flight scholarship to take me past solo (in a 150), then transitioned to the Citabria. With time, basically, free, and the airport just a 15-minute drive from school, I flew my [biblical beast of burden] off.

The GOOD side of doing the janitorial work is that the Wing headquarters was located in the airport terminal, and the bathrooms weren't part of the CAP rooms. The BAD part was this was still in the smoking era, and I had to clean a lot of ash trays. The place had several which were basically just big sand buckets, which meant I had to use a spatula to sieve out the butts. Yuck.

Eventually, turned the job over to another CAP buddy, and he built his hours as well. He's still working as a CFI/Charter pilot in Boise.

Went into college a couple years later, and the college was just across the street from the airport. By that point, I'd gotten checked out in the O-1 Bird Dog (I think I was the only CAP Cadet ever to qualify in one) and no one else was flying it. So during breaks in classes, I'd dash across the street and take the Bird Dog out for a walk.

BTW, the Citabria rented for $10/hour, and the Bird Dog for $13. Wet.

Ron Wanttaja