By Greg Alberti, EAA 1225585, EAA Chapter 196 Ray Aviation Scholar
As an 18-year-old, recently minted private pilot, I have been flying airplanes for over half of my life. The world of aviation has taught me that there are heavy ups and downs in life. It has taught me that not everything will go your way or be perfect.
At the age of 16, I set a goal for myself to earn a private pilot certificate within a year. Unbeknownst to me, I wouldn’t complete this goal for about two years. I had a plethora of challenges that struck me in different ways throughout my training.
I officially started my flight training in a 1968 Piper Cherokee 180 using a private instructor. After our first flight lesson, she got a job flying Pilatus PC-12s. My successor to her was an instructor from the local flight school. After our first lesson together, he got a job flying bush planes in Alaska. Although I was still freshly learning my way into aviation, I felt that all instructors were just building up hours for other jobs. That was until I met a JetBlue pilot who wanted to teach for his own satisfaction.
I ended up flying with this JetBlue pilot up until my solo flight on January 17, 2023. He had taught me how to fly from the eye of an airline pilot. My father, also a private pilot, admitted that he thought I had better landings than he himself did. After my first solo flight, the weather for the next few months started to get worse. Most New Englanders know that in the spring, it gets windy. Because I was not comfortable flying in 20 knots gusting up to 30, I did not end up flying as often as I wanted to.
My instructor told me in the late springtime that he had gotten a new job at United and would be busy for a few months with training. It had caught me off guard and I ended up not flying for the bulk of the summer.
In the summer of 2023, my pilot friend had an airplane accident at our airport. I happened to be there when it occurred. The pilot and all the passengers survived, but this experience made me seriously rethink whether I wanted to fly airplanes. I ultimately took the experience to learn and continued wanting to fly.
In the fall, I started to pick up flying again with a new instructor who had previously come to the airport. He was like my old instructor in the sense that he wanted to teach for fun because he was already working as a Delta mechanic. At this point, I switched over to flying a Cessna 150.
I had gotten in contact with the United pilot instructor, and he said he was also willing to help with training if needed. I took him up on his offer and had two instructors teach me. In the long run, I felt that it was a better opportunity because I got to see different aspects of each part of the instruction.
My training was going well, but the challenges were not quite over. An illness struck in late fall, and I had a cough for roughly three months, which disturbed my training. I had planned to take my checkride at the end of January but ultimately had to cancel because I did not build up sufficient hours in time.
Closer to February, I had an issue after one of my cross-country flights. The intake manifold seal was cracked inside of the engine causing it to backfire. This delayed my training as well. I had planned to take my second checkride in April but soon realized that it would have to be canceled again because I did not have the necessary training. I then told myself that I would not schedule another checkride until I was set up for success with all my hours completed. I continued to train into the summer of 2024.
In July, I was finally ready to take a checkride. I tried contacting multiple DPEs but it took a long time for one to finally respond. Eventually, I was able to book a checkride in the middle of September. After I booked the ride, the ability to fly the Cessna 150 took a turn. During a preflight, I found that a bushing on the elevator was loose. This kept me grounded. I decided that I would switch back to the Cherokee 180 for the rest of my training because I was already so familiar with it and the 150 wouldn’t be fixed for weeks.
Closer to the checkride, I did a full three-and-a-half-hour day of flying in 18 knots gusting to 25 to prepare myself for the checkride. On my last landing of the day, the audio panel in the airplane decided that it would fail. Within one week of the checkride, we had the audio panel completely replaced.
At last, the day of the checkride came. It was a beautiful day outside while the winds were approximately 5 knots straight down the runway. I passed with flying colors and I am proud to say that I am a private pilot.
Even with the numerous challenges I had faced throughout my training, I persevered through sheer determination. Getting a pilot certificate doesn’t only allow you to fly airplanes, but it also symbolizes the journey that was taken to get there.
