PilotEdge Forums

Its Been 8 Months since i last flew on PE or even my sim, due to income and bad health

So today I rejoined fired up the sim, PE and set myself at KVNY, So far eveything is working , 2 way communicaton checked and working after a lot of reststing the pe interface. ( start as admin, forget to set my system audio to defult for the headset, or start pe and forget to start as admin ect. Finaly got that sorted ) Did the standard radio check no worries.

Now here comes the part that am realy unsure about, I forgoten how to do most of the things i knew when i was flying back in feb of this year. Like i said my health has kept me from flying , Had a TIA, which is a form of stroke that can leave you with no after affects or some times you may have merrorie loss of some sort, this was my second TIA in 3 years the first 1 , I lost a lot of math skills that over the time i have relernt, the one i had this year seems to have hit my short term merriory and i think that is what is worrying me while sitting at KVNY .

When i stopped flying on PE back in feb I had done V1 thru 3 and had just started on doing the basic IFR training , At this point I have redone the first 3 during the day offline and have no problem but once i logged onto pe I locked up once I did the radio check.

Is this normal thing after not being in a plane for 6 to 8 months?

I think am just worried that i will have to ask for repeats of the info, or will mess up readbacks. I realy want to get back to flying PE as I know the chance to fly RL is slipping away due to health. So if anyone else has the same sort of problems or can give me any pointers to overcome this PLEASE let me know.

Andy the Britt from Oklahoma

Try the First Flight example on the web site. It keeps things as simple as possible.

Let us know how you do. Good luck and welcome back.

first flight was a a mess, tried to do circuts around KSNA (fsx) first was smooth but messed up the base to final , second run was ok still smooth , 3rd run strted to stutter and lock a little and ended up over flying base , 4 was really stuttering tried to contact tower (i could hear communiations ) wasnt sure if i was transmitting never got a reply from tower , so i landed the best i could let tower know i was going to close down (unsure if i was heard) . PE seemed to have crashed not sure when this took place. Had to force close it.

So now going to see if x-plane will work ok.

But i did get into the air baby steps baby steps


Andy

Andy,

I perfectly understand how you feel because I also have some health problem, in my case it is a hearing loss.

I was also away from flying on PE for personal reasons.

PE is a training environment and we are encouraged to use it as such.

What I mean is that we should not feel bad if we do not do the best we could as long as we try ..*smile.

As you know , PE Controller are very professional but at the same time very friendly and forgiving.

I do feel bad when I have to repeat couple of times "say again" but I just took it as a part of my challenge on PE.

There are times , I do not get the full transmission ( I can not hear the whole sentence), in a case like that I respond:" Say again".
If it still does not work, I ask :" request slower, I was unable to understand" and usually Controller repeats slowly so I am able to understand.

Many times I am "guessing" what was said and respond accordingly which is not the proper response.

For example , I was asking about the aircraft type and I responded with " Planned altitude will be xxxx'" ..lol,lol,lol
Yes, I feel very embarrassed at the times like described above but what is my other option?
Give it all up?

I will not give up because this is the only way I can get close to my dreams of flying.

I used to take real life flying lessons, unfortunately lack of money forced me to stop.

Now your case.

Andy, you are doing great, you are in a much harder position than many other pilots that have no health limitations and you are STILL doing it.

I give you lots of credits for flying on PE because I do know exactly the way you feel, we are kind of on the same boat here...*smile.

What I am doing now, I am flying some close traffic at SNA and started with simple VFR flights with Flight Following.
I will retake all the PE ratings but I am going to take my time.

I also use X-Plane and so far no problems at all.

Keep flying and as you said above, baby steps, this is the way to go.

I keep my fingers crossed for your health in real life and have lots of fun flying on PE, you are doing great, always tell yourself that, even when things do not go exactly as planned.

Cheers, AJ

Update

Did a few patterns at KSNA during the last few days, got to the point where i think i got it again.

Just did 2 flights from KVNY to L45 using X-plane and the FSX ( Fly FSEConomy and couldnt get the x-plane to finish the flight so redidit with fsx) . Both flight seemed ok first was a vfr without FF the second went vfr w/ff both flights where intresting .

Did have to ask control to repeat a few things like the clearance and then had to ask for freq change channel conformation, but all in all i felt better after the flights.

Tomorrow I am going to do the return trip from L45 to KVNY then see if there are any jobs heading out to Catalina just so i have a reson to do the coastel routes.

Thanks for the input it helped me get back in the air.