PilotEdge Forums

I'm a new VFR pilot, watching the workshops, tons of communication videos, and about a year of offline flying, and today during a flight I totally screwed up. With some slight confusion concerning altitudes on the VFR request, everything was going fine. "N556GL holding short" everything going smooth, smooth takeoff, climb, and turn. Then I got in the airspace of my arriving destination, KBUR, and still at my altitude, 4500 feet. I should have descended 5 minutes ago, but nope, thinking I'm farther away than I really am, the controller clears me for the other runway, to give me more time to descend, "Thank you thank you" I reply feeling ridiculous. "N556GL you're way out of my airspace" I didn't turn nearly enough for base turn of my runway. "Just keep turning left I'll tell you when to stop" is the next command I get from the controller, thinking why did I stop turning??. Finally I'm cleared for a straight in arrival, it goes alright, until I touch down, my sim freezes for about 15 seconds, when it unfreezes my plane is spiraled out in the middle of the airport, so frustrated I just quit out of the sim. I review the audio clips from my flight once they're posted and come to conclusion on my mistakes, it was as simple as I didn't descend and turn enough for my base, so when I was trying to fix that I stopped paying attention to my turn and was focusing on my descend, causing me to be way off of the base. I apologize the controller that was helping me, and would like to thank you for not telling me to shove a log up my ***.

Yes I heard some of that, I could almost visualise the sweat on your brow. The thing is you wont make the same mistakes again, just different ones.

Where else could you have so much fun putting yourself through the mangle --- we've all been there.

Good luck for the next one

New mistakes, can't wait!