Flight Training

Getting Your Private Pilot License – Circuit Training

By Senne Vandenputte | Last updated on June 19, 2022

This post is part of the story series Getting Your Private Pilot License.

As a glider pilot with about 220 flying hours, I finally decided to take the jump and start my Private Pilot training in June 2018. In this series, I share my experiences of getting my Private Pilot License in Belgium. From preparing for my first lesson, to my first solo flights and ultimately my checkride.

I hope these articles will be able to help you get the most out of your own flight training!

View all stories in this series

Last Sunday morning I had my fourth flying lesson. During the first 3 hours, my instructor and I did all the exercises that needed to be finished before starting with circuit training. We finished everything the previous lesson so I was ready to start practicing my landing circuits.

The objective of this flight was to improve my circuits, procedures and landings. Most important were the configurations of the aircraft and making sure I was flying a stabilized approach down to the runway.

The circuits at our local airfield in Goetshoven (Belgium) have been adjusted recently due to noise complaints from certain people living around the airfield (I guess we are not the only airfield with that problem). We have two crossed runways with four possible right hand circuits:

As you can see we also have a different circuit for motorized aircraft and gliders. They are all drawn to avoid overflying housed in so-called noise abatement areas. On Sunday, the wind was coming from the East so we had runway 06 in use at the time of my flight.

We started out with a few normal circuits. The first one I did I got mixed up with radio calls resulting in a misconfiguration of the aircraft which brought me way off the altitude and speed I should have had. A steep approach and long flare later we throttled up for another try.

My next few landings were a lot better once I realized aviate comes before communicate. We practiced a few standard landings, one without using flaps, a few power-off landings and an EFATO (Engine Failure After Take-Off). As you can see in the overview below all were ok!

Altough landing shouldn’t be that much of a problem for me with my gliding experience, I do find myself having some challenges with flaring at the right time. In a glider I’m sitting a lot closer to the ground, making my flares in the Tomahawk often too late. I found a great video by Rod Machado that helped me a lot.

Know Where to Look During the Flare

Watch this video on YouTube

SO far, my training exercises are progressing well I think:

Exercise 1a: Familiarisation with the airplane
Exercise 1b: Emergency drills
Exercise 2: Preparation for and action after flight
Exercise 3: Air experience: flight exercise
Exercise 4: Effects of controls
Exercise 5a: Taxiing
Exercise 5b: Emergencies: brake and steering failure
Exercise 6: Straight and level
Exercise 7: Climbing
Exercise 8: Descending
Exercise 9: Turning
Exercise 10a: Slow flight
Exercise 10b: Stalling
Exercise 11: Spin avoidance
Exercise 12: Take-off and climb to downwind position
Exercise 13: Circuit, approach and landing
Exercise 12/13: Emergencies
Exercise 14: First solo!
Exercise 15: Advanced turning
Exercise 16: Forced landing without power
Exercise 17: Precautionary landing
Exercise 18a: Navigation
Exercise 18b: Navigation problems at lower levels in reduced visibility
Exercise 18c: Radio navigation
Exercise 19: Basic instrument flight

I have now logged a little over 4 hours of dual instruction in the Piper Tomahawk. My instructor won’t be available next weekend so I booked a slot with one of our club’s other FIs. A few more circuits and hopefully my first solo in a motorized airplane!

BTW: This week I also received my brand new Flight Outfitters Lift flight bag. So excited when I got it in the mail a few days ago and can’t wait to take it flying!

Update: I finally wrote a review about this cool bag, you can read it here!