One of the most exciting, stressful, and sometimes frustrating parts of flight training is the first solo. Because you often don’t know what you don’t know when you begin flying lessons, that first solo can feel like an unattainable goal, especially if you don’t take ownership of your training by doing research.
One of the common misconceptions about flight training is that the first few hours are spent in the pattern. This is probably because many people equate learning to fly to learning to drive a car where so many people were in a church parking lot on a Saturday. The pattern is too busy, too low to the ground (leaving not a lot of room for error), and frankly crowded to do much primary training, so expect your CFI to guide you to a designated practice area where instruction and learning will take place.
