How many hours of training did you receive before flying without a more senior pilot with you? The L39 type rating requirement is a thousand hours but it won't be in the jet itself. I plan to do aerobatic training and everything but last I checked the Jet Warbird Training Center program was under 20 hours over a few days which terrifies me. Is that really enough training?
Once you have 1000 hours of real experience (hopefully in different types, not all in the same Cessna 172), 20 hours should be plenty for an L-39 type. Guys with previous military experience may only need 10 hours. I had no military experience, I did my L-39 type rating in 2020 and it took about 20 hours. Before that, about 500 hours of my experience came from a Columbia 400, which is a fairly fast, slippery piston single. I also did about 4 aerobatic lessons in a Mudry CAP-10B. Here's my first day of L-39 training, if you're interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DN_vMq-l9w
Matt Guthmiller also has some recent videos on getting an L-39 up and running, and his first flights in it.
I've got your first day downloaded on my Plex and I've watched that video so many times in the last few months! Thank you so much for making it! Are you planning on putting the other days up? I remember you mentioned somewhere else that you have 5TB of video left to edit.
That definitely makes me feel better. I've gone into pilot training with a lot of fear and it's always come out "omg this feels like home" so I'm hopeful once I'm in the L39 it will be a similar experience :)
What other airplanes should I practice in for the 1000 hours authorization after getting my PPL in the 172? Once I get it I'll join PlusOne Flyers here in SD so I should have a diverse set of planes to practice with.
Edit: I have my email in the profile if there’s any way you could share the video. I’d love to see all the content from the ground school portions especially
I definitely plan to edit the remaining footage and put it on youtube.. I will try to find the time over the winter holidays. Editing takes me a ton of time.
My recommendation is, 1) get your instrument rating and fly IFR enough to get comfortable doing that, 2) get some aerobatic lessons, including some unusual attitude recoveries, in any aerobatic plane, even if it's a Cessna 152 Aerobat, and 3) get some hours in a fast, slippery plane that requires you to plan your descents from 30+ miles out; could be a Cirrus, a Columbia, a Mooney, a Lancair, or a Bonanza, etc. Retractable experience is a plus too (get 10-20 hours in a Piper Arrow or something). And be prepared to pay for it all!
> I definitely plan to edit the remaining footage and put it on youtube.. I will try to find the time over the winter holidays. Editing takes me a ton of time.
Thank you! For what it's worth, it really shows! The vast majority of L39 videos online are low effort vanity dumps from hangar to hangar taken by a GoPro or two poorly positioned in the cockpit - you can rarely see the instrumentation, checklists, or anything remotely useful.
Your video towers above others. With the amount of cockpit detail visible in the main 3rd person view and in the B-roll like the red levers. Your hands visible on the throttle and stick so it's easy to see what you're doing and when the instructor has control. Beautiful exterior view from the wing during simulated emergencies and landing gear retractions. Down to the instructor's commentary during the nose tracking exercise with visible turbulence. Oh and most of the time, glare permitting, I can make out all of the gauges! ALL IN 4K!
The classroom videos are just icing on the cake with a cherry on top. One thing I didn't quite get though... what was the strap thing? :)
> My recommendation is, 1) get your instrument rating and fly IFR enough to get comfortable doing that, 2) get some aerobatic lessons, including some unusual attitude recoveries, in any aerobatic plane, even if it's a Cessna 152 Aerobat, and 3) get some hours in a fast, slippery plane that requires you to plan your descents from 30+ miles out; could be a Cirrus, a Columbia, a Mooney, a Lancair, or a Bonanza, etc. Retractable experience is a plus too (get 10-20 hours in a Piper Arrow or something). And be prepared to pay for it all!
Pretty much the plan I had, though I was planning to do aerobatic training with CP Aviation focusing on recoveries (I'm not an adrenaline junkie, just paranoid) before jumping into IFR. Any reason to do IFR before aerobatics?
A Mooney with long range tanks has been my plan for years because it would allow me to visit family in a single hop with a reasonable enough travel time to do it every other weekend (easy 5-10 hours per week), so that's encouraging. Once again, thank you!
Side note: how tall are you, if I may ask? That cockpit is cramped.
The instructor in that video was poking fun of the other instructor (who will show up in the next video) because he has a gut, and the stick in the rear cockpit hits his gut. So there's a "bungee" strap to hold the stick forward when you're getting in and out. But at the end of the video, the stick ends up hitting the first instructor's gut, so I poked fun of him at the end.
> Any reason to do IFR before aerobatics?
Nah, the order doesn't matter.
> how tall are you, if I may ask? That cockpit is cramped.
I'm 6'2 or about 187 cm, but I've had passengers up to 6'6 in the rear cockpit. Size usually isn't a problem. And it's less cramped than some MiG cockpits I've seen.
Hmm, it's been awhile for me - I entered military training in 1980. ("In those days, wearing an onion on our belt as was the custom" - sorry :), I initially trained with a bog-standard civilian instructor at our local college (for those in ROTC) for about 20 hours, with most of us soloing after 10 hours and mostly being judged on simple airmanship and attitude. I paid for the next 20 hours myself with a different instructor and happily learned to fly off a tiny little grass strip and got my private. At UPT I think I had around 20 hours in the T-37 to first fly solo, and probably less in the T-38, since we had probably 100 hours by the time we go to the higher speed jet. We didn't do a whole lot of solo as I remember because there were specific agenda items that needed to be covered dual (formation work, instrument work, etc.), rather than just giving the kids the keys to the jets and letting them wander around the country. I recall that I graduated with about 175 hours, plus perhaps 100 hours of simulator time. The training all together lasted a year and was a full-time job with a flight or two every other day or so, plus lots of academics. I couldn't properly comment on the scheduling of the flight schools that are run for civilian pilots, other than to think they've got a decent track record and certainly meet whatever the FAA minimums are - the basics of flying indeed are pretty much the same and having 1000 hours of reasonably solid time already would be pretty good for the new aircraft experience training you're really getting, I'd think. Having the personal budget of both time and money to pursue training without rush or struggle is going to be the best thing you can do for yourself if that's within your control.
Edit: to add a little to this since I started thinking about it, while the total flight time seems fairly low, we would go fly in absolutely any weather short of an actual thunderstorm, and the IPs for the most part made the students do the flying/navigating/communicating/planning/etc. Flying close formation in drafty clouds with pounding rain would humble a low-time pilot, and occasionally it'd be bad enough to get a grunt out of the mostly drowsing (it seemed) graybeard in the backseat. My last assignment in the AF was to go teach UPT (at the base I learned at), and hoo boy, did I see that the vast majority of the stress that the students underwent was mostly self-induced and the flying was about as basic as we could do - it just seemed (and was) hard for the students because we all were so, to paraphrase a great philosopher, unknowing about our unknowns.
Anyway, I'm sure you'll do fine learning to fly the L-39. It's a popular and comparatively affordable jet airplane I understand and looks like fun.
How different are the T-37/38s from common civilian trainers like the 172? How good were the simulators back then (I haven't use any sims outside of consumer stuff so I have no real point of comparison)?
What do you mean by pursuing training without rush or struggle? Looking at the cost of fuel and rental for the first thousand hours, let alone the cost of the jet with new TFE engine, I'm much more scared of stretching out the training so much that I'm always rusty.
> to add a little to this since I started thinking about it, while the total flight time seems fairly low, we would go fly in absolutely any weather short of an actual thunderstorm, and the IPs for the most part made the students do the flying/navigating/communicating/planning/etc. Flying close formation in drafty clouds with pounding rain would humble a low-time pilot, and occasionally it'd be bad enough to get a grunt out of the mostly drowsing (it seemed) graybeard in the backseat.
That sounds scary - I've been taught so far that bad weather is one of the leading cause of GA fatal accidents thunderstorm or no. Were your trainers or the jets themselves just better at withstanding adverse weather? Or are we civies too risk averse? I can't imagine doing it in close formation.
How many hours of training did you receive before flying without a more senior pilot with you? The L39 type rating requirement is a thousand hours but it won't be in the jet itself. I plan to do aerobatic training and everything but last I checked the Jet Warbird Training Center program was under 20 hours over a few days which terrifies me. Is that really enough training?