How to ease nerves flying solo? (Commercial student)

[L.Brown]

I’m a commercial student with about 180 hrs TT. I’m working towards my 250 for commercial. I jumped right into instrument after private and now I’m jumping straight into commercial. I know I’m a good pilot, the CFIs tell me that, but I can’t help but constantly doubt myself or come up with things in my head that could possibly happen and it freaks me out. Since I’ve gone straight from rating to rating, I haven’t done much solo flying/ flying without an instructor. And I always find myself super nervous about that! (Also my vfr skills are crap right now from doing instrument training lol)

like today, I was having such a hard time flying from airport to airport with my cfi. Fumbled on the radios, put in the wrong frequency for an untowered field, got confused on traffic pattern entry... it was a worse day than normal lol normally I’m fine with radios. But I ALWAYS have a hard time spotting the airport! I think that’s my biggest issue/concern. Also, afraid of atc asking something & I don’t understand/do the wrong thing. And second guessing myself. But has anyone experienced something similar? I know that I know my stuff, I just have a lack of confidence & PIC authority and I wanna get rid of this!

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

Yes, one of the problems with some of the schools and their straight through training is that it is producing ATPs sitting in the left seat of commercial airliners with the absolute minimum amount of time being solo and in command by themselves of the airplane.

One of the things I found very fun after getting my private was just picking out new to me airports in the vicinity, flying there using dead reckoning, figuring out how to and then landing at them.

I felt it was a big adventure and a blast. Lots of benefits because then you really know your local air environment and gain a lot of experience and solo time.

Have fun with it.