Setting My Personal Minimums

Just passed 80 hours in the Cessna 172, and my PPL checkride is imminent. I’ll have a full debrief on my checkride when I pass. We are in exciting times!

In my research to prepare for my checkride, setting personal minimums is a common feature in things to have. I’ve found the FAA version (https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/2022-01/Personal%20Minimums.pdf) and the AOPA (https://www.aopa.org/-/media/Files/AOPA/Home/Pilot-Resources/Personal-Mins-Contracts/Personal-Minimums-Contract-VFR.pdf). I’ll probably make my own soon, since these look to be formatted for a single flight as opposed to the reference sheet I was hoping for.

I’d like a sheet that I’ve created that I refer to prior to a flight based on Go/No Go decisions I’ve made in past and what I’ve found to be comfortable, and uncomfortable with.

Lessons already learned

The first thing I’ve found… I need to start keeping track of uncomfortable situations and what the conditions were like. I need to avoid survivor-biased memories, and remember the bad ones.

Here is an example. My instructor and I had a cross country scheduled for the afternoon of some day. We were supposed to get the plane at 4PM, and since this was late Florida summers, sunset would be sometime after 8PM. As luck would have it, a plane went in for unscheduled maintenance, and then there was a SNAFU with scheduling where the crew member that modified the plane schedules to overcome the maintenance plane only put us down for 6PM-8PM slot. The plane was immediately booked for someone looking to replace their displaced timeslot.

Making matters worse, that plane then had an unscheduled maintenance issue.

We attempted to start our cross country at approximately 7PM. We’d be coming home after dark, but both my instructor and I were current for night flights, and this seemed like a non-issue.

That is until the Florida weather found us and it poured rain for 30 minutes. Our actual departure time ended up being around 8PM, and it was getting dark. Finally hitting the runway, we were ready to go and began our takeoff roll. At 55 knots we rotated off the runway… and straight into the next issue. The airspeed indicator pined at 60 knots and didn’t bounce, budge, or climb. Recognizing the issue at about 100 feet off the ground, it was safer to climb up and attempt some troubleshooting instead of trying to abort the flight with the remaining runway, now in the dark. At about 400 feet, we noticed a discrepancy with the Altitude Indicator and rate of climb instruments. We now knew we had water blocking something in our pitot static system. We pulled the alternate static port, which resolved all the issues. Both the instructor and myself were now done with the day at this point. We went home.

What I should have done was wrote down the weather reports for this flight. I’d save them to my personal minimums, as a new pilot, to remind myself when things look like this, you may not want to go.

I’ll keep better track now.

Setting my minimums

It’s time to put something on paper. My plan is to flip through my logbook as well as my pictures on my iPhone to remind myself about weather encounters and what my thoughts were at the time. I’m setting minimums for Pilot in Command (PIC) flights I will accomplish in the future. While I will have in mind personal minimums for future instruction flights, these are the better flights to stretch my minimums, while also staying within my instructors. I’ve had a couple flights were weather was interesting, but only 2 that I became uncomfortable at some point. I’ll need to address the uncomfortableness, sure, but I need to keep in mind that just because I felt comfortable does not mean the weather was safe for PIC time.

First thing on the question list, weather. When I first set out to lay down personal minimums, I thought they’d all be weather. While weather plays a major factor in these minimums, there is more to it than that. I’ll explain in a second.

Winds

Lets discuss winds. I’ve flown in 25 knot winds with somewhere around 35 knot gusts. This was a local training flight, and the wind direction was straight from the north at 360. We have a runway 36, which means 0 cross wind. Recalling this flight, I was comfortable and not concerned. However, should I be doing that while I’m alone or with my wife in the right seat instead of my instructor. Probably not.

Days of >10 knot winds, the plane can really get moving as it climbs out of the surrounding structures and trees from the airport. The wind spoils coming from these structures can make the flight, for a short time, very bouncy. But on decent for landing, you spend a lot more time in this zone of turbulence, and while its safe and I’ve practiced landing in these conditions a lot… maybe I should hold off on attempting worse by myself. You also have to consider where these winds are coming from. There is a school rule on solo flight that limits students to a 15 knot wind +5 for gusts, and no more that a 5 knot crosswind component. While I boost my time here, these sound like good numbers to me.

Max wind velocity and gusts: 15 knots Gusts 20 knots
Max crosswind: 5 knots

Clouds

Moving on, clouds. Visibility as a VFR pilot is important. It’s in the name: Visual Flight Rules. As a VFR pilot, I am not allowed to not see. There is a whole legal table that lays out my visibility requirements to fly… and the FAA has made it a little complicated. I won’t reproduce it here, but here they have: https://www.faasafety.gov/files/gslac/courses/content/25/185/vfr%20weather%20minimums.pdf.

Now, I have a pretty good idea of comfortable and what is not. I know my minimum altitude, for the most part, is 1500 feet. I’d like to put myself around 1000 feet above that, as radio reception is significantly better in the middle of the Everglades when you are higher, so my personal minimum altitude is easily 2500 feet. I need a buffer to the clouds. Legally, I only need 500 feet below the clouds, but small Cessna’s can rise and fall with the wind currents easily. So, as not to upset the powers that be, I’ll throw an extra 500 feet below the clouds, giving my 1000 feet. This puts my minimum ceiling (broken or overcast) at 3500 feet. This comes with a disclaimer: I’m doing these for local flights. A cross country, I will say 5000 feet along the route, as the clouds could fall lower while I’m in route.

At night, at this time, I don’t think I’ll fly overcast sky’s at night. Getting away from the city lights, its way too easy to have no visual reference to the cloud bases. Also, at night the temperatures fall, which lowers the cloud bases as well. For now, no broken or overcast sky’s at night. I’m sure I’ll update the night minimum soon.

Minimum visibility also is easy for me. I’ve seen the 3 mile visibility days, and that’s pretty bad. 5 miles is interesting, but not scary. I’m happy with 5 mile visibility. 5 miles during the day it is.

At night, again I go back to the overcast sky situation. If the weather isn’t declaring >10, I’m not going at this time.

Minimum Ceiling Day/Night: 3500ft / No Ceiling
Minimum Visibility Day/Night: 5NM / >10NM

Pilot

I didn’t think of this as a personal minimum until I looked at the templates. What about me?

There is a lot to answer here. How am I feeling? I get headaches from allergies, so how is that going? What about what I ate? How’s my stomach? When did I last drink? Did I drink water? Am I stressed today? These questions don’t have genuinely laid out answers. Based on my research, I believe these should be scaled answers, and there should be minimum Go/No Go scores for each, as well as a total minimum. At first, this will be a shot in the dark. I’ll need to revisit this often as I learn.

  1. How am I overall? (minimum 3)
  2. When did I last drink, and how am I affected? (legal minimum 8 hours, my affected rating needs to be 4 or higher)
  3. How is my head/sinuses? (minimum 3)
  4. How is my stomach, including hunger? (minimum 3 for <2 hour flights, 4 or greater for >2 hour flights)
  5. Rate the last 24 hours of water intake. (minimum 3)
  6. Have I taken any medications with an effect on todays flight? What is the risk for those medications? (Probably 2 questions here. Any medication with an effect on the flight should be a No Go. Any medication with a risk factor that’s assessable should be a No Go. More below)
  7. Rate my stress level. (minimum 3. more below)
  8. Overall score (Minimum 25 total)
Medications

I don’t like to medicate anything. That said, I do know some medications have an effect that is not good for flying, and some medications are used to treat symptoms that are not good for flying. A medication like Advil is probably not going to have much of an effect on my flight, but the conditions I treat with Advil, headaches, muscle aches, etc. probably will. So Advil would rate low on a risk factor, but that flight has a high potential of a No Go when I ask myself question 3.

Now if its hard narcotics… just kidding. Obviously prescribed pain killers are a No Go, and I don’t take unprescribed medications. Hello Mr. or Mrs. FAA person. 🙂

Stress

Ah, we all have it. If you breathe, you have stress. Babies have it, and that’s saying something.

I manage my stress very well. I can get anxious, but this doesn’t normally stress me. I say normally because eventually it all becomes stress.

And then, at least for myself, there are different kinds of stress. There are kinds of stress that going for a short flight can help. But then there is stress that makes going for a flight risky. I’m going to have to make that line between the two more black and white as experience builds. For now, my take on stress is this. If the stress of the day leads to a different state of mind or emotion than normal, I will avoid flying. If the stress of the day does not effect my state of mind or emotion, going for a flight may help reduce my stress levels.

Lets not forget that flying itself can induce stress. If I find this kind of stress building, I must take care to not let it effect my ability to make good decisions, such as No Go decisions when I’m on a schedule.

Thinking out loud here, printing my personal minimums will help in those times, because if a violation of my minimums occurs, that is going to be strong enough reason to not go.

Training

Verifying I’m legal to fly on my training is important. Ensuring I’m current on my training for my personal minimums is importanter (pilot spelling).

I’ve really only done training, so I’ll need to lay these out as time goes. I can also use experience as a metric in lieu of training. This will need to be updated.

Aircraft Minimums

Aircraft equipment

Now this is important. There is equipment I legal need, and there is equipment that I’ll become accustom to flying with. What equipment is needed for me to actually be safe, not legal?

I’ve flown mostly with GPS. So, if I’m going somewhere unfamiliar, a GPS is probably a must. And since it is a must, I’ll need 2.
I’m not familiar with any autopilots, so I’ll add I won’t use those until I get trained with them.

I could navigate in South and Central Florida with a compass and VOR. So, in my home territory, I can put these in as minimums if GPS isn’t available.

Don’t forget a chart.

Do I feel comfortable flying without a fire extinguisher? During training, yes. With my family, no.

Is the flight over water, and how do I feel about everyone onboards water survival abilities? Make sure I have equipment to overcome this.

Aircraft fuel

There is legal minimum fuel: 30 minutes by day, 45 minutes by night. Then there is my minimum fuel. For the foreseeable future, I will be ensuring there is at least 1.5 hours of fuel in the tanks.

Aircraft faults

What aircraft faults am I OK with flying through? Which am I not? This list will grow with experience. I am listing what “not necessary for legal requirements” equipment I will terminate a flight for.

It’s also worth noting that if I’m near congested airspace, the equipment fault list that requires terminating a flight will be longer.

Aircraft performance

My experience at the moment will not result in a list for this. But, I intend to go get mountain flying training, and I’ll probably have some after that.

Airports

Ah, finally something that changes per flight. The airports. Homestead General (X51) has a 3000′ and 4000′ runway. How do I feel about shorter runways? I actually do feel I could land at George T Lewis Cedar Key, FL (KCDK) which is 2302′, but I should probably only do it with another certificated pilot or instructor in the right seat.

I should also ask about runway condition. I know Cessna 172’s can land just about anywhere, but am I confident my skill level can? The answer for now is No, until after I’ve done a grass field landing with an instructor.

Personal Minimums Checklist

Required Knowledge

My direct aviation experience, at the moment, is limited. At the time of writing, I am just over 70 hours of logged time, in Stage 4 of my part 141 PPL training, and a PPL checkride just around the corner. I’ve been flying out of X51 – Homestead General Aviation Airport for all of my training, and have performed 250 landings, at least 230 of them are at X51. Embarrassingly, I just found something I should have found about 229 landings ago.

Operating Rules and Procedures for Homestead General Aviation Airport (X51)

Well, isn’t that fun. The county government, Miami-Dade County, owner and operator of X51, has published their own set of rules for the airport. Now, I have, in one form or another, been taught most of the rules pertaining to my type of flight, Powered-Fixed Wing, and we’ve followed them. However, the existence of this document was not commonly known around the airport.

Upon finding this document, I’ve shared it with everyone I know. We owe it to ourselves and others to make sure everyone knows the rules and procedures; and to keep ourselves out of trouble.

What did we know

I’ll run through, briefly, what rules we knew and followed. Our tribal knowledge did not fail us.

Parajumpers

X51 has parajumping operations at the airport, and the rules and procedures address safety for the jumpers. The jumpers utilize the southeast portion of the airspace for their jumpzone.

The instructors and FBO staff will inform everyone that passes through the FBO about avoiding powered operations (really operations in general) over the southeast corner of airport property.

But what about someone coming in who has never been there before? Over flying the airport to take a look at the windsock and traffic pattern markings can put an aircraft over the southeast corner. Looking at the sectional charts, and the directory supplement, we can see traffic patterns for runways 10 and 18 are to the right, and their inverses, 28 and 36, are to the left. We can extrapolate the info not to fly over the southeast corner with that information, but it isn’t laid out in specific terms.

You know where it is? In the Operating Rules & Procedures document from the operator! Section IV, subsection B, #15 specifies “Pilots shall avoid operating in or adjacent to the Skydiving Drop Zone, Aerobatic Box and the Ultralight, Glider and Paramotor Operations Areas.” Further down, either in Subsection F, #5, or in the diagrams of Exhibit A, we can see the drop zone is located in the southeast corner of airport property.

Back taxiing and turn arounds

X51 doesn’t really need back taxiing or on runway turn arounds. There are taxiways and runway transitions on the ends of both paved runways. However, if traffic is already on a taxiway, going the opposite direction, it could be tempting to take a runway that is not in use.

Back to our operation directives, Section 2, subsection B, #5 “Turn arounds and back taxiing on the runways are considered unsafe operating practices and are not authorized.”

Guess what, that shortcut could cause your quite the headache.

The ‘No Transgression Zone’

X51 has 2 northern runways; 9/27 Turf and 10/28 (paved). There are no authorized connections between the two, one is meant solely for the ultralight and glider operations, and the other is the east/west wind powered runway. The ‘no transgression zone’ is between the runways, marked with red & white markers.

But here is an interesting piece of information, X51 in in Homestead, FL where it rains year-round and the grass grows non-stop. It is impossible for all the grass to be cut all the time, and these markers disappear into the wilds of X51’s grass for most of the year.

Section 2, subsection B, # 10, as well as diagram Exhibit B tell and show us where the no transgression zone is, and what to do about it.

What we didn’t know

Admission time, but of course we aren’t admitting to actually doing anything. 😉

Operations on 9/27 Turf

9/27 Turf, to the unknowing airman, looks like a prime opportunity to practice a soft field take off and landing. Wouldn’t you know, Miami-Dade County has though about that, and probably the potential for an accident that would shut down the turf operations. Section 2, subsection B, #13 “Only existing paved surfaces are to be used for aircraft operations.. Glider Tow Aircraft and Tailwheel aircraft are the only conventional fixed wing aircraft currently allowed to operate on Runway 9/27 (Turf).” Sorry tricycle gear aircraft, no turf operations for you. 🙁

The Lesson

Today’s lesson is simple. You, as the pilot in command, must know everything there is to know about the airports you are operating within, the airspace, and the route. Local rules and procedures are part of the knowledge, and we as pilots should be looking for them. They not only tell us what can get us in trouble, but can also give us information on being a good aviator and neighbor.

The local rules exist, and we didn’t know they did, until I happened to stumble across them while looking up some other information. I now know to look for them.

The First 40

I completed my first 40 hours just as I finished my Stage 2 checkout. September 7, 2023.

It’s funny to think about, the FAA only requires 40 hours experience for Part 61 student pilots, 35 hours for 141 student pilots, but with the maneuvers that require proficiency, plus the required checks insurance companies specify prior to solo, these numbers are basically not achievable for anyone without prior experience.

To be honest, we are better for it. The required knowledge and experience may seem like a lot for a student pilot, but it helps keep you safe. General Aviation accidents have been on the decline for a while now, and I think most of the decline is an increase in training. This isn’t the FAA or flight schools becoming more strict on ACS standards or something; it is an increase in the amount of knowledge before you are set free. Later down the road, every extra hour of experience still counts toward your future goals.

Before Flight School

Prior to starting flight school, I have always been an AVGeek. Both my grandfathers were airline people, Delta & Eastern. The Air Force was my goal for a long time (although Information Technology won out… sadly).

I joined the Civil Air Patrol in middle school, Florida squadron 280 at Homestead Middle School. This was one of the first squadrons from a new school program the CAP was developing to build their cadet program. After a year or so at Homestead Middle, the squadron moved to some charter school and renamed to 802 to fall in line with the number scheme for the school initiative. I transitioned over to squadron 279 out of Homestead Air Reserve Station… or Base… shortly after this move. After being heavily involved for years, I left the Civil Air Patrol around 2004-2005, and my interests in the Air Force with it. I did apply and investigate joining the AF and Coast Guard aviation units after high school graduation, but that didn’t pan out.

I always kept an eye on the flight schools at the airports, but the expense and time requirements were a problem. But one day my neighbor called and said he was joining a school at Homestead General Aviation Airport. I went a signed up; the money and time requirement I’d just need to figure out on the fly.

Ground School

I started with a night class ground school. There were 4 of us in the class, plus the instructor. After purchasing an ASA student pilot kit (~$250), we jumped in to the basics.

Apparently the ASA ground school book thinks the basics are all the math around flight and aerodynamics. Not things like the parts of an airplane, or who is the FAA, or basic understanding of medical and certification requirements. Nope… math.

We jumped to the back of the book to find who is the FAA and started there.

Classes ran for 2 hours, usually 3 nights a week, for about 3 months. So (3 nights x 4 weeks) x 3 months = 36 classes or 72 hours. We covered a lot, and it helped later down the road.

We were introduced to ASA Prepware for the written test prep. The school had a requirement for 3 90% or higher practice test grades to receive an endorsement to take the written. I completed my written in August, with a 92%.

The FAA Written Test

Every FAA Certificate has a written test component. The Private Pilot Exam, or PAR, is the first. The test requires >70% to pass, consists of 65 questions, and you are given 2 1/2 hours to complete it.

Unlike most other FAA writens, the PAR does not have a public question bank that are the exact questions you could see on the test. Rather, the question banks are similar questions. Therefore, you should not work on memorizing the question and answers, but rather the understanding around the question.

An example is determining the VOR radial you will need to be on to traverse from an area on the section map to the VOR. If you end up memorizing the radial, and not the understanding on finding the radial, you’ll find yourself answering the question wrong.

The best advice I can give is to read the FAA Airplane Flying Handbook and the Pilot’s Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge, as well as taking many many Prepware practice tests until you consistently score >90%. Be sure to learn the basic understanding of each question, and not the question. Also, brush up on Basic Med requirements… for whatever reason, I got a bunch of those.

Flight School

We finally get to the fun part, FLYING!

I started flying about 3/4 of the way through ground school. This is a nice place to start that I accidentally found as you have had many basic lessons on the ground, which help you get a running start in the air. But you also still have that last bit of ground where you can use your practical knowledge, that you’ll gain quickly while flying, to start to master the knowledge taught in ground.

Lesson 1: we taxied up and down Taxiway A at X51. I only had to do it once to show proficiency. We then took off and did a intro to flight lesson. Mostly straight and level flight, turns climbs descents. My previous experiences made this go by quickly, so my instructor and I jumped into stalls. After a handful of demonstrations, we walked through my first intentional stall and recovery.

Lesson 2 was a repeat of lesson 1, minus taxing. After lesson 2, my demonstration of slow flight was spot on, and my stall recoveries are becoming second nature… important knowledge to begin take offs and landings.

Lesson 3 I started learning take off and landings. I have a tendency to come in high.

Lessons 4 & 5 are nailing the maneuvers and knowledge from 1,2,3.

Lesson 6 & 7, Stage 1 review & check. A funny story is my instructor didn’t catch a change in the stage curriculums and thought Steep Turns were stage 2. Didn’t matter, I performed my Steep Turns within standard, on only the second attempt.

Lessons 8 – 14 are mostly pattern work, or flying circles over the airport in different configurations. Power off, no flaps, crosswinds, slips, etc are grinded until you remember each step by default. In the middle, we threw in night time pattern work for the night requirements, and flew the same night to KPBI (Palm Beach International) to meet the night cross country requirement; just for fun.

Lesson 15, it happens. SOLO! We are 28.9 hours in, with 135 take offs and landings.

At this point in my training, I am very knowledgeable about our home airport, X51 Homestead General Aviation Airport; the Cessna 172 checklists are very much routine now, but I still doublecheck I’ve remembered and completed everything with the paper list; and flying all the different situations are just another day in the office.

But here it starts to get fun, and technical.

Lesson 16 we begin Short Field & Soft Field maneuvers. It’s actually pretty easy to get confused since the names look and sound the same. I figured out a quick little saying for myself.

Short Field, climb out shortly (distance not time). Soft Field, get off the soft ground quickly.

To build a little on soft field, its not necessary to climb out quickly, but we want to be off the ground as soon as possible, since soft ground has bumps and holes. This reminds me to hold… well try to hold… the plane in ground effect until Vy (74K).

We also started ground reference maneuvers. I do not struggle with these at all.

The concept of ground reference is pretty easy, you want to draw the maneuver in smooth, easy lines with the breadcrumb feature on a GPS. Turns around a point should look like a perfect circle. S turns should look like S’s. The winds will push your airplane, and you need to account for these winds to make your maneuvers the desired shape.

Up to this writing, I’ve only had one iteration of these maneuvers that almost didn’t look proper. But then a gust of wind pushed the tail straight and I leveled the wings quickly, yelled “Nailed It!” into the intercom, and continued like it was planned. Maybe a little bit of cockiness helps.

On September 8, I passed my Stage 2 check out, at 42.0 hours, with a total of 172 landings, 2.9 night hours, 1.4 simulated instrument, and 1.9 hours solo time.

On to Cross Countries!