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by warner25 558 days ago
> so hard, to the point it looked like she wasn’t going to be able proceed with her rotor license (before it all clicked)

Yeah, I think we were all convinced that we were going to wash out of flight school in the first few weeks. Hovering was not something that you could see yourself gradually getting better at, so it felt impossible right up until it wasn't. It really did just "click" one day. Almost two decades later, I still have a vivid memory of the very moment that I realized I had full control of the aircraft when picking it up from the ground.

When my buddy and I were telling an instructor pilot one day how we felt (like we'd never be able to hover), he wisely pointed out that the flight school syllabus had a certain number of hours for a reason. It had been refined over the past 50 years, so they knew exactly how many hours were needed, and if things "clicked" for us ahead of that schedule it would mean that time and money were being wasted.