Most important lesson learned??

[Boss_BlueAngels]

Just curious, what were some of your most valuable lessons learned when working with/around aviation?  I can certainly say that in training, particularly instrument training, I learned more about myself than flying.  Patience, fatigue, personal limitations, when not to fly.

Anyway, just thought I'd ask this question to kind of liven up this forum.

[Mobius]

Never take a chance.  

You could endanger yourself and more importantly those around you that don't have anything to do with aviation.  If you ever have a doubt about yourself or your equipment, ask someone about it or don't fly, it's not worth your life or the life of others.

[beaky]

Everything you mentioned, plus:
When under Flight Following, especially near a controlled airspace, if you're going to deviate from course more than 30 degrees or change altitude more than 300 feet, let the controller know what you're going to do first. Learned that on a long x-c after diverting to find a gap in the weather... the poor controller had to move a bunch of  IFR traffic around me. I didn't bother telling him because he sounded so busy... !!
I guess this falls under the "big picture" category: don't just listen for your call sign!

[beefhole]

It may not necissarily be a lesson learned, but flying (and my future aviation goals) has caused a major personality shift in me.

I used to be the type of kid that was damn smart (I still am ), but always took the easy way out, and was fine with being second (or third, or eigth) best at everything.  I would skim off the top for all of my work, never working to my full potential.  And I was fine with it.

Two things changed this-getting arrested ( ) and beginning to fly.  I realized that, if I wanted to be a pilot in the airforce, I could not be content with being normal.  Average.  Marginal.  I was going to be the absolute best at everything I did not only in regards to aviation, but I had to step it up in school too.  I was not willing to be one of those PPL guys that says "well, my navigation is a little out there but I can get her in the air and get 'er back down."  I was going to be proficient in everything I did, and work hard at getting there if I wasn't.  Both my instructors have always been very impressed with the amount of reading/studying I do on my own, and they say that they have to teach EVERYTHING to many of the students they get.

I've never had this attitude once in my life before my sophomore year, and I think me likes it

[Citationpilot]

I can think of a few lessons I've learned over the years:

-Don't use the auto pilot at night when your tired (or even better, don't fly when your tired)

-Always make sure the tow bar has been removed

-Don't fly into the magenta or red colors on the radar

-Don't fly single engines in IMC unless you have to

-Don't fly a complex airplane just because you can afford to!

-Don't shut an engine down unless you have to (it may not start back up)

-Don't be more concered about getting to your destination than flying the plane

There are longer versions of the lessons above, but that's for another time.

[beaky]

Beefhole makes a very good point, probably the most common and most important side-effect of flight training, or any similar endeavor. I had to completely retool myself mentally in order to earn my PP. Discipline, sacrifice, patience, humility,and focus all had to be reinforced.

[SilverFox441]

PAY ATTENTION!

There are a great many things in and around airplanes that can kill you...they want to kill you...they exist to kill you!

They will kill you unless you watch them closely and make sure they aren't sneaking up on you, so watch them...all of them, all of the time.

[Scottler]

"You'll never get rich working for an airline."

[Boss_BlueAngels]

Wow, this is all good stuff.  

With my instrument flying, I found that if you don't kick it's butt studying, it'll kick YOUR butt when you get out in it on your own!

How to deal with sress and keep going and 'seperate yourself' from situations.  Flying 3 days a week with an additional 18 credits, and playing the drums for a school club 3 hours a week will teach you a lot about priorities and stress management!  Also, there have been many days that I didn't really feel like flying, but decided to go anyway (Don't get me started on their cancelation policy... I think it only encourages poor decision-making) but turned out to actually release some stress and relax myself.  one nice thing about flying is you cannot have anything else on your mind when doing it... it requres complete concentration and focus, wich is great if you're worried about midterms, projects, and other school stuff.

[beefhole]

Agreed.  Flying can create stress when you're on the ground, but once you're up there it sure does make up for it

[ozzy72]

Remove your tail-number before doing anything stupid, otherwise its easy to identify you

[Eskimo]

The three things which are no good to a pilot:

• Sky above you
• Runway behind you
• A tenth of a second ago

[chomp_rock]

Well, I've learned a lot in my years of flying, here is an abridged list:

Never fly when tired

Never deliberately fly into rain

Always follow the checklist

Never shut an engine down unless you have to

Never focus on one instrument and not the others

Never taxi a taildragger faster than you need to

Never confuse the throttle and mixture levers

Always bring a spare flashlight

Always bring a handheld transceiver

Never lean over to get something while flying unless on AP

Never do a zero G with an open drink in the plane

The list goes on and on...

[Mobius]

Never confuse the throttle and mixture levers

On one of my first solos I was abeam the numbers where I had to reduce RPMs to 1700 and I reached down to grab the throttle, but grabbed the mixture instead and was ready to pull and realized what I was doing.  Startled me to say the least.

[beefhole]

A student accidentally pulled the mixture on my first CFI when he was in the pattern (he went straight to best glide and landed fine-guy was an excellent pilot)-so, as Mobius said, it does happen.