Marc's Blog: flying - I've been a Pilot for 10 years

2015/11/03 I've been a Pilot for 10 years

π 2015-11-03 01:01 in Flying, Nflying

Stats:

627H of flight

42H of night flying, only 6.3H of actual instrument flying

6 landing shorts of 1000 landings, 1 night landing short of 100

131 instrument landings, 490H in high performance, 172H complex

I'm checked out in C152, C172, C172RG, C182, C182TR, M21K (Mooney 231 Turbo Retract), TB20 (Trinidad), SR20, SR22, TSR22, Mooney Acclaim.

Highlights:

I got to fly an extra 300 twice, and for dogfighting no less, with Sky Combat Ace :) ( 1 and 2 ).

Also did some dogfighting in with Air Combat USA

I also got to fly a pretty good 737 simulator in Perth and Auckland

I got to try flying a glider (need to try more of this)

I got to try paragliding and hang gliding.

It was cool to have flown myself to burning man several times, the perfect place to take advantage of personal flying.

But probably the most practical use of my license has been to fly to Willows airport where I've been racing my car. Turns out I've flown there 31 times so far, not bad.

Another reason to learn flying was to go skiing. As expected, it was never helpful for Tahoe, but I got to fly to Mammoth a few times ( 1, 2, 3).

I've flown myself to Oshkosh 3 times, in SR22, TSR22 G3, and Mooney Acclaim

And just for good measure, I jumped out of a perfectly good plane.

Destinations: I got to do other nice real cross country flights with nice destinations I woudn't have driven to:

Shelter Cove to hike the lost coast trail

Yellowstone

Seattle/San Juan

Grand Canyon to hike down and back up

Palm Springs

Colorado Rockies, Grand Canyon, Death Valley

Unexpected experiences in 10 years:

Got a stuck starter after engine start in Visalia and had to abandon the plane

Got a bird strike while under the hood at night.

Got a 2nd bird strike after flying back a Mooney 231 with a dead battery I had to jump start with a car (flock of birds took off as I was landing)

Got a dead starter in Willows and had to abandon the plane

And to top it off, got a turbo oil leak in a C182TR which led to an engine failure and dead stick landing at burning man

Engine Failure After Landing

Lowlight?
I flew my first 200H in 1H, 500H within the first 5 years, but only flew 127 hours in the second 5 years.
Yeah, that's kind of sad in one way, but I kind of know why. It's a combination of:

In my earlier years, I spent a lot of years training to higher levels, IFR, went to increasing faster planes all the way to the 240kts Mooney Acclaim (I never cared for doing commercial, doesn't seem that useful to me, and I never went for twin aircraft because the ones I can fly are not faster, hard to find for rent, and I don't think I'd stay proficient enough in them to be safe).

I flew to a lot of the places I wanted to fly to around where we live

I have many other hobbies, so I stopped flying randomly just for adding flying hours :) (I'll go fly for a purpose/destination though, but just have fewer now). I didn't really quit flying, but I'll mostly go fly with a purpose.

Does that mean I'm getting a sucky and rusty pilot? I would hope not. While I might not be able to do the best heavy crosswind landings due to lack of practise, or hard IFR, I at least feel that I continue to be capable of flying in weather, or in a pitch dark night, so my flying seems to be enough to keep my skills, so that's good news.

And as parting words, some of my bestof bestof pictures:

flying over the great barrier reef in Australia