10 years ago today...

[azure]

... I passed my private checkride. What a decade it's been! I've had years when I've flown over 100 hours and years when I've barely cracked 20 hours. But I've yet to equal my student pilot year when I flew nearly 300 hours (250 of them before the checkride). With the price of 100LL going the way it is, I probably never will.

But I still haven't done a "real", long XC. The farthest I've flown from home base as PIC was to KELM last winter for a PnP mission (281 nm). That was also the most hours I've ever flown in one day, 7.2, finally surpassing my student solo XC, 6.0.

I've met Ed, Bruce, Barb, Moxie, Grant (I think), Larry from Texas, Tall Jim, and probably other PoAers I can't remember, as well as a bunch of local and not-so-local people from the Babes. All pilots, all great people.

I'm looking forward to a few more good years (need a crossed fingers smiley here), and hoping to meet more of the folks who post here!

 

[Mafoo]

I hope that in less then 10 years and two months, I can make the same post!

Congratulations!

 

[flygirl34q]

Congratulations, LIZ! The two dates every pilot remembers without having to look it up in their logbook... first solo and private checkride!

 

[steingar]

Congratulations, LIZ! The two dates every pilot remembers without having to look it up in their logbook... first solo and private checkride!

To be honest, I remember neither. Perhaps that's a chick thing. A quick check of my flight log shows that at the end of January I will be in the same position, a decade of flight experience. Mine is quite different, with a goodly number of fairly long flights (at least one a year) but no IR or anything else. My little Cherokee has flown from Ft Lauderdale to Burlington, VFR all the way. Haven't been out west yet, might have to do something about that.

 

[BillTIZ]

Congrats to both on their 10yr journey.
May the next years be just as fruitful.

Remember, the long cross country flights are just a series of short 3hr flights tied together.
38 yrs since my September solo, in the last two years I have flown coast to coast and return, SoCal to Maine and back. And LAS to Anchorage and Fairbanks and back. No leg was longer than one tank of fuel plus reserves.

 

[steingar]

Congrats to both on their 10yr journey.
May the next years be just as fruitful.

Remember, the long cross country flights are just a series of short 3hr flights tied together.

Actually, a couple have been 4.5 hour flight tied together. That's the most I've pushed my Cherokee. I could easily get another half hour out of it before hitting reserves, but so far I've seen no need to do so.

But there really is more to it that that. Much more. CFI's say that because they never go anywhere (present company excepted of course). But long flights can take you way way out of your comfort zone. They can take you over water when you're used to land, and over rocks when you're used to flat. You have to deal with unfamiliar weather patterns, and issues like high density altitudes that you may never see at home. It definitely isn't like your favorite milk run x5.

 

[azure]

Thanks everyone.

I agree with Steingar about long XCs. The main issue for me is weather. I'm not afraid of doing them, the wx gods have just never aligned for me so that I could fly somewhere like FL, or MA, or even, say, Gaston's, VFR at the time I was hoping to go. I've scrubbed many, many shorter flights because of weather too. Most of those flights would have been quite feasible IFR. That's why I'm working on the rating. When my airplane and my work schedule allow, of course...

And oh, Lynn, I remember my checkride date but not, for some reason, my first solo. It was sometime around end of May or beginning of June, 2002.

 

[DogDaddy]

Wow! Congratulations!

 

[spiderweb]

... I passed my private checkride. What a decade it's been! I've had years when I've flown over 100 hours and years when I've barely cracked 20 hours. But I've yet to equal my student pilot year when I flew nearly 300 hours (250 of them before the checkride). With the price of 100LL going the way it is, I probably never will.

But I still haven't done a "real", long XC. The farthest I've flown from home base as PIC was to KELM last winter for a PnP mission (281 nm). That was also the most hours I've ever flown in one day, 7.2, finally surpassing my student solo XC, 6.0.

I've met Ed, Bruce, Barb, Moxie, Grant (I think), Larry from Texas, Tall Jim, and probably other PoAers I can't remember, as well as a bunch of local and not-so-local people from the Babes. All pilots, all great people.

I'm looking forward to a few more good years (need a crossed fingers smiley here), and hoping to meet more of the folks who post here!

Congratulations, Madame Azure! This month I hit 11 years!

 

[Piloto]

10 years ago I had money in my pocket, now I have bills and pills. Never got the promised stimulus check. Hope things change in November

José