They say all great things come to an end and today they did. My full-time position as a Director of Operations for an Internet company was eliminated leaving me out of work. Since flying is an “extra” I will need to cut back my flying until I know where my money is coming from. I do own my own Internet company and have been doing that part-time for years, but I will need to go full-time in that business to make up for the loss of cash. If things work out, great…if not…not so great. I have a few things lined up so we will see how things go.

This evening all I did was practice take-offs and landings. Why? Because I noticed that I was loosing some of my “seat-of-the-pants” flying skills during my flare to land. Why? Bacause I am not doing enough flying. During my training before I got my ticket I was really in the zone. I felt that I knew where the wheels were and how close I was to the runway. Lately that seems to be fading away a bit. So at Penn Yan I decided to practice my take-offs and landings, of which I did 8. I should have done 18 but time is money these days.

Today I finally got in my cross country flight to Hamilton, NY (H30) from Penn Yan (KPEO) completed and on the top of it all I caught up with Brett Zefting (Bravo Zulu Aviation).

The weather was very cooperative this evening and I couldn’t wait to get airbourne. I plotted my course to H30 from KPEO as direct via GPS. For backup navigation I was to use the Georgetown VOR and planned on using good ‘ol dead reckoning as this route was familar to me having tried it once before with Hamilton closed at the time. Tonight I would be at 5,500 ft on my east bound and 4,500 ft on the return.

After take off from Penn Yan I gained my altitude and asked Elmira Approach for a flight following. As usual they dumped me to Rochester Approach as soon as I asked for a following. Rochester Approach was busy but took me and kept me until I was passed over to Syracuse Approach. Syracuse Approach was by far the most accommodating and stayed with me as well clearing me from traffic right after the Georgetown VOR.

When I was about 10 miles from H30 I cancelled my flight following and made my 10 mile out call. No traffic was on the frequency and no field was in sight. The new weather system at H30 was working so I knew my entry point for my downwind, but even at 5 miles out and still fairly high there was no field in sight. I made my 5 mile out call just to see if anyone was around, but no reply was forthcoming.

Finally at about 2 miles from the field I found the lake, hangers and the new strip. Now that I was on top of the field I did an immediate downwind over to final. After landing a voice over the radio asked if I was 73450 from Penn Yan? – I said “yes, is this Brett?” Yes was the answer back and I told him who I was. Brett told me to taxi over to the FBO for parking. I quickly parked the 172 and got out and met Brett.

Brett has been working on a great number if things, including his instrument rating. He has a blog so I won’t go into everything he is involved in. Brett showed me around the FBO and showed me the plans for a plane he was helping college students build. We sat for awhile and chatted over pizza for about an hour, but the daylight was leaving us and I had to rush back to Penn Yan before dark.

It was great to meet Brett in person finally and perhaps we will fly somewhere one of these day.

Tonight I flew from Penn Yan (KPEO) to Genesee County (KGVQ) via the Geneseo (GEE) VOR and back. After climbing to 3500 ft I contacted Rochester Approach and asked for a flight following and got it. I had to ask them to repeat the sqawk code of 0327 – but other than that things went fine. I started getting a bit of a westerly headwind as I neared the Geneseo VOR and kept it until I landed at Genesee County (KGVQ). The winds favored runway 28 and were at 270 at 12 knots gusting to 16 knots.

The air traffic at Genesee County (KGVQ) was pretty constant with me and 3 other pilots in the pattern, all of them with Pipers and moving a little faster than me.  We all kept busy doing full stop landings, must be we all wanted to get out 90 day currency for passengers. I was generally too far from the runway on downwind and base which made my final longer than it needed to be forcing me to increase power along the way. After the second landing I was getting caught up with what was going on and fixed it. This is why everyone needs to fly more often!

After 5 take off and landings I decided to head home. I took off and departed to the south. I contacted Rochester Approach and asked for a flight following and was told to sqawk 0344. As I neared the Geneseo VOR, Rochester Approach told me I had traffic 12 miles ahead at 12 o’clock at 3400 ft which was not good since I was at 3500 ft. Approach asked me if I wanted to go above or below the traffic, I said below, so they told me to decend to 3000 ft which I did and held for the next 15 miles. After things were all clear I went back up to 3500 ft and continued on the 120 radial of the Geneseo VOR to Penn Yan.

In Penn Yan the winds were calm, the air space was clear and the green lawn welcomed me like a warm blanket. It was a great evening to get my 90 day currency, to complete a 50 nautical mile cross country to Genesee County and to chit chat with a member after I fueled the 172 back up. That’s what it’s all about!

I took a drive to Canandaigua Airport this morning to sign paperwork in order to rent aircraft closer to home. The rates are more per hour, but it would be nice to have a Plan B in case my plane is not available at Penn Yan. It would also be nice to finally use an airport that I drive near everyday on my way home. Since I am the AOPA Airport Support Rep. for this field it would be nice to know more about that is going on and to speak with fellow pilots. Next…getting checked out on a plane to finish this process.

Today I managed another trip to Oswego County airport with my boys. It was a nice flight from Penn Yan and back. On this trip I managed to forget to set my transponder to ALT on the return leg (which is very stupid) and I managed tp turn off, instead of turned on my landing lights when I got to Penn Yan. I would have felt better if I didn’t use a checklist, but I did and still missed it. Yes, my boys ages 10 and 12 can be a distraction, but that’s not an excuse for not getting it right. The reason I screwed up is because I wasn’t as careful as I should have been.

Note to Self…don’t get rushed or distracted by passengers.

Anyone who is a pilot or a dedicated student knows that balancing Family Time and Flying Time can be difficult. As the weather heats up and the blue skies and calm winds call us, this becomes increasingly difficult. We need to keep current every 90 days if we want to take passengers, but we also need to fly alone or with a CFI to remain aviator material.

To help solve our problem we can spend some family time in flight. A nice 100 mile round trip somewhere is a nice way to combine family and flying. A $200 hamburger joint (fuel costs ya know) might work, or even more if you are a good planner and the weather has your back.

Another thing to consider is a dedicated day to put aside (with your wife’s permission of course) 4 hours of time to fly with your buddies to a pancake breakfast somewhere. Balance is key here. If you go making this a weekly event you might have issues at home.

Another ideas is to set aside one evening a week to fly…and keep to it. This could be a evening when the wife is with her friends or family doing something for herself. Everyone needs some ME time and so does your wife or girlfriend.

Remember that just because you like to fly and experience new things, doesn’t mean others feel the same way. So do be thoughtful and supportive. You should build up time with you significant other and do things that they want to do, so when it’s your turn they will feel that it would only be fair to you to let you fly.

Don’t make your wife feel abandoned. Explain to her that flying on a regular basis makes you a safer pilot, that skills degrade over time and that regular time in the air will come in handy for that romantic flight together that you keep on talking about (but haven’t done yet)…come on!

Being in a flying club means sharing planes. There is one person in particular who lusts after our Cessna 172 about as much as I do and that is Brett. Brett manages Bravo Zulu Aviation and every now and then Brett and I share a few emails. I think we might have met face to face once, but that was it. We have talked about flying together, but it was a rough winter and things never came together. That’s not an issue since there is always this year. I have to confess…I’m jealous of Brett and his relationship with N73450.

Why am I Jealous?

Just one look at his blog will show you why. With articles such as Cessna 172 VFR to JFK or Fun in the Washington, DC ADIZ it’s obvious that he is getting more “quality” time with my lady than I am.

Argh!

I try not to be jealous…really, but sometimes I just can’t help it. Here I am trying to figure out how to go about getting my instrument rating and he’s out there waltzing in the skies with 73450…and all of this in March no less!

Well… I have no one to blame but myself. It’s getting hard to top his adventures unless I fly across the ocean and land at Heathrow or something like that. I hope they are happy together…now that I am in counseling I am starting to feel better about all of it. But it’s a slow process. 

After a long cold winter I finally got in my first flight of 2008. Just by chance Gordy, my instructor for my private, was also at the field putting away the J-3 Cub. I needed to get in my 90 day and kick some rust off myself. Gordy and I exchanged some small talk and since he had some time on his hands this Easter Sunday, he asked if I wanted a passenger. Well since this was the first time I saw Gordy since last October I said sure!

We pulled N73450 out of the barn and I started my checklist. We were at 6 quarts of oil so I put 2 more quarts in our bird. We got in and I slowly went through the checklist. As a passenger Gordy was doing OK, but being the CFI that he is, he volunteered information as needed. I was more than OK with that.

We took off and decided to get the three takes offs and landings to a full stop taken care of in short order. We had a slight cross wind from the northwest on runway 1 but it was nothing I couldn’t handle. Once we got this out of the way Gordy asked if I wanted to fly to Rochester. Inside I was dying to get into Charlie airspace, but I was kicking of the rust and taking to ATC was not what I had in mind just yet. Gordy knows me pretty well and before I could voice my concerns he said that he would handle the radio. “Ok” I said. So off to KROC we went.

At KROC I made the first landing approch for runway 25. Naturally I was getting re-oriented to the field and crossed the path of runway 28 as I was headed for 25. That mistake only happened once. We had a cross wind here, a bit stiffer than in KPEO and I had to finess the controls a bit to get into position. I did a touch and go and headed back into the sky. Gordy then asked if he could try it and I said sure and gave him the controls. This time we made a short base to final landing. For a moment I thought Gordy was going to bang the prop since we seemed to come in pretty steep, but he greased it with just a little drift and then took off.

Now that Gordy showed me how it was done I was once again the student emulating the instructor. I came in nice and smooth a few times and did a go around when once didn’t work out so well. Gordy tried his hand at it again and once again greased it on from steep decent. I thought the prop was going to be history again, but everything worked out great.

Next we headed for home with about 1.5 hours of flight time, some class C exposure and kicked of some rust at the same time.