Two Thousand Four Hundred Seventy Three

That's a lot of days.  Over six and a half years.

Like so many pilots who don't fly for work, my own flying took a back seat to the rest of life for far too long.  Without a decent place to rent a plane on short notice and receive some periodic dual time, plus a demanding work schedule taking me outside the U.S. for weeks at a time, flying just couldn't be a priority.  That's not to say I haven't been busy...

Some of the other things that have taken up my time:

• Teaching two kids how to drive
• Continued work in Canada and North Carolina
• Employer closed up shop, so started two businesses, now self-employed
  
• Three high school graduations, sending two kids to college and one into the National Guard
• Several college campus tours, road trips, and camping trips all over the western U.S.
  
• Watching a total solar eclipse
  
• Countless cross country and track meets, soccer games, mountain bike races, music festivals, and school concerts
• Supporting wife and daughter Ragnar marathon run and motorcycle license courses
• Working in Australia again, plus Africa and Peru
• Taking a motorcycle trip and a safari trip in South Africa
• Buying three cars, an RV, and two motorcycles
• Catching two local hot air balloon festivals
• Riding in a motorcycle parade
• RV trip to the Oregon coast
• Visiting and investing in a startup kit aircraft business
• Attending the Red Bull Air Races
• Earning a PMP certification
• Marrying off a daughter, hosting a wedding luncheon
• Sending kids on school or volunteer trips to Costa Rica, Italy, France, Australia, California
• Taking a concealed carry firearms course
• Working in South Carolina and Nevada
  
• Long motorcycle trip along the California and Oregon coasts
• A Caribbean cruise and New Years Eve in Miami
• Backpacking trips in the Beartooth and Uintah mountains
  
• An Eagle Scout Court of Honor
• Seeing two of our favorite comedians, favorite TV show hosts, and favorite bands live
• Attending Maker Faire
• Taking a long RV road trip from California to Oshkosh
• A pesky pandemic
• Several major home improvement projects
  
• Learning Spanish 
• And coming soon...a new grandson

As our lives start to transition into the next chapter, all of a sudden flying is possible again.  But it couldn't be as simple as just calling up the old flight school and scheduling some time, could it?

First, I opted to renew my medical through BasicMed.  This is available if you have had at least a third class medical (and not had it revoked or denied) in the previous ten years.  While I could have still been medically eligible for a full third class, the time and availability of an AME made it such that it was simply easier and faster to go the BasicMed route.  

Then, I would need a flight review.  My original school was technically available, but they no longer rent planes if one is not enrolled in a formal course to obtain a rating.  So, even if I could have done the review there, I would still not have a place to rent and stay current.

Plan B entailed calling up a different school about the same distance away at a smaller airport.  They also work with the local college and therefore get busy when school is in session.  But since we're still in the summer months, a plane and a CFI were easy to schedule.  I was able to schedule two flights in the same day to get back up there and knock off the rust.

While I have several hours in a 172, I would have preferred "going home" to the DA-20 given the amount of time away from flying.  Since this new school only has 172s and 152s (besides several larger and more complex models), I opted for the 172 since that would likely be the model I'd rent in the future.  We flew two different planes on Day 1.  

The morning flight was in a model with basic "glass" instrumentation.  Rather than the large G1000 screens which dominate the panel and contain virtually all of the key information, this older plane was retrofitted with a small Aspen display - whose small size belies the high volume of information contained on the screen.

 Rather than spend much time on the ground, we went straight to flying.  I did the preflight, which is so ingrained and routine, I barely needed the checklist even now.  Then we hopped in and I took a bit to get all situated.  The instructor walked me through a few of the instrument steps, but we really only focused on those that would be relevant for today's short flight - setting the altimeter, working the radios, interpreting the dials, etc.  As I went through all the steps of getting the weather, picking a runway, listening to other traffic, and going through the rest of the pre-takeoff steps, I said out loud almost everything and what I was thinking about.  This helps any instructor know what's going on in your head and why you might be doing something in a particular way.

Then it was time for takeoff!

This is a small airport with no control tower and just a single runway.  So we listened and looked for traffic, then opened the throttle and accelerated down the runway.  Most everything came back from my memory in an instant.  Keep your hand on the throttle, let the plane accelerate to rotation speed, gently pull back on the yoke, continue to accelerate in ground effect and gradually let the nose point at the right angle to climb out at Vy (the best rate of climb airspeed).

The instructor wanted to focus on slow flight and stalls.  This isn't too surprising, since that's where many students (and licensed pilots) have trouble and one of the first things to degrade after not flying for a while.  But in my case, this wasn't too bad.  I struggled a bit to find the right combination of pitch angle and power to achieve the right speed without losing altitude, but after a couple of tries got it good enough (not perfect by any means).  Rather than the instructor just telling me the right combination, he let me sort it out and kind of wallow through the air for a bit to see how I did.  Stalls were actually pretty uneventful.  You don't have to be super-precise with any particular item, other than keeping the wings level and staying on heading.  Both power-off and power-on stalls were pretty decent, but again could use a little polish.

The instructor threw in the not-unexpected practice engine failure, and I immediately went to tunnel vision trying to find a place to land.  The main problem I had here was focusing on a place that was too close and then needing to lose altitude and energy to make a landing.  But I neglected to do the normal "flow" of the emergency checklist to practice checking fuel and engine to attempt a restart.  Also, I kept needing to change my target landing spot.  I should have used slips, turns, or even flaps to start descending.

The afternoon flight was similar to the morning, but in a plane with slightly less power.  That meant that as we climbed out in this warm, high altitude environment, we pretty much stopped at about 7,000 feet altitude.  The instructor mentioned we may have been caught in a downward-flowing mountain wave, and this was completely foreign to me.  While I've read about them, it didn't occur to me that we could be in one, and looking back it would have been good to talk about the exit strategy if I was encountering rising terrain I couldn't outclimb (in this case we had plenty of altitude). 

We made a total of seven landings, three in the morning and four in the afternoon.  None of them are what I would call great, but they were all within acceptable margins of safety, on the centerline, and allowed for a relatively smooth touchdown.  But on one end of the spectrum, I was far too fast on final, mis-remembering the approach speed (which I had been remembering all the landings before...??).  On the other end, I had one picture-perfect approach which came apart about three seconds before touchdown due to a downdraft or windshear and I had to add a bunch of power before floating down the runway again.  

The big takeaways here, for patterns and landings - watch the speeds, and put in flaps at the same point of the pattern each time.  I also need to watch the left crosswinds since I kept overshooting the base to final turn, which was made worse due to flying a high-wing plane and not being able to see the runway creeping up on me.

Day 2 was a non-flying day due to low clouds and rain, so we did the ground portion of the flight review.  This was also uneventful and I only had to look up a couple of technical items.

Now on the schedule is another flight or two next week to keep working on the basics until I can be fully signed off for solo flight again,