I have not fly an aircraft for one year before staring the Flying Across America project, to save money for the project. Long story short, this project consists of flying from Florida to California and back in a Cessna 150 with Jason Schappert, the flight instructor and blogger behind m0a.com to promote General Aviation. The project is now running and we’re in California and we’ll turn back to Florida soon.
After such a long time without flying, my comfort zone was rather tiny. Flying for this project, with an instructor on board is a great way to expand my comfort zone. After 28 hours of flying from Florida to California, I feel much more relaxed about a lot of things:
- Flying around or through weather (rain, marginal VFR conditions, wind)
- Mountain flying (navigation, turbulence)
- Flying in large airports or through dense airspace
- Land at unknown airports
There were not new things to me but when you’re not used to do these things often, it is easy to become uncomfortable with them. Lots of pilots get trapped this way. They fly around their home airport only, and only in good weather. When things become more demanding, be it because of less than optimal weather or because they want to fly to a remote airport, they don’t feel comfortable.
The only way to prevent your comfort zone from shrinking is to fly at its limits frequently. You can even expand it this way, step by step. If you feel like it’s becoming too small, you can trust by doing things a bit more complex than what you usually do, until you feel comfortable again. Or you can flight with an instructor and make bigger steps. Flying is just like any other skill – it needs repetition to be maintained.
