Plastic Pilot

This is the time before the next flight I planned in a light aircraft. This will be the longer interruption in my flying activities ever. Before starting training for my IFR, I went through a shorter non-flying period, to put enough money aside.

We have been living in Frankfurt area for one month now, and thing get settled slowly. We feel more and more “at home”, but budget-wise it’s too soon for flying. My priority is still to keep my ratings alive. So I need 12 hours after the 5th of August 2008.

The plan now is to go to both London and Geneva. We’ll drive to Geneva to see family and friends, and then fly out of there to London, thus taking benefit of EasyJet prices. The flying part of the trip will be at both West London Aero Club (WLAC) and Geneva Aeroclub.

There is no exact planning for London right now. The fleet there is varied, ranging from Piper SuperCub to Piper Saratoga. Flying a Saratoga over England sounds tempting, and given the number of airfields in the London area, this could be the opportunity to realize the 12 Airports Project, but in a different region. For budget and objective, the Saratoga is may be not the best plane: it flies fast, so flies less, and is not exactly cheap.

A SuperCub familiarization - first tail-wheel for me - also sounds tempting. The White-Waltham grass is perfect for that, and it seems possible to pack it within the time we’ll spend there. Another variant could be simply flying around London in a PA28.

The Geneva part is more easy. The club recently received a DA40 TDI with G1000, so I’ll profit from it. It will probably be a mixture of VFR and IFR, and I’ll try to bring G1000 photos for the blog, possibly with the terrain page when flying in the Alps. I don’t know if this G1000 will already be retrofitted with the Synthetic Vision System… that would be a dream.

As always when making plans with short and fixed time frame, I now have to cross fingers for having good weather. August shall not be that bad, but if you could cross fingers as well for me, I’ll appreciate that !

When pilots don’t fly, they project new flights - I’m no exception to this rule. One of my projects is to fly 12 legs in a day, to 12 different airports. It all started while discussing with a friend pilot. I suggested 10 airports, but as it sounded too easy, so we decided to make the challenge a bit more… challenging.

The plan was to do full-stop landings at each destination, pay landing fees (welcome to Switzerland) and start the next leg, swapping seats each time. This Google Earth snapshot shows the selected airports.

Putting Lugano (LSZA, bottom right corner) in the list makes it even harder, because crossing the Alps VFR is not always an easy task. The total flying time with a DA40 is about 6 hours, and 30 minutes stops means a total time of 12 hours ! This is clearly a project for a long summer day with nice weather. A variant is to fly 8 legs myself in a day, so as to fill a page of my logbook in one day…

Having such projects is important for private pilots, because it helps to avoid boredom. Many private pilots stop flying within the three years after they get their license, mostly because they get bored of flying to the same airports, and can’t afford (or are afraid of) long trips.

I’m anywhere but close to realise this project (read here for more), but I still hope to make it one day, as I still hope flying to La Rochelle, Guernsey and to the Toronto City Center Airport. When a pilot stops having projects and dreams, he’s not far away from stopping to fly. So keep dreaming, and share your projects in comments.