Looking Back and Going Forward

Looking Back

Unfortunately, 2011 was another valley in the peaks and valleys of the IFR Pilot's aviation career.  Here's a look at the cold, hard numbers and other matters of interest:

• Total flights:  18
• 17 in N62TB
• 1 in N2447E, a G-1000 equipped Cessna 182T during a trip to Phoenix/Sedona.
• Total flight hours:  32.0
• 30.2 in TB20; 1.8 in C-182T.
• 29.3 daytime; 2.7 night
• 1.5 actual instrument; 3.2 simulated instrument
• 23.0 hours cross-country
• 31 day landings, 11 night landings
• 12 approaches
• New airports visited:  3 (KDVT, Phoenix, AZ; KAOO, Altoona, PA; KPKB, Parkersburg, WV)
• Longest leg:  3.9 hours from KWST to the Home Base
• 1 Angel Flight (boo, hiss, unacceptable give-back)

Here's the long-term picture of how 2011 stacks up against prior years:

There was a brief glimmer of hope that one more decent flight in 2011 would reverse the 4 year decline, but Momma Nature slammed the door on that idea with some crummy weather during the last week of December.

Going Forward

Here are a variety of things that ideally will be accomplished in 2012, in no particular order:

• Sell 2TB, or better yet, find one or two partners to share the costs.  (Active discussions occurring as we speak.  Keep yer fingers crossed.)
• Obtain single-engine commercial pilot certificate.
• Obtain sea-plane rating.
• Write more for the blog.
• Get an nFlight Cam and post more videos to the blog.
• Attend the Socata.org Fly-In in Florida in April (if 2TB doesn't sell).
• Find another outlet for publishing law-related aviation articles.
• Fly five Angel Flights.
• Master flying GPS approaches with the Garmin GNS480, both with and without the autopilot.
• Fly at least once with a local TV personality.