But what if you are rated in more than one category or class of aircraft? How do the currency requirements affect you then? The answer is simply complex. Take me, for example. Some days I swear I've earned too many ratings for my own good. I'm rated in single and multiengine airplanes, in gliders and in gyroplanes. Besides that, I also fly taildragger (conventional gear) airplanes. But which of those aircraft am I current in? Rarely all of them at once, to tell the truth.
To be current in everything I'm rated to fly, I have to make three takeoffs and landings in my company's Piper Warriors both in the day and at night. The flight instruction I give in these aircraft doesn't count because I'm not the sole manipulator of the controls.
Then I have to climb into my taildragger, a Kitfox, and repeat the procedure. Because the Kitfox is essentially a day-runner (it has the appropriate lights, but we rarely use it that way) I stick with the day landings - to a full stop, of course.
From the Kitfox I need to climb into my flight school's Piper twin-engine Seminole and repeat the whole procedure again - three takeoffs and landings both day and night. To keep my glider rating current I have to fly (probably in the Kitfox) 30 miles north to the nearest soaring center and borrow one of its gliders for three tows around the patch. Finally, it would be time to search out a gyroplane to borrow for another series of takeoffs and landings during the day and, if I was lucky enough to find one with running lights, at night.
It takes all that for me to achieve total VFR currency. And imagine, I have an airline transport pilot certificate (ATP) for multiengine airplanes and an instrument rating, too. Good thing I don't hold any type ratings (yet). Of course, by the time I finished keeping current in everything I'm rated in I'd probably have no time, and certainly little cash for flying around and having fun.
As it stands now, I'm careful to stay current in the aircraft I fly the most, single-engine airplanes with tricycle and conventional landing gear. That means my 90-day multiengine currency lapses occasionally. No matter. Whenever I have the opportunity to fly a twin I take the time to get current. FAR 61.57 doesn't say that you must have a CFI along for the ride (only that you don't carry any passengers). Depending on how long it has been since I've flown a twin, however, I'll often take a CFI current in the airplane with me. It never hurts, I've found, to get a second opinion when you're a little rusty.
I'll be the first to tell you that it's been a while since I've flown a glider. I'm not much for weekend trekking to the gliderport. I cling to the hope, however, that in my next home, in a fly-in community, I will have the hangar space and the budget to add a glider to my collection. When that dream begins to take shape, I will journey north and seek out the resident glider instructor for some much-needed spit and polish to my technique.
The gyroplane rating was really a means to an end (though flying the craft is a blast). I picked up the rating while researching a story many years ago, and have yet to make good use of it, but, as I said, I have plans. Gyroplanes are rotorcraft, the same as helicopters, and once you have an airplane rating and a rotorcraft category rating, you are halfway to a helicopter rating. The helicopter rating is on my list of things to do. It's a long list, to be sure, especially since I've got to make time for all that currency flying, but I have high hopes. After all, I am a pilot.
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