November 29, 2000. N28216, TB9, FDK-FDK. Pattern work, 1st solo. I was pretty sure this was going to happen, and I knew all about shirt-cutting, so I wore a T-shirt under a sweatshirt. Throughout the circuit I heard my flight instructor’s voice in my head, but to be certain, I repeated all of his phrases (“Look for traffic coming in on the 45.”) My CFI waited by the runway with a handheld transceiver for my first touchdown and then began walking back to the flight school. On the second approach I did a go-around, and he lost sight of the airplane and thought I had gotten lost.
October 3, 2001. N28216, TB9, FDK-LNS-HGR-FDK. Long solo x-country, x-winds. This entry is in red ink. Some pilots use the same pen—the exact same pen—for every logbook entry. I have no airline aspirations. The pages in my logbook tend to look more like those in a coloring book.
November 8, 2001. N55372, TB9, FDK-FDK. Private pilot flight test, unsatisfactory. That’s a tough thing to admit, even 13 years later. The examiner had me dead to rights, though. I flubbed the emergency power-off landing. Did I go home and cry that day? Yes, I did. Did I come back and finish up? Yes, I did.
November 21, 2001. N28216. FDK-FDK. Private pilot flight test, satisfactory, followed two days later by this: FDK-LNS-FDK. First $100 hamburger!
September 28, 2002: Spins, loops, and rolls in a Cessna 150 Aerobat. A great confidence builder, especially for someone who has never enjoyed power-on stalls.
September 2004: 11.2 hours logged in an Aeronca Champ. While I ran out of time and good weather before I could complete the tailwheel endorsement, I did come away with an appreciation for proper rudder usage (that’s an understatement), as well as a new technique for judging height above the runway before the flare.
Working for AOPA, I got opportunities to fly interesting aircraft:
August 11, 2005: 0.3 in a Cirrus SR22—my introduction to glass-panel avionics and the Cirrus’ peculiar-to-me sidestick.
September 8, 2005: 0.5 in an Experimental Breezer—my first taste of what we would come to know as Light Sport aircraft. I’ve since flown a Van’s RV-12 and logged many hours in AOPA’s 2010 Fun to Fly Sweepstakes Remos GX.
July 22, 2008: 1.0 in 208GG, AOPA’s Get Your Glass Sweepstakes Piper Archer. By this point I’d logged a lot of time in Archers, but none of them had Aspen avionics or a custom leather interior.
2010 was a traveling year. Charged with shepherding the Fun to Fly Remos, I got to fly it from Frederick, Maryland, to Long Beach, California. West Virginia; Illinois; Missouri; Kansas; Oklahoma; Texas; New Mexico; Arizona; California—all on a 100-horsepower Rotax engine. Thanks to the Remos’s Dynon glass panel, autopilot, Garmin 430, and a capable co-pilot, that weeklong trip was a breeze.
The only anxious moments were after we had left Sedona, Arizona, following a visit with “Flying Carpet” columnist Greg Brown. As we crossed into New Mexico, the landscape resembled the surface of the moon. What if the engine quit? Thankfully, it did not. I got comfortable with the liquid-cooled Rotax, except for the fact that when you shut it down, the prop doesn’t windmill—it just stops. Clunk.
From the end of 2010, my logbook entries mostly belong to 7301J, my 1964 Piper Cherokee 140. Miss J and I have flown Pilots N Paws trips; traveled to the Maryland and North Carolina beaches; and logged many $100 hamburger runs. And pattern work—lots of pattern work.
The last page shows a flight to Cheraw, South Carolina, for a family reunion; $100 pancakes with a friend who’s new to general aviation; a scenic tour of Niagara Falls in a Cessna 172; and a run to North Carolina for lunch with a friend.
I am excited to crack open a brand-new logbook and start a new chapter in flying. Now, where’s my purple pen?
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