Celebrating your freedom to fly: Staying skilled, having fun

While searching for ideas you can use to keep skills hot after getting that pilot certificate, I toured the hallways of Frederick Flight Center in Frederick, Maryland—at the airport where AOPA is headquartered. The first idea may surprise you.

Build your new community

Now you are part of a unique group of American society—the pilot community. But where is it? Part of it is at home, where there may be family members who haven’t been bitten by the flying bug, but like to travel. Take them to an airport restaurant or to see familiar sights from the air. The destination is the goal for them.

As for yourself, attend fly-ins and pancake breakfasts, where you can meet and socialize with fellow pilots. You are “networking,” and the payoff is advice on a variety of topics—from technique to maintenance to future purchases.

Add to your skills

While the regulations require you to grind out takeoffs and landings every so often to maintain the privilege of carrying passengers, there are fun ways to do that. One instructor completed his private certificate but needed to take a year off. How could he keep those skills from deteriorating?

He choose to get his tailwheel endorsement in a Piper Cub, and learned basic stick-and-rudder skills—especially rudder—with no distractions, meaning there was no radio. After a year of learning gadgets and gizmos in his more modern trainer, he was forced to deal with the skill of flying at the primal level. It was inexpensive, too. There’s nothing like flying with the side door down if you want a new experience.

There are other ratings waiting for you, too. One that tops the fun chart is a seaplane rating. Like the tailwheel endorsement, it is relatively inexpensive and builds piloting skills.

Challenge yourself

That same instructor also spent time looking for short runways, once he was confident in short takeoff and landing skills. One of those had a 100-foot tree at each end and required a bit of research—is it a hot day? Are you heavily loaded? Are you ready and willing to go around? All of those judgment skills will come in handy in the future.

There’s another advantage to short-field practice: The largest fly-ins require spot landings on colored dots painted on the runway. When you are used to putting the aircraft down exactly where you want on short runways, you’ll do well at major fly-ins.

Associated with the tailwheel endorsement is soft-field takeoff and landing technique. Tailwheel aircraft are much happier on grass than pavement. A Manassas, Virginia, instructor made his grass landings an art, dragging the wheels in just the top of the grass for as long as possible. You heard the blades of grass hitting the tires long before touchdown.

Tailwheel aircraft do other fun things, too, like traveling to remote locations with dirt runways, or—fitted with skis—landing in snow.

Another challenge is to go to unfamiliar airports. You’ll do most of the work before you leave home, of course. You might even call to find out what local checkpoints are used. Then you can tell others you are “over the water tower,” just like a local pilot. You may get tips from that new pilot community you built, or by calling a fixed-base operator or flight school at the destination airport.

Movin’ on up

If your trainer had four seats, you’re already in an airplane that you and you passengers can take on those first adventures, or you could move up to a faster one. If it was a two-seat Light Sport aircraft, you have at last count 118 variations you can try, from seaplanes to tailwheel aircraft to those with tricycle gear.

Maybe the goal is to get where you are going faster than the trainer would go. That’s true with Light Sport aircraft, too. They range in speed from 60 knots all day to the full 120 knots allowed under Light Sport rules.

If you like the big iron—that twin sitting on the flight school’s flight line has already caught your eye. It requires lots of ground school and a checkride, but not many flight hours to call yourself a multiengine pilot.

Double-crossing crosswinds

One of the most frequent challenges you’ll face is a crosswind—hopefully slight ones to start. It’s wise to perfect the technique by yourself before those longer trips with passengers.

Build confidence in light winds at the home airport, and build up gradually to the winds you will set as part of your personal limitations. Challenge yourself. “We used to look for runways that had winds 90 degrees to the runway,” one flight instructor said. If it turns out to be too challenging, go around.

The real world demands proficiency with crosswind landings. It will be impossible to perfectly predict winds three hours ahead of time at the destination. You’ll need to be able to handle whatever exists at the time you land. You might as well face it; you’re going to make friends with crosswinds.

Wear a hood

A student at a local flight school saw his training delayed, but he had a plan. He had soloed in the winter of 2014, then weather prevented him from flying again until the following March. “I’m going to get my private and go right into instrument training,” he said. If you can afford it, that’s a great plan.

For one thing, it leaves you in the training environment while you are a low-time pilot. For another, it has an immediate payoff for flying under visual flight rules. Ever take off on a clear night and discover there is no horizon visible minutes after leaving the airport environment? The instrument scan you develop as part of your instrument training will keep you level and at the proper climb angle when those occasions arise, such as flying over a bay or large lake at night.

The private pilot certificate’s minimum number of training hours required under the hood and flying solely by reference to instruments may not be enough to get you out of trouble sometime in the future. Practice with a qualified safety pilot in the right seat. That’s one possible alternative to starting on the instrument rating as soon as the private pilot certificate is completed.

Talk it up

One of the things you probably liked least during pilot training was talking on the radio. That’s why it may be a good idea to periodically practice that. Less-busy airports with air traffic control towers but no approach or departure control offer the least challenge, but if you are already comfortable with that, visit airports with more complicated procedures.

If you have the most complicated airport as a neighbor, Class B, get used to the procedures found there. Many of the Class B airports not only discourage touch and go landings, but prohibit them. You may be able to land, taxi back to the approach end of the runway, and take off again—depending on the traffic volume. Or fly in, pay that landing fee, have that now-expensive soft drink, and then go through all the radio procedures required to depart. You’ll want to call the fixed base operator, which may well be a jet center, to learn the times when the airport has the least traffic.

I once thought it would be a great idea to land at Boston’s Logan International Airport and depart the next day—until I discovered it would take a landing fee of $33, an overnight fee of $73.70, a Massport fee of $39.60, a handling charge of $36 (unless I bought seven gallons of gas), and a security fee of $72.25 to do that. When going to Class B, bring lots of cash.

Try some of these tricks to keep yourself always practicing—and always learning.