Thank you for a great article (“Right Seat: Hands Off,”January 2016 Flight Training). I’ve enjoyed quite a few of the articles in Flight Training.
I’m a believer in observing others’ techniques and tricks (and also a checklist junkie).
I keep two logbooks: the big Jeppesen log with all my own gory insurance and FAA time details and a parallel journal-type logbook with basics of time, takeoff/landings, and dates—and with a narrative, sometimes flight planning notes; performance numbers; or my own rudimentary drawings and “maps” of approaches to remote strips, lakes, obscure island channels, Forest Service cabins, et cetera.
Alaska is an interesting place to fly, and there’s no shortage of interesting people flying, too. I think I’m on Volume 7 or 8 by now.
Whether I’m flying myself or learning from others, it’s come in handy referring back when practicing skills, or going back to that cool place we found to go hunt or camp. Notes like planning for an evening arrival on a lake, where you are taxiing into the sun mirrored in the glassy water—and where there may be those pesky shallow-water hazards. Let’s review that one again!
As a bonus, when I’m “driving,” I’ll often ask my passenger to make an entry. Sometimes I get details, occasionally I get poetry.
By the way, I think I may know the guy Ian Twombly mentioned who flies low over the thick forest but is extremely hesitant over water. I’m pretty sure he lives a couple hundred miles north of me in Juneau, Alaska, and flew a pretty ratty-looking, although airworthy, Cessna 172.
Thanks again for your contributions.
Jeff DeFreest
Ketchikan, Alask
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