Numbers

Among my favorite Christmas presents this year was a framed certificate commemorating my first solo. It was dug up out of my parents' basement and long forgotten by yours truly.

Because my original logbook was stolen I had only an approximate idea of when exactly that momentous occasion took place. Turns out it was July 20, 1983 and I was all of 16 years old.

Funny thing then that 23 years later to the day I passed my CFI check ride on July 20, 2006.

It's been a good year for flying. 170 hours PIC, plus another 20 in the simulator. 65 of those hours were as an instructor and those are the 65 hours I'm by far the most proud of.

So, by some measures it wasn't a lot of flying, by others it was a ton. Not many people get to log nearly 200 hours in a year, although a select few get to log many times more than that.

Regardless of the measure, I spent enough time in airplanes in 2006 that it feels weird to go more than a few days without flying.

The toughest part about flying so much is forcing myself to treat each flight with the respect it deserves. Truth be told, flying a 172 takes about as much thought as jumping in my truck to drive to the store. It's a good feeling, but also a dangerous one.

I never want to get complacent about flying, so I work on being as methodical as possible and on never forgetting that I'm actually flying an airplane. It's tougher than I thought.

My students all do their own pre-flight inspections, for example, and they do them very, very well. So it's rare that I actually preflight an airplane and I'm getting used to having somebody else take care of that chore for me.

Left to my natural tendencies the wing could be falling off and I might not notice, so I force myself to ask about the oil and fuel levels, inquire about the status of the annual inspection and query my students about the paperwork or the weather.

I'm starting to understand the old adage about the most dangerous airplane being the one piloted by two flight instructors. It's true. Seriously, never fly in an airplane with two CFIs at the controls. Ever. Bad mojo that.

2006 was a year spent acquiring ratings and earning the honor to teach others. I started the year a private pilot without so much as an instrument rating and finished a CFII. Amazing.

2007 is looking to be a busy year. I'm starting with both a primary and an instrument student next week and there are some other promising instructing opportunities on the horizon.

My logbook shows:

C172: 307 hours

C182RG: 88 hours

SR20: 14 hours

SR22: 9 hours

PA28: 6 hours

PA46: 0.5 hours

Instructor: 65 hours

Pitiful by most accounts, but that's nearly 18 full days spent in the air and each and every minute has been a blast.

Except, of course, for the minutes when things weren't going so well and I wished I was someplace else, of which there are many.