A problem I’ve had ever since I got my license, is that I can’t really fly as often as I’d like. With the price of oil going up, avgas prices can’t be far behind which only makes it worse. So the question is, what can I do to remain sharp when I can’t fly and to make the best use of my time when I do get to fly? I welcome the thoughts of anyone out there who may be reading my blog (does anyone really read my blog?), but I’ll list a few of the things that I try to do when I can’t fly.
- I read as much as I can about flying. I don’t subscribe to as many magazines as I used to, but the ones that I still read cover to cover are: Aviation Safety, IFR, and IFR Refresher. I also read quite a bit from AOPA Pilot and AOPA Flight Training, and occasionally Flying.
- I use the technique that my first instructor taught me, of armchair flying. That is, I’ll plan a flight or pick a flight out of my log book and sit in my favorite chair and go through all the motions flying the flight in my head.
- Go to the airport and watch/listen to the other planes/pilots.
- Listen to ATC on my laptop.
- Lately, I read blogs about flying, too. I happened across http://www.bloggingpilots/radar the other day which will provide me with more flying stuff to read and they are on Twitter, too.
- Hope I hit the lottery so I can afford to fly as much as I want to (yeah, okay, not really, but it is nice to dream).
You’ll notice, I didn’t include ‘use Flight Simulator’ in that list. Frankly, I don’t own a copy of MS Flight Simulator or the like anymore (I owned a Mac copy 20 years ago). One of these days, I may invest in a copy of On Top, but I haven’t yet. The big problem with all of those options is that I don’t use Windows as my primary OS except on the work-supplied laptop (where I can’t install software that doesn’t have a work purpose). Plus, it would help to have a bigger screen and yoke/pedals to make the most of those software packages. I’d like to think these help keep me a little sharper, but the fact is, I still could afford to spend a few hours with an instructor to knock some of the rust off. In fact, I need to get an IPC in to be IFR-current again. Oh, well. Last night, would have been a fantastic night to fly, tonight wouldn’t be bad either. Well, off to dream about flying.