January Flying Recap

I've set a few fairly ambitious goals for 2015, and so far, I'm actually making progress on them! One of the more ambitious goals is to fly 240 hours total time over the course of the year. My previous highest time year was 2007 with 236 hours, and I spent most of that year instructing full time. Part of the motivation behind this goal is to justify the amount of money I spend on owning and maintaining two airplanes, but the rest of it is just a drive to outdo my previous record while still working a full time non-flying job.

One thing I noticed when I went back through my logbook was the number of flights that I just couldn't remember. Not every flight is exciting, but I figured that a monthly recap would help me remember my flights a bit better. So on that note, here are my January flights!

Total hours flown in January: 12.3

Total hours flown year to date: 12.3

I had a slow start to my flying this month; within the first two days of the year I managed to break both airplanes. The C120 had a stuck carb heat cable, and the C172 had a really rough running engine. They were thankfully both quick (and cheap!) fixes, so I was back in the air a few days later.

January 6th: 1.2 in the C172

Finally, back in the air! It snowed in the morning but cleared up in the afternoon, so Mark and I did a short local flight to look at the snow.

January 17th: 1.1 in the C172

I had just enough time for a short local solo before heading in for an eve shift, so I flew down around Lake Anna. It was really smooth and you could see some ice on the lake. I ended the flight with one of my nicest (and shortest!) landings in a while.

January 20th: 3.9 in the C172

Mark and I flew down to Blue Ridge Airport (KMTV) near Martinsville for lunch. What a great stop! The people are really nice, and the food is fantastic; between the burger and the chocolate pie I was afraid I'd have to redo my weight and balance. They even offered to tow me over to the fuel pump to top me off so I wouldn't have to start the engine just to taxi down.

This was the view from our table. Perfect!   :)

January 23rd: 1.7 in the C172
I had enough time for a short cross country before work, so Mark and I flew down to Tapphannock (KXSA) for a landing before heading back to Warrenton. It was a smooth ride the whole way, but you could see lower cloud layers moving in ahead of the weather we got that night.

January 28th: 3.7 in the C172
MTV was so nice I wound up going back! It turned out that the airport is almost exactly halfway between where I'm based and where my flying buddy Dave (the one I went to Oshkosh with) is based. We agreed to meet at noon for lunch. Mark and I had a tailwind the whole way down and made great time, and flew almost directly over Lynchburg (KLYH).

It was so nice to catch up with Dave! Since we both moved we only see each other once every year or two, so hopefully this means we can get together more often.   :)

January 31st: 0.7 in the C172
I only had time for a short flight before work, so I flew out to the mountains and back with my buddy Dave (airport manager Dave, not the one I just had lunch with). Visibility was great but it started to get a little bumpy toward the end of the flight. Oh well...it was still nice to get out that morning!