When I was working on my private pilot certificate, I thought that once I get it, that will be the end of my pilot training. I will use that to take my family and friends around to nearby locations for a day/weekend out. However, given that I live in PNW, the weather is not always great, and you only get a few weeks of good clear weather for you to venture out flying let alone spending a weekend at a get away destination. Due to this, I always hesitated taking my family and friends to further out destinations (where you could actually do something). All my trips were within the local area airports or just aerial sight seeing. To get around this challenge and as a safety backup, I decided to pursue my IFR rating. Due to the weather and the fact that I did my training on weekends, the progress on my IFR was slow. I completed most of my IFR training early March but had not met all the required hours for cross country and had not taken the written exam. While working towards my cross country time, COVID hit shutting down the flight school and then in April we had a baby. This threw a wrench on the timeline on getting my rating. Even after the flight school opened, I wasn’t able to go on both days of weekend to finish my cross country time because I needed to be there with the baby. I am trying to go once every weekend and get my cross country time in and I try to keep the cross country long enough such that I get enough flight time but short enough so that I am not away from my baby for a long time. Here is a screenshot of the flight that I did this past weekend.
Over the last several weeks, I have been doing 2 hour cross countries and I think I now need 9 such flights to get enough time before I go back to fly with my instructor for the required 250 nm long cross country get all my required flight time for IFR. The challenge with these long cross countries are that they are long and lonely. Because of COVID-19, I have been hesitant to take friends out as well making these 1.5-2 hour flights a bit boring since most of the time, I am flying in a straight line to destinations that I have already been to. I’m hoping to get done with this part of IFR requirement done quickly so that I can focus on getting to check ride and actually flying long distances, with friends and family, without worrying too much about IFR conditions. I still have to worry about freezing level, icing and storm activity though!
astropilotdad.com 