Only 47 hours this year. Lots of travel and Voluntary Air Corps exercises that never happened because of the pandemic.
In 2021 I may buy into an aircraft.
alioth wrote:
Things like the AOPA Wings are no help because they still require an FAA CFI, which is the limiting factor, if COVID in the UK is still out of control in March (and I don’t anticipate the US allowing us to travel there until late 2021, assuming all goes well with the vaccine).
Wings do NOT require a FAA FI to do the flights; you can have flights done with any FI credited, if they sign some paperwork saying you did what the FAA FI would have you do. The invaluable Qalupalik outlined it in this post and also here – so you’re not out of options, and neither are we.
Also, Wings are FAA, not AOPA, but you know that :)
90.1 hours in eleven types, from C 150, to Navajo, Caravan and a little Twin Otter. I have no particular aspirations for flying this coming year, other than just to keep flying from time to time. I can see some more Caravan and Cessna 206 flying on my horizon, I’m sure something else will present itself too. Perhaps I’ll get a camping trip in in my flying boat, I missed that last summer…
Well, another frustrating year for me aviation wise, as all I managed to clock up is a ferry flight from maintenance to homebase, 1 hour exactly.
The airplane on the other hand has done 43 hours nicely spread over the whole year. Almost all of it was flight training, either new pilots or recurrency. There have been two trips done, one to Corsica and the other to Venice in Summer, everything else was local.
Goal, quite obviously to get my medical renewed and to get the SEP revalidated finally. Then I will look at how to revalidate my IR, by the looks of it, I will have to redo the lot, so I might wait for the BIR to come along.
For the first time in years I actually have some trips lined up to work towards. So will see what happens.
The aircraft did ok this year technically apart from a flat tyre and, on the very last flight in 2019, some avionics acting up (all of them lost GPS reception) which will need investigating now. I suspect humidity to be the reason for that, right now the airplane is in a temporary hangar space and we can’t get the faults to replicate. So that is one bit we’ll have to do. Also we will need to upgrade the 2nd NAV/COM as we are no longer IFR capable with only one 8.33 radio. I am looking for a 2nd GNS430/W for this purpose.
116 hours for me. Down about 30 hours from my average over the last few years.
Managed a couple of new destinations, before and after various lockdowns – Malaga and Schwabish Hall.
As I think I noted last year, I have a mental block about flying to Germany and Greece, which I wanted to tackle in 2020. So in 2021 I really want to finally make the deferred trips to the Rhine Valley to drink Mosel and visit Charlemagne’s tomb, and to see the Greek Islands, especially Milos.
AeroPlus wrote:
Just 88 hours last year of which most in Africa,
Hey, AeroPlus, please tell us about flying in Africa! Where, how. Take us all on imaginary flight of fancy.
Happy New Year to all!
I have been pretty quiet on the forum this year, but actually it has been quite a “happening” aviation year for me.
It started off very passively – as I had just completed the move to my new home in the North of Germany and away from the busy Düsseldorf area. I have always been a strong defender of the idea that renting planes AND doing serious trips is very well possible given the right circumstances. In my old home, I had a very good and flexible network and private owners renting out, a commercial outfit for shorter trips, and a club with a decent and, most importantly, available fleet of modern touring aircraft and there are a few trip reports on Euroga show-casing the point (e.g. the Balkan trip in 2014). However, up here in the North, the charter/rental situation is much different and that is why at the beginning of 2020, I was in the process of looking for an airplane to purchase – finally, some might say. 
Btw, here’s a toast to all those who contributed to my thread about this and all who helped out via Telegram further on. Special thanks to @By9468840 for countless tips on Arrow ownership.
So not much flying in the winter, and after I had zoomed in on an Arrow as the plane of choice and not being able to find one to our liking, we ended up getting in touch with two current owners/groups who we considered getting a share in. Corona prolonged this process a bit, but at the 1st of July, I officially became co-owner in what started out as a group of four and ended up as a group of two of a mint green Piper Arrow (my co-owner was part of the previous 4-people group). Not the color I’d pick when buying brand new, but I got used to it.
I’m just pulling together the year-end-numbers for our little syndicate and I see that despite the Corona-restrictions (which removed ANY need for business related trips that I would otherwise have done and made international trips so complicated that we ended up not doing any), I got 30 hours of flying our plane in half a year. That is less than what I expected with an owned plane, but still ok, as it about matches my usual 60-70 hours as renter from previous years.
Most notably, we did a three week trip exploring various of the Northern German islands with my girlfriend and her daughter and the plane helped us keep away from flocks of people and jammed motorways (as many Germans were spending their 2020 summer vacation up here on the North, either on the islands or the mainland Baltic or North Sea resorts).
There is another, more unfortunate factor that developed towards the end of the year. As a proud holder of a UK EASA PPL and also a hopeless optimist, I’d waited until fall with my State of License Issue Transfer into an, ehem, more reliable EASA member country. When it became clear that no timely solution for mutual license recognition, or even – Heaven forbid! – continued EASA membership of association was on the horizon, I initiated the transfer to AustroControl. I also followed their advice and refrained from asking for status updates for a long time. That was clearly a mistake, as I got suspicious towards the end and indeed, AustroControl had never received (by post)/processed my application, while the UK CAA had and they were waiting for the form from AustroControl. In the weeks leading up to Christmas, I’d been in touch with both CAA’s to continuously update each other and the process is now moving – but AustroControl made no promise to complete by the end of the year and as of today, I have no Austrian license in my hand, so curious how this will play out. What I personally find an outrage is that the EASA agencies (here, AustroControl) say that if they don’t COMPLETE the process by Dec 31, 2020, they will have to reject the SOLI application because the underlying license is not a valid EASA license. I’d say the time when they received the application should be the relevant date here and it was definitely a valid EASA license then.
186:32 for me. 90 in the Learjet 75, 68 in TBM-930, 10h on Extra 330SC.
Crazy year overall. First jet type rating, first commercial flights, first medal in aerobatics. Looking to unlock ATPL in 2021 and do some flying from the left seat.
Started PPL in March
Night Rating in October
Bought Beagle Pup
Now have 88h45
Hoping that 2021 is better – the goal is to get my ME/IR done by the end of Summer.
Happy new year to all!
Only 580h in 2020 which is about 200h lighter than usual. Very little flying in my own aircraft for the obvious reason but hoping to do much more in ’21.
