Finding The Right Next Bird

Now that I am current and legal, the natural next step is find the right plane.  I have been “window shopping” for several months.  I briefly entertained the idea of getting a different type of plane… Maybe an aerobatic plane or a seaplane..  But in the end, the safety and comfort of the Cirrus just felt like the right way to go.

So here is the new bird:
While this looks just like my old Cirrus from the outside, it has some really major refinements, most notably the wild Perspective + Avionics, which you can see below:
I think it will take me some time to master this new flight deck.  But it is a really fun cockpit to experiment with 🙂

Lisa and I picked up the plane this weekend in Tennessee under clear blue skies.
Fortunately Hurricane Florence had slowed down and stalled over South Carolina, which gave us the perfect window to escape.  We flew direct 4.5 hours form TN to NY and missed all of the weather!
Now we are really ready for some more amazing adventures!

Cheers,
== T.J.==

Getting Back In The Saddle

After a 4+ year hiatus from flying, I have been itching to get “Back in the Saddle”.

The closest I had been to flying was playing with drone, which was fun …. But nowhere near the same as true flying.  You can see some of my drone pix/videos here:

However, I was dreading the process of getting current… (My medical-=> expired; My instrument proficiency -=> Gone; My VFR proficiency -=> Gone; Even my logbook was “dusty”)

But last month, I decided to get going!

The first step before anything else was to get my medical in order.  Since I last flew, the FAA has created a simplified “Basic Med” that really is quite easy.  But that does not let you fly outside the US, which I will likely want to do.  So I found my local FAA doc and got the traditional 3rd class medical.

The next step was brushing up on all of the core aviation knowledge, which I thought I forgot.  With the help of the AOPA “Rusty Pilots” info, that got me started and I was surprised how quickly it all came back to me… Maybe it was like riding a bicycle 😉

Now it was time to get down to business with some Cirrus specific training.  There was a bunch of online transition training material that I studied for a couple of weeks and then it was time to find an instructor and really get going.

I decided to reach out to one of my old instructors in Atlanta and scheduled an intensive long weekend to get current on everything at once! Here we are about to climb in for my first lesson:
While the basics of flying all came back to me easily, the cockpit was totally different.  Over the past few years Cirrus has really upgraded the avionics dramatically in the SR22 G6.  You can see the new cockpit below.

After the initial few seconds of terror, I started playing with the buttons on the ground with GPU connected.  They have added so much amazing capability into this cockpit it feels like a spaceship!

After a grueling weekend including lots of landings, approaches, etc I am now legal again!

Next step is to find a new bird of my own.  The tricky part will be to find right plane with Turbo, A/C and all of the cool new avionics toys 😉

As soon as I have my new plane, I am hoping to start making some more videos and reviving my Youtube channel.

Cheers,
== T.J.==