The First Thousand Hours

Life is full of little transitions and milestones. Back in 1995, when I got
my ticket, I privately vowed that I would fly 1000 hours in the next ten
years.

At the time, this seemed wildly optimistic. I had a house, two little kids
underfoot, a wife who had just gone to working part-time in order to be home
with the kids, a middle-level management job at my hometown newspaper, and
very little discretionary income.

Nevertheless, I had waited my whole life to learn to fly, so I flew as often
as I could, even selling my plasma to raise funds for aircraft rental.
Relatives knew that the *only* thing I wanted for birthdays and Christmas
was "flight-time-money"...

It's been an interesting decade. Last week, while en route to visit
Montblack for Turkey Day up in frozen Minnesota, the clock ticked off that
thousandth flying hour. And although it actually took 10 years and 9 months
to achieve, I have a great excuse -- my wife, Mary learned to fly in the
interim, and I have had to share flight time equally with her ever since!
Heck, if we added in *her* PIC hours, we're actually approaching 1600 hours
now...

I sat down with my log books and transcribed them into an Excel spreadsheet,
allowing me to extract the following mildly interesting data:

- 1000 hours is the equivalent of 25 full work weeks in the air
- In 3,932 days (from Private to 1000th hour), I made 1181 flights,
averaging one every 3.3 days
- 1502 landings without breaking anything
- Number of landings noted as "perfect": 13
- Number of landings before achieving "perfect": 371
- 19 different aircraft types flown (Top two: 437 flights in the Pathfinder;
404 in the Warrior)
- 190 different airports in 25 states (Top 3: Iowa, 47 different airports;
Wisconsin: 41 airports; Illinois: 26 airports)
- 113 different passengers (other than Mary and the kids)
- Highest wind noted during landing: 62 knots
- Highest headwind noted: 70 knots
- Average flight time: 0.85 hour per flight
- Longest flight: 5.4 hours (Reno, NV -to- Scott's Bluff, NE)
- Most unusual plane flown: Lockheed Constellation...
- Most fun plane flown: 1942 Stearman...
- Most fun flight: Aerobatics in a Decathlon...
- Most memorable flight: Into Dulles International, in Washington, DC, to be
an exhibit at the Smithsonian...
- Most beautiful flight: 1.5 hours over the Grand Canyon...
- Best use for aviation: 31 flights to Wisconsin to see my Mom during her
last year...
- Dumbest thing I've done in a plane: Flying without flotation gear straight
across Lake Michigan with my toddler son (and a flight instructor) in a
clapped out old Mooney at 3000 MSL...
- Most poignant flight: Flying into Meigs shortly after 9/11...what a
bittersweet memory!
- Money spent on flying: I don't want to think about it.... :-0

Flying has been -- and continues to be -- a wonderful, magical, spiritual
experience for me, and I've been very lucky to have achieved (what I thought
was) an unattainable goal. During this past decade, I've seen some
remarkable changes take place in aviation.

- When I learned to fly, GPS was still basically a dream -- now, we sport
*two* color units in our aircraft...
- The World War II guys, once the main-stay of our airports, are just about
gone now...
- ADF has virtually disappeared from general aviation planes...
- Glass cockpits were science fiction in '95 -- now they are becoming the
norm...
- Women pilots, once incredibly rare, are now only "rare"...

It's been my privilege and honor to share the skies with you gentlemen and
women, and I look forward to spending another decade of safe, accident-free,
aviating with you all!
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"