In 2005, I sold a Citabria I had owned for a few years in order to fund my RV-7 project. At the time I thought the RV would take me about five years to complete, and I simply accepted the fact that my flying was going to take a lower priority while I was busy building. Instead of the 5-10 hours a month I had been flying, I thought it would drop to about 1-3 hours, which seemed reasonable to me at the time.
Now, almost 3 years later, I have come to realize that my assumptions were incorrect. My flying has diminished to basically nothing, as in zero, nada, zilch, and during the past 3 years I have only flown about 5 hours total, most of which hat has been as a lowly passenger. I would be OK with this if the RV project was moving towards completion at a good rate, but it isn’t coming along as quickly as I had hoped. A new house, new addition to the family, my job, and just life in general have all conspired to prevented me from making the progress I thought I would. Before you jump to conclusions let’s just get one thing straight, I am not complaining, I am simply offering an explanation. Truth be told, my initial estimations of the time and money I could devote to construction may have been a bit too generous, but then again they were accurate at the time.
All of this is just fine and dandy to me, and I have come to accept the fact that the RV is going to take much longer to complete than I had originally estimated. Now, when friends ask when I will be finished, instead of saying “It’s a 5 year project”, I simply answer “It will be done when it’s done.”
While I may be OK with the pace of construction, the part of all of this that I am not OK with is my continued lack of flying (as PIC). I have taken roughly three years off and it’s really been bugging me. I’ve been thinking about it for some time now, and I’ve recently come to the conclusion that it’s time to get back in the game!
I had to take some time to think about how to make it happen, and I’ve decided to start by getting current and checked-out for solo rental. Not wanting to wait any longer, this past weekend I took a trip over to the airport to talk to the folks at one of our local flight schools where I interviewed an instructor and filled out the paperwork necessary to start scheduling flights. As I mentioned, I am going to start by getting my BFR, but once that is complete I want to move onto instrument training. So here we go again, back into the cockpit I go. I’ve already got two lessons scheduled for this weekend, although the weather forecast doesn’t look so good. One of the purposes of this blog is to document the next stages of my training, so I’ll be sure and let you know how the flights go.
Until then… clear skies!
Congrats on returning to flight. I understand better than you might know.
As for the time it takes to build your plane, I’ve heard repeatedly from dedicated builders that you shouldn’t build a plane cause you want to fly a plane. You build it cause you want the building experience. If you want to fly, then you need to make that happen separately. Which you now have.
– Jack
Thanks Jack! I appreciate you checking in here. For some reason WP didn’t notify me of your comment as it usually does, so I didn’t see it until now.
I agree, and I can honestly say I am building because I want to build. I truly love it (building). Someday it will fly, I can promise you that, I just don’t think I am willing to wait that long to fly again myself.