Dan Albers of Conroe, Texas, sent in this tip: When I retired from the airlines, my flying went from 70 to 80 hours a month, to maybe 50 to 60 a year.
How I work on staying current is each time I fly, I pick a different airport about 20 to 30 minutes flying time from my home base. I plan a short cross country, get the weather and decide what I want to work on en route.
I may practice slow flight, stalls, or steep turns on my outbound leg. Once at my destination, I’ll do two or three touch and goes, maybe working on soft/short field technique.On the way home I’ll intercept airway radials, or do more air work.
When I want to work on instrument currency, I’ll take a safety pilot, and we will each fly a leg.
We are fortunate in southern Texas to have many good general aviation airports and approaches. We can practice intercepts, holding, and just about any type of approach.
This has worked well for me to stay current and have fun flying.
Do you have a tip on anything related to general aviation? You can add your tips and advice on this form. You can even upload a photo.
Another great way to stay current is the Civil Air Patrol. CAP is flying many new missions these days and I can tell you there is not a problem staying current with some fun and usefull flying, over a 100 lives saved last year.
Tom Bishop
Retired Delta
I agree Tom. I started up flying again after a 9 year break from my last flight in the Air Force. It got a little expensive on my own and then I found a local CAP squadron. It is great to get free flying once in a while on the Air Force dime and flying interesting missions (search and rescue, photo recon, training other CAP pilots and cadets, etc.). I highly recommend CAP for the pilot who likes flying different types of missions in a professional environment. Its a great way of volunteering!
Sounds like Dan has his act together. His plan is excellent, however I see one little problem with it. And that is he does the air work he wants to do. I have a similar method of staying current but the difference is I can’t just pick what air work I feel like doing. I have a coffee cup filled with strips of paper with every maneuver in the book including some acro, (well I fly a Corby Starlet), and set an alarm for my engine out drill. Another “push” for me to stay on top of my flying is I am 85 and fly a plane that is very responsive, and I like doing a little acro on my flights. If you would like to what and where I fly go to “you tube” and type in Lee Berry and his Corby Starlet
I agree with Dan…doing short hops to different airports is a great way to stay current, work on maneuvers and patterns and just have fun! Sadly, I live just north of Denver and the last couple of days have been crap…SNOWING!! So when I can’t get in the wild blue, I get on my Microsoft Flight Sim X (I hear laughing already). At least that way, I can work on flow and procedures. And believe it or not, for me anyway, it does help with muscle memory.