To fly 100 types of aircraft before the FAA decides I am too fat, slow and stupid to control an aerial vehicle

My grandfather's tales of flying wooden, cloth covered airframes in the first world war inspired in me a deep love of flight.  I built models, read a lot, and finally, when I was good and old, I learned to fly. The typical student pilot eventually earns the private pilot certificate in about 70 hours and is then allowed to fly single engine airplanes of modest engine size, with a nose wheel and landing gear that does not go up and down.  She is further restricted to flying in relatively benign conditions during daylight and nighttime, as long as there are no clouds around.  I was somewhat below average, but managed to earn the license to learn in spite of rather poor natural ability.

The main thing I learned is that I just love, absolutely adore, the feeling of flying.  I have spoken with hundreds of pilots and former pilots and many seem to tire of the simple act of departing firm contact with mother earth.  Myself, I get a silly grin whether I am headed to a distant destination or taking a plane up to make three landings so I can remain current in my ability to fly passengers.  I am a total junky.  Since 2005 when the FAA made the initial error and granted me the ticket I have not managed to go 45 days without a flight.  I get antsy and stressed and start thinking of really bad excuses for getting into the air.

Two years ago my life changed when we moved from southern California, one of the great places on earth to fly, to northern Washington state.  I now live on a small island and flying is not just fun, convenient and entertaining it is very useful logistically.  The three hour trip to Seattle is just 45 minutes.  The 4-6 hour round trip Costco run is a 14 minute hop to a waiting car that is just 5 minutes from consumerism's Mecca.  This is a great place to fly and I somehow managed to convince my family that owning a plane was the way to go.  I had been seriously shopping for planes since my third lesson and had perhaps the most minute knowledge in America of the asking price and condition of perhaps 5 airframes over a 6 year period.  Buying my plane was relatively simple when the deal of the decade appeared.

My plane in the shadow of a somewhat larger plane.

With my own plane and the island life my flying time leapt from 50-90 hours a year to 180-250 hours per year.  The total cost stayed similar because I was no longer renting planes...and taking nearly quarterly check rides.  All this time in the bird, flying the same routes, made me realize that I wanted a new goal in my aviation life.  I am too old and fat for the real records.  I can't imagine flying higher, faster, further or with fewer clothes on than anyone else ever has.  Or even achieving an impressive standard in any category but the last, but I am somewhat usual among my aviation friends in that I actively love to fly new things.  I am not a great pilot, and with fewer than 600 hours I am far from an experienced pilot.  I can't fly in clouds and floats are still beyond me. Still, I just get a huge charge out of sitting in a new type of plane and reading through a completely unfamiliar checklist.  Check oil pressure...excellent, where is the gauge?  Fuel pump on...that switch must be somewhere down here.  The checklist and the pilot's operating handbook are like brand new junk reading from my favorite mystery writers.

I have a few endorsements to my ticket, so without further training there are several hundred 'certificated' airplanes out there that I can just climb in and fly around.  Add to that a rather stunningly diverse world of 'experimental' types and there is really quite a lot of variety for a flying gourmand like me.  For years I have read the flight reports in magazines and I follow the forums of several type groups, and this serves to whet my apetite for new airframes. Because I rented for so many years I really learned a lot about the variety available within a single type, the most popular airplane ever built, the Cessna 172.  This bird comes in carburated and fuel injected models and can have gauges so primitive they are literally powered by the winds of flight, or so sophisticated that they can fly you through the clouds and put you within 300 feet of the end of your destination runway.  Nevertheless they all fly pretty much the same way.  If I had to steal one I would be quite confident that I could be gone in 60 seconds and that my departure would not inspire comment.  So, while I had once thought it might be fun to fly every 172 from the 172A all the way though the 172SP after about 10 models I was not feeling much of a challenge.  In some years the only difference was a new window.

Recently I switched to a new digital log book and I realized that I had flown about 18 types of airplane.  The International Civil Aviation Organization standardizes things like airport codes and type of aircraft.  This codification provides a convenient litmus test for determining whether two aircraft are different.  All 172 Skyhawks are C172, and all those variants on the entry level Piper are P28A whether marketing decided to call them a Cherokee, a Warrior or even an Archer. So, my goal is simple: I want pilot in command time (and hopefully a few landings) in 100 types of aircraft.

I have been thinking about the goal for a while, but recently I got a little more serious and decided to write about the effort.  It is fair, dear reader, to ask why I would want to write about a rather abstruse and ultimately self centered task.  I have little conceit that anyone cares about my adventures, but I do suppose that my perspective on some planes my be of interest to a new prospective airplane owner.  Perhaps some  non-flying reader with the manual dexterity of a nine year old and the mental acuity of a bright chimpanzee will sense kinship in abilities and decide that if the writer can get off the ground, then so too can she.  One thing is quite sure, we may not need more writing, but we do need more pilots.  Pilots are thin on the ground, they are getting older, and they are not doing a good job of inspiring the young folks that they once were.  I came to this game late, but I have tried to evangelize for this craft and have one new pilot/plane owner to my credit and two more on the way.  Another reason to write this is that I have to write something.  I have to write for my job, but the text is generated in longish lumps with some temporal distance between them, and in a style that is only slightly less off putting than the old Japanese/English instruction manuals for hooking up daisy wheel printers.  I like writing and whether there is a deeper purpose or not sometimes it just needs to get out.