Flying Update Part Two - A (Temporary) Ending?
As I was working through my instrument training, I realized I was “all-in”. Flying had become a real passion, and I just wanted to be up all the time (yes, I had a full-time job, so this was a nights and weekends thing). I could fly the flight school’s aircraft, but they were mostly for training: always busy, and frankly, a little beat-up. I started to think more and more that I’d rather own my own plane so I could control my own destiny. I had a co-worker at Amazon who was also a pilot and was interested in owning as well, so we started talking about buying an airplane together and splitting the cost. He had to back out for personal reasons, but after the research we had done together, my heart was completely set on owning.
I tried to justify the purchase by building financial models to try to compare renting costs vs owning costs, to prove to myself that owning would be cheaper. Silly Rick, to make owning cheaper, I’d have had to fly 200 hours a year - far more than I had time to fly. This didn’t dissuade me, though! It was never going to be a financial-based decision anyway. If I went ahead with it, it was because I really liked the benefits of owning - never having to argue with someone else over flying time, flying something that I knew was well-maintained, and perhaps most importantly, pride of ownership.
I found a consultant who specialized in helping newbies like me navigate the purchase. He helped me narrow in on what I should buy considering my mission, price range, and a few other factors. We settled on a Cessna 182 Skylane with a glass panel. I bought N121GS (the tail number) in May of 2018 from the original owner, an older gentleman who had recently stopped flying. It was a 2007 T182T - the first T is Turbo, the second T is the version of 182 (Cessna introduced the 182A in 1957!). The Turbo was a really nice feature - it meant it could climb faster, helpful to get above the clouds, with a service ceiling of 20,000 feet (although the highest I ever got was 16,000).
My Pretty Plane
I picked it up in Long Beach, California. My flight instructor Troy and I flew down commercially and ferried it back to Seattle. I got a tie-down in Boeing Field (KBFI), where she was based until I sold her in 2021. In between, I flew 1GS over 310 hours and had many adventures. Here’s a small selection of them:
Ryan asleep, a common occurrence
- In August 2018, I flew to Spokane, Washington (KSFF, Felt’s Field) to take my son on college tours at Gonzaga and Whitworth University. We flew out pretty early that day, and he almost instantly fell asleep. This was a trend - my son probably got 20-40 hours of sleep on 1GS.
- Later that month, I flew to Los Angeles (KSMO - Santa Monica Airport) to visit my cousin Kevin for a weekend.
- In May 2019, I flew to San Jose, California (KSJC) for an Amazon work trip (on my own dime, not supported by Amazon). The FBO (Fixed Base Operator, the companies that service planes on airports) drove the rental car right out to the plane so I could unload. It was very cool, I felt fancy. On the way home, I flew to Paine field in Everett, WA (KPAE) because my son had a playoff soccer game I didn’t want to miss. If I had flown commercially, there’s no way I would have made that game.
- In July 2019, I took my son for a weekend orientation at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, CA (KSBP).
- In August 2019, I flew from Seattle to Myrtle Beach SC (with my son as copilot, but he also slept a lot), then from Myrtle Beach to Philly (still with my son), a round trip from Philly to State College, and then from Philly home to Seattle (this section I did alone). This was a crazy, epic trip and so much fun. On the way out we stopped in Billings, MT, stayed overnight, then flew over Mount Rushmore before stopping in Nebraska and Kentucky. On the return, I stopped in South Bend, then a tiny airport in South Dakota for gas (just missing a storm), then Billings again and then home. I did the return legs all in one day.
- I didn’t do any big trips in 2020 due to COVID. Flying during this era was interesting though. Commercial travel was so quiet that being up in the air was way more peaceful than normal. ATC had less to do, so they seemed less stressed.
- In April 2021, I flew to Santa Barbara, California (KSBA) for a vacation (Danielle and JJ flew commercially and met me there).
- I had numerous local sight-seeing trips to the San Juan Islands, Mount St Helens, Crater Lake, Bend Oregon, Boise Idaho, Coeur d’Alene. Highlights include taking my dad and older sister up, my cousins, and quite a few close friends. I never really convinced my mom to go for a flight. My wife and kids went up a bunch, but I think they didn’t love it, they just tolerated it.
Mount Rushmore from about 6,000 ft
My Dad flying N121GS
Seattle’s Skyline
Mt St Helens
I created a YouTube channel where you can see some of my flights. I wasn’t really good at video editing, but maybe it’ll give you a sense of what it’s like.
Commercial Rating Pursuit
The next training certificate I would pursue after the instrument rating was Commercial. So far, I was an Instrument-rated Private Pilot, so I couldn’t earn any money at all while flying. The FAA is very clear about this - to earn money, you need a Commercial license. So I started training for this with Rainier in spring 2019, but using 1GS instead of renting. The Commercial ticket is pretty straightforward - there are some new maneuvers you have to learn, demonstrating advanced aircraft control. The trickiest maneuver is the “Power-off 180 Landing”. This is showing that you can land if you’re in a situation where the engine dies. You have to pull the power to idle when you are “abeam the numbers” in the downwind leg, and then make a 180 degree turn while the engine is idling, and land the airplane. It requires loads of judgment. It’s hard.
There were a few other things, including accumulating more hours, more time at night, particularly loads of landings. I went out to Boeing Field relatively late one night and to do 10 landings in a row to tick off the night landings requirement. In any case, I got it all done and ready. My instructor signed me off for the check ride, and I made a reservation with a DPE. About a week before the check ride, the alternator on 1GS died (ah, the joy of airplane ownership). I had to cancel the check ride until the airplane was fixed. It would up taking nearly a month, and by the time I had 1GS back, my instructor had gone off to the airlines. It would probably have taken me another month to get back to where I was so I just skipped it. I started retraining for it in early 2021, but then I wound up selling the airplane, as detailed below, so I wound up never finishing the Commercial ticket.
Some questions folks would frequently ask me about flying:
- How far could you fly? Pilots tend to think in terms of time versus miles. My airplane would typically burn 13-14 gallons of gas an hour and had an 87 gallon tank, meaning I could fly for ~6.5 hours. You’d never want to plan a 6 hour flight because running out of gas in an airplane is a real bummer. I’d typically plan for my longest legs to be around 4 hours before I’d stop for gas. My longest ever was on my return from Billings, MT to Boeing Field at 5.3 hours. I hit unexpected headwinds so I was probably 30 minutes longer than I’d planned. I didn’t like it.
- Ok, great, but how far can you go in 4 hours? (Related) How fast is your airplane? This is an annoyingly complicated question to answer. The indicated airspeed (i.e. what the instruments show you) in cruise would be around 130 Knots (about 150 mph). However, there’s TAS (true airspeed) which is a calculated airspeed based on your altitude (because the density of air changes how the instruments read speed, the indicated airspeed can be wrong), and then the groundspeed, i.e. how fast you’re going over the ground. They were all different. Sometimes, your TAS would be 140 KTs, but you have a headwind of 20 knots, so your speed over the ground would be 120KTs. I’m sorry it’s so complicated! That said, the systems (the Garmin G1000) in the airplane calculate all this for you, as do the flight planning tools in Foreflight. When I’d plan a flight, I’d pull the weather to get indicated wind speed and direction to be able to properly determine how far I could fly on a particular leg. As an aside: you typically have a tailwind flying from the West Coast to the East Coast. This is why commercial flight times can vary by as much as an hour or more on long flights eastbound vs westbound.
- Do you have to make a reservation to fly to another airport? For the airports I flew in and out of, no. If I’m flying VFR, I can just go. If I’m flying IFR, the destination airport knows I’m coming, and they’re going to control my landing time, sequenced with others. That said, there are large airports that would probably turn me away if I just showed up. I don’t think I could have flown to SeaTac at 1pm on a Tuesday. They would have told me to bug off.
- What happens if you have to pee? Yes, I got this question often. My little Cessna didn’t have a bathroom. If it got bad, I’d have to land. That said, and maybe this is TMI, I did ultimately buy myself a special bottle which I used a few times. Pilots need coffee. Coffee goes through the system. ‘Nuff said.
The End of the Flying story
He’s still sleeping, I’m on oxygen
I took a job with Samsara in 2021. This was in the middle of the pandemic, and they were still remote, but headquartered in San Francisco. Samsara anticipated going back to in-office at some point, and they asked me to consider relocating. I was open to it, but wanted to get my younger child through high school before moving. We agreed to revisit then (in 18 months or so). In the meantime, I anticipated traveling quite a bit to San Francisco, and so would have far less time to fly for personal reasons. As a result, I made the decision to sell the Skylane. I was able to find a buyer quite quickly and by the end of June 2021, I was no longer an airplane owner. That said, in hindsight, selling it was a mistake. I wound up not traveling nearly as much as expected, and Samsara stayed fully remote for the time that I was there.
Maybe at some point I’ll get back into it. Danielle is encouraging me to. For now, I’ve got enough other stuff on the plate that I haven’t prioritized it. That said, I think about it every day.