In order to tell how I stopped flying, I need to start at the beginning.
After the plane was fixed, I started working on my PP rating. I only flew 19.5 hours that year. I had this giant grin on my face for hours after I soloed. It was the greatest feeling in the world! My flight time ended shortly after I soloed; winter and other things moved in. I didn't continue working on my PP rating until May of 1992. That big gap of time was a headache, and I had to relearn a bunch of flying skills. However, everything went well, the plane didn't break, and I passed my PP checkride on October 13, 1992.
At this point, I started flying for fun. I'd go do S-turns along the railroad tracks so I could watch trains. I practiced maneuvers. I was able to take my airplane on trips for the $100 hamburger, to see my Parents, and to take some of my friends flying. This was all really great. I was having lots of fun. I was also building time so I could start work on an instrument rating. I really wanted one so that I could use the airplane when the weather was marginal. Also so I would be a better pilot.
Mike, another co-owner of 55u, would act as safety pilot for me when we went bumming around in the airplane. This let me get a lot of hood time and it let me develop good basic instrument skills. It also let me become familiar with shooting (VFR condition) approaches, enroute charts, and approach plates. Eventually I gathered enough PIC and cross-country time to have an instrument rating, and I started taking instrument instruction. My first instructor didn't work out well. He had stopped instructing full time and was in a high-availability job. That meant that I often showed up to the airport to fly, and he was no where to be seen. Unscheduled exercises by his employer. Arghh! After some of this, I decided to go to Watertown and enquire about Instrument Instruction at Wisconsin Aviation. I met a really great pilot and instructor, Jurg Grossenbacher. After doing a test flight to see where my IFR skills were, we were off on IFR instruction. In addition to instructing, Jurg was also a charter pilot. I received a lot of real world knowledge and testing from him during the instruction for my instrument rating. I did good, and on 7-1-93 I passed my Instrument rating checkride. I even got to use it for .1 on the way home from the examination!
So now, I was on to my Commercial license. I started putting more flight time on in 55u. I also started getting checked out in a Piper Arrow, as I needed to fly a complex aircraft for the Commercial ticket. And I picked up more IFR experience, both with an instructor, and by myself. Flying was still fun at this point. I'd say .. "It looks like an IFR day" and go shoot approaches. Or I'd go on a short cross country
Unfortunately, the other guys weren't flying as much. Because of this they wanted to sell the airplane. At the end I couldn't even really take 55u for a trip to Detroit that I had planned. The other guys didn't want to spend more money for maintenance if anything went wrong ... I'd have to take care of it it by myself. I thought the plane was in OK shape, but I didn't want to risk the financial burden if something went wrong. So, I rented an Arrow instead. Eventually we sold 55u to Wisconsin Aviation. It was a sad day for me. The last time I flew N5755U was ferrying it from our base, Blackhawk Airport in Cotttage Grove (near Madison), over to Wisconsin Aviation in Watertown. That day was 11-1-1993, and the ride was an all too short 0.4 hours. So much for my "little cherokee".
I sort of burned out a little bit during my commercial rating. I hit a plateau for a time during the maneuevers, and it took me a while to perfect them. I also did more instrument work when the weather was bad to keep my IFR flying proficient. Eventually, I passed my Commercial flight test on 10-21-94.
Truth was, I was still a bit burned out from the Commercial ticket. In addition to spending a lot of time working on it, I had also been spending a lot of money. Renting an airplane versus flying 55u was a giant increase in my flying costs. My total hours that year dropped by a factor of 2.6, while my costs increased 12%. I didn't fly for 1.5 months after my commercial ride. The poor winter flying season had something to do with it too, but part of it was being tired from the commercial rating.
Flying also grew less fun during this period. Renting was so expensive compared to owning that I didn't really use the airplane for things that I would have before. Like just going flying to be flying. Or doing s-turns above the trains. Or visiting my family.
In the spring of 95 my flying picked up a little. I'd go trade SIC (safety pilot) time with friends so we could remain instrument current. I also have a friend who flies Cessnas, rather than Pipers, by preference. We would trade off time in the air to each other to see what it was like to do stuff in the other kind of aircraft and see how it handled. During this timeframe, Susan also left instruction, to go fly Lear Jets! Fortunately I ran into another great instructor, Mike Kohrs. Mike had flown helicopters for the US Marine Corps and had experience from a differnet point of view. I started working a little bit on my CFI rating again, but it didn't go anywhere. Then, after a while, Mike got a job flying for the state of WI, and I was out of really good instructors again.
In 1995 and 1996 I had 16 hours of flying time each year. Contrast that to the 160 hours of flying time I had in 1993, and the 60 hours in 1994. Lots less. 4 to 10 times less.
Well, then how in the world did I end up not flying seriously for 4 years?!
At that point, 1996, moving into and taking care of my new house started consuming free time and money. I stopped working (never really started it in all seriousness) on that CFI rating that year, although I did manage to get in 16 hours of flying.
Through the next three years, 1997-1999 I managed 5.9 hours of flying ... 1.1 in 1997, and 4.8 in 1998, and 0.0 in 1999. I had found some time to start flying again in 1998 and got a BFR to get me up to date, and I even went flying without an instructor for 2.3 hours. Unfortunately, there was a lot of legal mumbo jumbo resulting from my job situation. I wasn't employed for 5 months. I was paying my house payments out of my life savings, and sadly, though I had the time to go flying, I just didn't have the funding to do so!
After I did have a new job, I found myself totally consumed, for the people who were leading it had absolutely no clue how to manage software development, or to even develop software. That, and other problems, really dragged me down and I didn't spend any time learning about flying either. Just wake up goto work, work, goto home, sleep, repeat ...
Another factor is that my work had become my identity. Instead of me leading a life, with work as something that I did in my life ... my life was work. This was OK when work was OK, (which is how work became my life, but was a horrible situation when work started going bad. Because my work was my life, my life started going bad too.
Work aside, and that is a big aside, I think the underlying reasons I stopped flying has to do with some big things:
The first big thing was time to devote to flying. I believe that flying, especially IFR, is a religion of sorts. You need to keep devoting time (a lot of time) to it to stay current with all the flight time requirements, regulations, changes, legal interpretations, aero-dynamics, and all sorts of other things. If you don't spend the time to keep abreast of those things and to have your flying knowledge available at a moments notice ... I think you are an accident waiting to happen. I think that the knowledge and experience is part of the murky and invisible line that seperates "Pilots" who operate an aircraft, from the "Aviator" who flies. The time I had to devote to keeping that level of "Aviator" proficiency wasn't enough.
Another factor that is involved is the enjoyment factor. When all the time you do have in an airplane is to keep current, you don't have the time to enjoy doing something. Rush Rush Rush to stay current.
Yet another factor was a rash of equipment failures in rental aircraft. Every time running for 3 or 4 "going to do something neat" with an airplane ... the airplane was not available. Things like maintenance problems, or something was broken, or the aircraft hadn't been returned by another renter. How can you go on a trip when you don't have an airplane to fly? This put a real dispirit into my flying, for every time I tried to do something neat, I was beaten back.
The next factor is all my fault. I wanted to be a good Pilot, an Aviator, very much. I wanted to study subjects in depth and become an expert in them. And I started doing so. I dived into weather, for I wanted to become better at understanding the various phenomena so I wouldn't be backed into a corner by something that wasn't obvious. There was nothing wrong with this studying by itself. However, combining it with the reduced time for Aviation created a slight problem ... I didn't go flying much because I was spending my flying time studying. And when I did try to go flying, either my "FBO Currency" (for insurance) was up, or the airplane was broken, or something else went wrong. This created a "Graveyard Spiral" of it's own which eventually stopped me from flying. There is the old saying if something hurts, don't do it. Well, I was "hurt" almost every time I tried to go flying ... and eventually I stopped.
I really miss having my own airplane. Renting one is such a shadow of owning an aircraft you can just use. These things, by the way, never happened when I had my own airplane. The maintenance was up to date. If I didn't fly it for 31 days, I didn't have to wait 2 weeks to schedule a ride with an instructor, I could just go flying. The airplane was always ready for a trip ... or I could assure that it was prepared properly for the trip. With rental aircraft, something that is OK 2 days before your trip can be broken the day of the trip, and BAM your trip is ruined.
I've found that the intervening years of not flying have wreaked untold havoc to my aviation "knowledge base" inside my head. I still know most of the stuff, but it is remembering that I know it that is the hard part. So much of that knowledge should be right at the forefront of my mind ... and it isn't ... yet.
My flying skills came back quite quickly. The difference between 1.0 hours and 3.0 hours was quite amazing. I was worried that it would take as much time as it did for me to first solo, but it didn't. Heck, after even 1.0 hours I shot a beautiful actual ILS! Stuff like that makes me think that there is still hope for me. I managed to repeat the ILS a few days later, so it wasn't some sort of lucky fluke.
However, the rate of flying re-acquisition has been outflying the rate of knowledge re-acquisition. There is only so fast a rate that you can re-read books, regulations, and other knowledge that you gained over years and years. It is so tiring that it is almost a job. Rennie reminds me that I'm supposed to be having fun doing this. That is easy to forget when you are trying to jam years of undoing into 30 brief days before a job might take over my life again.
Recently, I've started to wonder if maybe I should change to a different line of work. When I go to work I feel like a zombie. When I go flying I feel wonderful. All told, I'd rather prefer my life to feel wonderful.
Josef T. Burger, October 15, 2000