I recently had a unique opportunity to fly a Cirrus SR22 with the new Avidyne R9 avionics suite.  I was asked to fly this SR22 to the Washington, D.C. area on a last minute situation.  I was interested in the opportunity, as I hadn't done much cross country flying recently and stretching the flight legs seemed like a good idea.  Although I have no Avidyne R9 flying experience, I thought to myself that having several hundred hours of Avidyne Entegra flight experience in other Cirrus aircraft and having looked at the new R9 at recent trade shows would be sufficient to get me where I am going.  I was correct, I got where I was going.  That isn't to say that my understanding of the avionics were truly up to par.

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What’s the number one reason people drop out of flight training before earning a pilot’s license? Ask a dozen flight instructors and you’ll probably hear a dozen answers. But there’s one problem pilots don’t talk about enough: the loss of flight training momentum.

You may have heard that when you start flight training, you should fly as often as you can, maybe even 4 times per week. This promotes a building-block approach to learning, as you build one new skill on top of another and you spend less time reviewing past lessons.

This is great advice, but we all know that life can get in the way of flight training.

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It is a new year and another opportunity to talk about the fun of flying. Between Christmas and New Year, I had great flying experience with my two favorite passengers; my two young daughters.

For the Christmas holiday, my family and I drove to see family as I am sure that many of you did as well. When my wife and I departed for home on December 26th, we left our girls to stay for a few extra days with their granny.

It wasn't long until it was time to retrieve the kids. Decision time, just under four hours roundtrip on the road or just over an hour in a Cessna 172…since I am writing about it now, I am sure you can guess the choice that I made.

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