Let’s start with the bad news. Here’s what I said at the end of last year’s post:
In 2025, my goals are to fly at least one Angel Flight mission per month; to go up to the FAA headquarters in Oklahoma City and do their aviation physiology training seminar; to fly myself to Oshkosh and the American Bonanza Society convention; and to get at least one additional rating or qualification. Onwards!
Soooo… I didn’t accomplish any of those. For Oshkosh and the ABS convention, work conflicts prevented me from attending, the confluence of the FAA’s scheduling and my own work schedule prevented me from going to OKC, and I was overall too busy to follow through with getting another rating, although I did start studying for the first two exams required to become a flight instructor.
But! It’s a new year! The possibilities are limitless. And overall, 2025 was a pretty good flying year. I flew 102 hours, all throughout the southeastern US, including four Angel Flight missions, as shown below:
Highlights of the year included a pop-up trip to visit my mother and sister on their own trip to Galveston, taking Erica and the girls to see Lady Gaga in Miami, several flights to Starkville to pick up, drop off, or visit Anna, and work trips to Orlando and Dallas. I also got to do a few discovery flights with people interested in becoming pilots, and those are always terrific fun.
Overall the plane performed and flew beautifully. I added a second Avidyne IFD440 GPS in the spring, so I now have flight instruments, navigation, and a flight management system (FMS) roughly comparable to what United and Delta have, which is nice. I also have made heavy use of Starlink in the plane, including writing about it for Aviation Consumer. Speaking of writing, I had my first article published in AvWeb, too, and there are several more in the queue.
There were a few lowlights, too. My annual inspection took six weeks (until mid-February), which I didn’t love– winter in the southeast is often great flying weather thanks to abundant high pressure. Maintenance problems killed my planned flights to Las Vegas and The Bahamas, both of which I had looked forward to for quite a while. And planning for engine upgrades is looming as a depressing and expensive topic for 2026.
What about the rest of 2026? I’m still very much enjoying my Angel Flight missions; besides the four I did fly, I had five others scheduled but cancelled by the patient, which often happens. There are often long stretches when either no one needs to go anywhere or where other volunteers snap up the flights first, too, but I’m recycling the same goal of an average one mission per month for 2026. I want to make some progress on my flight instructor rating by passing the first two exams (Fundamentals of Instruction and Flight Instructor-Airplane) And, by god, I am going to fly myself to The Bahamas in 2026 if I have to flap my arms the whole way!
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