Haven't flown in 10 years. Help!

[JOEFRIDAY2]

I was in the same position. I had a private and had not flown for 10 years. They promised me that it would come back quickly. They were right. It's like riding a bicycle. After about 5 hours it was if I had never stopped. A couple of tips that I might share with you:

1. Try to fly the same type of aircraft you flew before, if possible, at the beginning. Then transition into the others.

2. It takes 20 hours to get proficient with the G1000, but once you do then you will find it is an amazing tool that makes flying much safer. Yes it is worth doing. Keep in mind that Cessna has not made a "steam gauge" aircraft since 2004. Steam gauges are not coming back. You might as well get the G1000 learning curve out of the way because these old steam gauge aircraft will not be around forever and the navigation technology is moving away from a lot of the old stuff.

Good Luck! It sounds like you have a wonderful wife.

Joe

 

[genot]

I want to thank everyone who posted. I was wrong, it was 3 days from the original post not two (my days off I've held for four years went back one in February, so the whole day thing is still standing on its ear). So the flight was actually today, er yesterday. I followed everyone's advice, and I'm pretty amazed at how smooth it went and how accurate what everyone mentioned here was.

It wasn't a Garmin 430 like I'd assumed. A couple of years back my girlfriend, now my wife, thought it would be cool to learn to fly so I went looking for discovery flights. Everything they had at that time was 430 or 1000. This one had some sort of King? red headed step child GPS, which was more than OK. The CFI was gracious enough to let my wife come along. My wife was gracious enough to be cool with most of the private PTS maneuvers.

It probably sounds silly to most of you, but stalls are pretty exciting if you've been out of flying for a while. I definitely over controlled the yoke, but it was shockingly more like being used to a 150 in trim than having no clue as to the impact of my input. The CFI was terrific. The respect I've always had for them is magnified now with age.

In case anyone was wondering, I transposed my call sign on my my first radio call and semi stuttered my way through the inbound call. I also was offered the opportunity to call for flight following to mess with my fellow approach controllers, but declined only because knocking off pounds of rust AND ridiculing coworkers would have been just too much work when you botch your own N number.

I did however recover any ATC cred radio embarrassment with the "read this METAR" portion. I read the METAR like a pro! If only he'd have asked what CHINO means on a METAR, I'd have shone like the sun.

 

[rframe]

I followed everyone's advice, and I'm pretty amazed at how smooth it went and how accurate what everyone mentioned here was.

Congrats on getting back up in the air!

Dont worry about feeling a little nervous about the stalls when you haven't flown in 10 years, but if I can make a recommendation, dont let the few you did on your flight review be the last that you do for the next two years. Like any "emergency procedure", stall recovery should be drilled until its automatic... reduce angle of attack and fly out of it. That also lets you build confidence in slow flight and get a much better 'seat of the pants' feel for the airplane.

Great story about messing up your radio calls, I'll use that anecdote when my students get flustered, embarrassed, or nervous about making messed up radio calls.

Keep flying and have fun!