15-Nov-2009 So you think your a good pilot

[DaveBrennan]

One of the interesting things about revalidating my licence (450 hrs on a Shadow I sold to GS in 1998) is that I am learning lots of new stuff flying the Eurostar.

Some of these are due to the aircraft but some are due to the system. When I owned a shadow I flew enough hours a year not to fly a check flight. So for the 6 odd years I flew my Shadow I never once had to fly with an instructor.

Clearly for me there were lots of things that I didn't do in a Shadow that I have to do when I fly the Eurostar, like using my feet, moving the trim every 30 seconds of the flight.

But it does make me think back in the 90's flying my Shadow out of Old Sarum as a qualified pilot I never said to Fiona before you revalidate my license, what about a check flight, I know now that she would have found stuff that I was doing wrong.

Having to go back has told me that some time between passing my GFT and flying the Eurostar I picked up some bad habits while none of us like to write PUT in our logbook maybe sometimes its no a bad thing.