While I love taking family trips in our airplane, I think I will always look forward to the occasional long, solo cross-country flight. There is something special about being aloft alone, probably because “alone” is the wrong word for describing the experience.
I just returned from a weekend excursion to Deer Isle, Maine. I have made the trip before, but this time there were no passengers, no dogs, and almost nothing in the baggage compartment. Annie, our Commander 114B, was light and lively, and the hum of her engine kept me company. So did her manifold pressure gauge, airspeed indicator, turn coordinator, and oil instruments. Let’s not forget the autopilot, ATC, other pilots on the radio, and all of those little aircraft icons popping up as traffic on the Garmin GTN 750. Pilots are almost never really alone—not in the northeast U.S., at least.
