I have now flown on every day in the year!

[RussR]

A silly, but fun project that resulted from my wife asking me, years ago, if I had ever flown on (such-and-such) a date - like Christmas maybe, or something similar. That was back in 2010, and resulted in me going through my logbook with a single-page calendar and marking off which days of the year I had flown on. You'd think this would take a long time, but it really didn't. At the time, I had about 800 hours over 17 years, but it really didn't take very long to go through my logbook and check off the dates. Well less than an hour. Was kind of fun. Then each year, I'd print out a new calendar and update it as I went through the year.

For example, here's the 2012 calendar (I don't seem to still have 2010 and 2011.) Orange is what I had flown on in previous years, green is what I added that year.



I didn't become a CFI or doing any Commercial work until late in 2012, but after that I really started filling in a lot of the holes. Some of the dates I did specifically target (like Feb 29th in 2012, where I purposely did a local flight to check it off), but most just happened through the course of normal flying and teaching.

It was interesting to see some patterns develop, though.
- For example, the month I had flown the least number of days in was January. Sure, makes sense, winter, cold. But in second place for least-flown days was April. Why? No idea, just kind of happened that way.
- There would be strings of 3 or 4 days or even a week (early on) that I had never flown on.
- I had never flown on Christmas. So, in 2021, I specifically took my mom up. We had a nice time looking at lights.
- The first month for me to "complete" was October. Seemed reasonable, typically nice flying weather.

Obviously as the years went on there were fewer and fewer dates remaining. In 2019, for example, I didn't add any new dates. In 2020 I added 1 more, and in 2021 I added 2. In 2022 I had just 3 dates remaining, all in January, but one of those was January 2nd. I got the other two but missed Jan 2nd.

So yesterday I was determined to get that last date. I didn't want to wait another whole year! But I didn't have any clients scheduled to fly with, my day job didn't need me, and I don't own or rent a plane. Fortunately a client of mine let me use his, so my daughter and I went for a short flight to look at the clouds and check the day off. Success after 29 years of flying and 12 years of tracking!

 

[Shepherd]

You got me to thinking.
It's not planned, but for the last few years (I went back to 2012) I've flown on January 2, every year.
Weird.

 

[iamtheari]

You got me to thinking.
It's not planned, but for the last few years (I went back to 2012) I've flown on January 2, every year.
Weird.

I would have to check my logbook, but I had the same thought. I flew yesterday after spending January 1 wanting to fly and not getting around to it. I wonder how many years I have thought "I should fly on December 31 and January 1 so I can end the old year and start the new doing something I love," and then didn't follow through until the 2nd.

 

[NealRomeoGolf]

January 2nd is definitely not one I was missing. Got that back in 2012. I'm missing lots more though. You've got lots more years of experience than I do.

 

[Jim K]

That's super cool. Gonna have to start on that project

 

[jbehler]

Pretty cool...but when I first read your thread title I thought you meant every day in 2022!

A silly, but fun project that resulted from my wife asking me, years ago, if I had ever flown on (such-and-such) a date - like Christmas maybe, or something similar. That was back in 2010, and resulted in me going through my logbook with a single-page calendar and marking off which days of the year I had flown on. You'd think this would take a long time, but it really didn't. At the time, I had about 800 hours over 17 years, but it really didn't take very long to go through my logbook and check off the dates. Well less than an hour. Was kind of fun. Then each year, I'd print out a new calendar and update it as I went through the year.

For example, here's the 2012 calendar (I don't seem to still have 2010 and 2011.) Orange is what I had flown on in previous years, green is what I added that year.

View attachment 113649

I didn't become a CFI or doing any Commercial work until late in 2012, but after that I really started filling in a lot of the holes. Some of the dates I did specifically target (like Feb 29th in 2012, where I purposely did a local flight to check it off), but most just happened through the course of normal flying and teaching.

It was interesting to see some patterns develop, though.
- For example, the month I had flown the least number of days in was January. Sure, makes sense, winter, cold. But in second place for least-flown days was April. Why? No idea, just kind of happened that way.
- There would be strings of 3 or 4 days or even a week (early on) that I had never flown on.
- I had never flown on Christmas. So, in 2021, I specifically took my mom up. We had a nice time looking at lights.
- The first month for me to "complete" was October. Seemed reasonable, typically nice flying weather.

Obviously as the years went on there were fewer and fewer dates remaining. In 2019, for example, I didn't add any new dates. In 2020 I added 1 more, and in 2021 I added 2. In 2022 I had just 3 dates remaining, all in January, but one of those was January 2nd. I got the other two but missed Jan 2nd.

So yesterday I was determined to get that last date. I didn't want to wait another whole year! But I didn't have any clients scheduled to fly with, my day job didn't need me, and I don't own or rent a plane. Fortunately a client of mine let me use his, so my daughter and I went for a short flight to look at the clouds and check the day off. Success after 29 years of flying and 12 years of tracking!

 

[murphey]

I was going to fly today but I'm stuck at home waiting for FedEx to deliver (signature required). This is the 2nd FedEx fail. First was last Friday.

Maybe tomorrow.

One of my favorites is take off on Dec 31, land Jan 1. Since my logbook starts a new page with each new year, looks like I never landed in 2022. But the weather was crummy both days. Maybe next year.

 

[RussR]

Pretty cool...but when I first read your thread title I thought you meant every day in 2022!

Hah, yes, it was hard to figure out what to title it!

 

[Bob Noel]

Did you include 29 Feb?

 

[Jim K]

Did you include 29 Feb?

I had the same question lol. As I was looking through my dates, I found that 2020 was a leap year, and that I did in fact fly on Feb. 29. I'm sure that was intentional.

I have a long way to go though. I don't have Jan 1 or 2 either, so it'll have to wait for next year

 

[Zeldman]

Next up, fly every hour of the day. Not counting time zones, and do not try all 24 at once....

Flying EMS and cancelled checks ensured that I have flown not only every day of the year but also all those late night/early morning hours.

 

[asicer]

<--- Exports to CSV, strips off year, sorts, uniquifies...

Looks like I'm short 62 days. A few notables missing: Leap Day, Halloween, Christmas.

Examining the plot, I thought the gaps would be centered around winter solstice but it looks like that's not necessarily the case.

 

[EdFred]

I've flown over Lake Michigan in a single engine, every month of the year. Does that count for anything?

 

[charheep]

I've flown over Lake Michigan in a single engine, every month of the year. Does that count for anything?

No. /s

 

[X3 Skier]

I've flown over Lake Michigan in a single engine, every month of the year. Does that count for anything?

It does but I'm not sure it is a good thing.

Cheers

 

[frfly172]

I have stopped flying over Lake Michigan ,have only done it around Osh for several years.

 

[iamtheari]

One of my favorites is take off on Dec 31, land Jan 1. Since my logbook starts a new page with each new year, looks like I never landed in 2022. But the weather was crummy both days. Maybe next year.

Good thing you didn't go up on December 31. With that kind of weather, you might still be up there ...

 

[RussR]

Did you include 29 Feb?

Yes. In 2012, I flew on that date intentionally. Looks like I flew at night, did a low approach to Wright Patterson AFB, and did three full stops back home to get night current!

 

[RussR]

Next up, fly every hour of the day. Not counting time zones, and do not try all 24 at once....

Flying EMS and cancelled checks ensured that I have flown not only every day of the year but also all those late night/early morning hours.

I bet I'm pretty close. Probably missing the 3 and 4:00 hours, likely have the rest. I'll try!

 

[RussR]

Pretty cool...but when I first read your thread title I thought you meant every day in 2022!

Incidentally, so far I've flown every day in 2023! Trend should continue tomorrow, but probably not after that.

 

[RyanB]

That is quite cool, I must say! Thanks for sharing!

 

[35 AoA]

21 years of flying and I imagine I am not there yet. Specifically the holiday months I'd for sure fall short. This is interesting though, thanks for sharing. I imagine I'd see some very consistent patterns of heavy vs light months, clusters that make no sense out of context, etc.

 

[AggieMike88]

@RussR … did I hear through a podcast you have a gig with a company that surveys instrument approaches?

What is that like and how are you liking it?

 

[RussR]

@RussR … did I hear through a podcast you have a gig with a company that surveys instrument approaches?

What is that like and how are you liking it?

PM sent!

 

[texasclouds]

 

[TCABM]

PM sent!

Wait…there’s contract Flight Check?

 

[MooneyDriver78]

Only completed 1 month, October I have 11 left mainly because that’s when my annual is due.

 

[RussR]

Wait…there’s contract Flight Check?

No.

 

[Jim K]

No.

First rule of contract flight check is don't talk about contract flight check?

 

[brcase]

interesting project...
I started flying 1987.
Since then I have only flown once on 12/5, 12/6(my Dads Birthday), 12/20, 12/24, and 12/31

Maybe I need to make a project of filling in those day as having flown twice on those days. Just circled them on the calendar for next year.

Looks like most popular day is 8/29, I have flown 24 times on 8/29. followed by 22 times on 9/23 and 21 times on 9/14.

By 2006 I had flown every day except Christmas Eve and Christmas Day (12/24,12/25)
2011 I did a Christmas day flight, leaving only Christmas eve.
2013 I finished every day of the year flights by flying on Christmas eve.


I have flown 197 days in gliders, probably not going to try to fill in the rest of the days, I don't care to fly them in the cold.
8/30 is my most popular glider day, have flown 11 times on 8/30.

Brian
CFIIG/ASEL

 

[iamtheari]

I finally checked and I'm not there yet. I've logged time on 250 unique calendar days, including February 29 on which I have 2.9 hours. To fill out the bingo card, I need 21 days in January, 9 in February, 14 in March, 10 in April, 8 in May, 4 in June, 7 in July, 8 in August, 8 in September, 6 in October, 8 in November, and 13 in December.

But making a PivotTable of my logbook plus two calculated columns (=TEXT(A#,"mm") and =TEXT(A#,"dd")) is a fun jumping-off point beyond that.

Of my hours, July is the source of the most (105) and January the least (26). But November was the high for cross country, night, and IMC. That's mostly due to two big trips in November 2022. I have logged night time in all months but July (which is because I don't like to do anything but sleep between midnight and 4 a.m.) and IMC in all months but January and December. I've never flown on January 1 (I spent most of 1/1/23 wanting to fly while working on other projects). I've flown on January 2 twice (including this year, see prior parenthetical). I have flown on December 31 twice (2017 and 2019), and on the last day of 7 other months. I've declared my independence from the ground only once (July 4). I've logged 4 times as many flights on the 28th of the month as on the 5th.

I have no time on my own birthday in March or my mom's in December, 6 hours on my dad's in April, and 3 on my wife's in June. I've logged a high of 11.7 hours on August 15 and a low of 0.4 hours on May 30, August 18, and November 15. I have an average of 3.6 hours on calendar days I've logged time, median of 2.9, and standard deviation of 2.4 which I think means I'm a wildcard.

Most importantly, though, while wasting this time today, I found an error in my logbook where I accidentally logged a flight on the wrong day.

 

[NealRomeoGolf]

Sounds like a new feature for @EricBe to add.

 

[iamtheari]

Sounds like a new feature for @EricBe to add.

Maybe more of an "achievement" than a user-facing feature. I know he has some of those hiding in there, waiting for people to discover them.

 

[Pinecone]

Interesting.

I am missing 44 days, with Dec being the biggest hole (9 days missing), so a year before I can fix that. February is missing 6 days. I will try to work on that this year. May is the only complete month.

 

[Gary Ward]

Interesting...Congratulations. Awesome that you did it without owning a plane and it sounds like you got paid for all those hours!!

I have only been flying since 2015 and have 1200+ hrs in the log book. I have flown my own 172 pretty much full time since 2018. I have to break it out and see how many days I am missing. I know I flew 27 days straight a couple years ago during covid when I was not working much. My wife thinks I may not be missing that many days. I will find out one of these days when I find time. I try to fly 4-5 days/nights a week including last night. This last fall I went to AP school at night after work which cut into my flying time. I only flew about 200 hrs last year when I was around 270 hrs the last 3 years.
I log all my flights and maintenance everyday I fly or work on the plane. Not sure if this will help me figure out which days I haven't flown?

 

[EricBe]

Sounds like a new feature for @EricBe to add.

Ummm...what's missing? In MyFlightbook.com, Go to Training->Achievements and scroll down. There's a link "View a calendar of your flying" that will draw the calendar with the # of flights on each day, limited to the time range specified in the dropdown for the Flying Stats. And those stats include things like longest streak of consecutive flying days, the longest streak of consecutive non-flying days, the # of days in the period that were flying days (and the % of days that was), and so forth. Happy to add more, just let me know...

 

[Dave Theisen]

Just a quick look at my log books, I don’t think I have ever flown on Christmas Day, and in 38 years of flying, I just flew on the 4th of July for the first time this past year. With over 12,000 hours, I think it would be statistically impossible for me not to have flown on the other 364 days. I did verify that I have Leap Day covered.

 

[RussR]

Ummm...what's missing? In MyFlightbook.com, Go to Training->Achievements and scroll down. There's a link "View a calendar of your flying" that will draw the calendar with the # of flights on each day, limited to the time range specified in the dropdown for the Flying Stats. And those stats include things like longest streak of consecutive flying days, the longest streak of consecutive non-flying days, the # of days in the period that were flying days (and the % of days that was), and so forth. Happy to add more, just let me know...

That option doesn't quite break it down as I described in my OP. You can't look at it and tell at a glance whether you have ever flown on July 4th, or Dec 25th, or any other given day, without scrolling through all the years and looking for a green dot on those dates. Or conversely, it doesn't tell you what days in the year you've never flown on, again without tallying it all up.

Unless I'm missing some feature.

 

[EdFred]

I only have 292 of 366 days, and no completed months.

 

[EricBe]

That option doesn't quite break it down as I described in my OP. You can't look at it and tell at a glance whether you have ever flown on July 4th, or Dec 25th, or any other given day, without scrolling through all the years and looking for a green dot on those dates. Or conversely, it doesn't tell you what days in the year you've never flown on, again without tallying it all up.

Unless I'm missing some feature.

Ahh, gotcha. I misunderstood that part. I should add "day of year" to the analysis tab; it would do that.