flying.
Aerobatics is where I first learned that a checklist beats an opinion, upside down, every time. General aviation cross-country is the same discipline at a gentler pace — and a much better view of the risk register I spend the rest of the week reading.
The briefing room does most of the work.
A Standard Aerobatic rating, flown in a Pitts S-2A out of Old Buckenham.
Half the discipline is in the briefing room, not the air: knowing the recovery from every attitude the aircraft can find itself in, before you go anywhere near the runway. The other half is doing precisely what you briefed — not what feels right at the time, because upside down at low level is a bad moment to start improvising. It's the same relationship with checklists and pre-briefed decisions that a good incident response runs on, minus the office and plus a canopy.
None of it happens alone. A Pitts is a small, honest aeroplane, and the people on the ground — the instructor, the other pilots, whoever's on the radio — are as much a part of the discipline as the airframe. Trust in the team, on the ground and in the air, is the part that doesn't show up in the logbook.
Cross-country, VFR, no shortcuts.
General aviation navigation across the UK — planned properly, flown the same way.
Away from the aerobatic box, the interest is general aviation: proper VFR cross-country navigation around the UK, planned the way it's meant to be planned rather than trusted to a moving map. I keep an honest flight-time log — not for the number, which nobody but me is counting, but because measuring the boring bits properly is usually how you get good at the interesting ones.
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