If anyone is interested, the Spitfires and Hurricanes flight is documented here:
Best single flight, maybe the last leg of my Bulgaria trip in 2011, when we managed to get home despite quite adverse prognosis but with the help of two of my outstanding colleagues from Meteo Swiss who brought us home with their expert route advice. The sense of accomplishment that day was something I won’t forget in a hurry.
Best single day of flying was a 9 hr tour de force on my Cessna 150 in the 1990ties going from Zurich to Perpignan and back in one day. Well, almost, we ended up in Geneva landing IFR at 21-54.
Best over all experience, difficult to say. Getting rated on the AN2 as a whole was something I’d never want to miss. I’d like to get back current on it actually.
Just out of PPL training I experienced nothing nearly as spectacular as you guys. My first solo cross country was really motivating because I then ultimately realised that I alone was actually flying an aeroplane and making it go from A to B. And it was just a flight over the North German plains without any spectacular sights.
My solo to Hannover EDDV was even cooler because I was mixing it with the big iron at an international airport and even getting utility out of a flight before even passing the PPL checkride.
The best flight with an instructor was one where we flew the precision radar approach at Wittmundhafen AB, did VOR navigation to Helgoland and instrument familiarisation in actual clouds on the way back. That was really school flight! And nice views of Helgoland and the Wadden Sea islands included…
So I will also name two.
My first very long cross country with my family in a Mooney. It is from Sydney to Melbourne then King Island in the middle of Bass Straight. It was a challenge with a c.100nm overwater leg. While I scared myself silly with terrain near Sydney which led me to getting my instrument rating, it was a demonstration of the utility of flying to get to a holiday that would have been hard commercially.
The second was my recent type rating check ride in Santa Fe in an L-39. Fulfilled a lot of my long held childhood dreams of wanting to be in the Air Force by training in and flying a military aircraft (albeit a trainer).
That L 39 looks stunning. Well done Jason on your type rating..
Mig-29 in Russia, getting up to 800km/h just over ground, going vertical at 8 Gs, climbing 17km or so, exceeding Mach 1. Then we were almost out of fuel and had to go back for some tail slides over airport.
I can’t really single out one particular flight either. I like flying in 3D, into the valleys, between mountains. Last year we had a sightseeing trip into Trollheimen (the home of trolls) at a fly in. The route was made by a local guy. We were 10-15 planes or something flying the same route at the same time. It was really fun.
JasonC wrote:
The second was my recent type rating check ride in Santa Fe in an L-39.
So are you currently shopping for an L-39 to trade in your current ride? 
It would certainly get you to your destination even quicker.
Rwy20 wrote:
So are you currently shopping for an L-39 to trade in your current ride? It would certainly get you to your destination even quicker.
No certainly not. But it was good fun.
For me it was many years ago when a dear friend was dying. He was a retired RAF pilot and asked if I would take him to see his chosen burial place on the banks of Loch Lomond, before he died. It was a huge pleasure to do this and we chose a really nice gin clear day and flew from my grass strip in Lincolnshire, toured round the Loch and then returned home. He spoke very little on the way home but the tears said it all. To be a pilot sometimes confers great priviledge in that we can do things few others can. For me that was a most memorable journey. He died a few weeks later and I like to think he had the aerial view of his last resting place in mind when he died.
