Traveling light

First off, airplanes—like pilots—tend to get heavier with age. Secondly, our passengers, on average, are both larger and heavier than the average citizen was when our airplanes were first sketched out on the drawing board; and even then, rare was the GA airplane that let pilots fully fill the seats and the fuel tanks, much less layer on a vacation-load of luggage. Oh, and speaking of luggage, modern travelers carry more with them than in times past, along with full electronic ecosystems of laptops, tablets, and smartphones and their associated cables and chargers.

Carrying a passenger and some luggage in my two-seater without needing to stop for fuel every 30 minutes has forced me to achieve new heights—well, new lows—in packing light. After all, shaved ounces can add up to pounds. Pounds that can be traded for gallons of gas or increased performance. And while it’s been suggested (by my spouse) that I might have gone overboard in my pursuit of eliminating every spare ounce, there’s not an airplane in the GA inventory that can’t benefit from lightening at least some of its load. Still, I realize that my ultra-lean traveling style is not for everybody, so feel free to take my advice lightly.

Lightening up pilot stuff

You won’t see me walking away from the airplane carrying a headset bag. Not on a cross-country trip, anyway. That bag is back at the home hangar, and I just leave the headsets in the airplane each night, hidden high up on the floor against the firewall. (I guess if they get stolen on my next flight, I’ll know someone read about them here.) Yeah, it doesn’t save much weight, but it does save some, and, again, every ounce adds up.

Speaking of bags and ounces, what about the contents of your flight bag? You know, those things you always lug along with you without thinking about it? The E6B you don’t remember how to use. The three-year-old sectional chart. An excessive number of spare batteries—I bet you don’t carry three spare tires in your car.

I urge you to upend your gear bag on your kitchen table and sort through the contents. Re-evaluate the pile through the lens of the trip you are about to take. Maybe flying over Midwest farmland, you don’t really need that ginormous grizzly-bear-skinning survival knife with a compass in the handle. It’s August in the South; perhaps the space blanket can stay behind this time. You have a handheld radio, a cellphone, and a personal locator beacon: Do you really need that signal mirror?

Lightening up electronics

I use a “flightPad” to navigate, and a smartphone for backup and communication. I find the navigational tablet can double as a source of entertainment at night, and as a preflight weather briefing platform in the morning so I don’t waste fuel weight on a laptop or other electronics. For charging, I found a quick-charge box that can juice the two up—along with my co-pilot’s phone—in a serial fashion, limiting the number of chargers, adaptors, and cables that need to be schlepped along. It doesn’t sound like much, but it adds up quickly.

Lightening up clothing

Fuel is the “big heavy” for the airplane, and you cut corners here at your peril. But clothing—the big heavy for the crew—can be significantly reduced in absolute safety. I’ve pared down clothing steadily over the years, and I’ve found that the key to traveling light, when it comes to clothes, is obvious: Take as few items with you as possible. While it sounds radical, my basic traveling wardrobe now pretty much comes down to:

• 1 shirt to fly in.
• 1 “civilian” shirt for nights out on the town.
• 1 pair of pants, the ones on my body.
• 1 T-shirt for hotel lounging.
• 1 pair of shorts for same.
• 1 pair of shoes, the ones on my feet.
• 1 hat.
• 1 super-light-weight wind breaker.

Pajamas? That’s what skin is for.

How do I make such a skimpy wardrobe work? Easy. I do a quick load of laundry each night in the hotel sink. That’s not as big a burden as it sounds like because there’s hardly anything to wash. It’s, like, a 10-minute job. For reliable quick drying overnight, I’ve found that you can’t beat “backpacking” clothing. While not cheap, it’s lightweight, holds up well, and has the added benefit of sporting lots of pockets. I found a line of pants that never heard the word wrinkle, are comfy, and manage to walk the line between utility and presentable-in-public. As a bonus, they have zip-off legs so they can double as shorts on the apron in hot climates.

That’s for spring through fall. Winter travel, of course, requires heavier gear. But our airplanes handle weight better when it’s cooler.

What about the contents of your flight bag? You know, those things you always lug along with you without thinking about it? The E6B you don’t remember how to use. The three-year-old sectional chart. An excessive number of spare batteries.My cargo manifest also includes two pairs of quick-dry underwear and two pairs of quick-dry socks—one set packed, the other on my body. You can do it with one pair of each in theory, but we pilots love to consider worst-case scenarios in preflight planning, and the worst-case wardrobe scenario would be a late night in a humid climate resulting in wet undies in the morning. I can think of nothing worse than flying in damp underwear and wet socks, and these quick-driers weigh next to nothing. Way less than the headset bag.

Lightening up luggage

Not all flight bags are created equal, and the weight difference from one to another can be astounding. Sadly, the better made a bag is, the heavier it is. And all the really cool bags tip the scale uncomfortably, even empty.

Not all flight bags are created equal, and the weight difference from one to another can be astounding.I’ve tried several different bags over the years, but have settled in on a the-heck-with-what-it-looks-like, it weighs-practically-nothing nylon gym bag from one of the big-box stores. It’s the lightest I can get without walking into a hotel with my belonging in a plastic trash sack, not that I didn’t consider it. To save weight further, the gym bag is the only bag in the airplane. I split its space 50-50 with my co-pilot.

Lightening up toiletries

In this department, it’s more about what not to pack, rather than what to pack. Most travelers carry supplies that are available for free in virtually every hotel. There’s no need to pack shampoo or conditioner. No need to pack soap. No need to pack hand lotion. No need to pack a razor. No need to pack a hair drier. Heck, there’s actually no need to pack toothpaste, a toothbrush, or a comb (although I do—with the toothpaste limited to the itty-bitty travel size).

The only unusual extra in my mesh toiletry bag is a small bottle of liquid laundry soap. Trust me on this, hand soap and shampoo are poor choices when washing clothes in a sink.

Time to compromise?

All of that said, some heavy items I find I still need. For instance, I pack a tow bar. I had thought I wouldn’t need a tow bar when traveling, but I was wrong. Let’s just leave it at that. Of course, for traveling, I use a lightweight, collapsible model. Likewise, I carry a nice—but somewhat heavy—set of self-cinching tiedown straps. Although they weight more than three decent pieces of rope, it’s a necessary sacrifice for me as I’ve never mastered tying those stupid double locking half hitch knots. Even watching YouTube videos on the ramp on my phone, I can never seem to get them right.

Of course, as humans, I understand that we benefit from trading weight for comfort, however you personally define comfort. For me—bizarrely—it came down to drinkware. Following a really hot, bumpy, and stressful flight, I was trying to unwind in my hotel room with a glass of wine. Except it wasn’t a glass. It was a thin-walled clear plastic cup that the hotel provided. I cracked: A Dixie cup of wine? This isn’t cutting it.

In my quest for ultra-light travel, I had gone a bridge too far.

I knew that packing a glass was asking for trouble, so I found a lightweight metal wine “glass” featuring a heavy polycarbonate stem which unscrews from the stainless metal main cup, then snaps into the top to protect the stem en route. It holds a proper adult serving, and empty weighs 3.9 ounces. Granted, that’s the equivalent of a hair over five ounces of 100LL, but it gives me a measure of creature comfort. Sometimes ya’ gotta make a sacrifice.

Speaking of comfort, I also confess to being a coffee snob, and hotel coffee is Russian roulette. The solution? I carry a few packets of powdered instant coffee from the green mermaid people. But those, at least, weigh so little that I can pack them guilt-free.

And while I can’t stand to drink good wine out of a plastic cup, it doesn’t bother me one bit to drink good coffee out of the lousy paper cups from the hotel lobby.