"Jay Honeck" writes:

There's no mystery to me as to why not everyone loves aviation like we do
(or why some people love golf like I don't!).

Right. But these "near-pilots" DID love aviation like we do -- and
something spooked them to the point where they walked away.

Well...did he? Your specific example? As you said yourself, quitting
was essentially inconceivable to you, and you resorted to fairly
drastic means to pay for flying sometimes (you mentioned selling blood
plasma). You didn't report him saying anything suggesting his love of
flying was actually like yours.

If we are to replace all the World War II and Korean War-era pilots who are
dying in droves, we've got to get people into aviation, NOW. I address
this "scared straight" issue as just another small piece of the "Why is GA
dying?" puzzle, and hope that we (as pilots) can come up with better ways to
train newbies so that this kind of thing won't happen so often.

Note how many of the people taught to fly for those wars kept on
flying, either professionally or for fun, afterwards. Not, I believe,
a very high percentage.

I've been interested in flying forever, but I've never done anything
about flight training. I used to ride my bicycle over to Stanton
airport (from Northfield) now and then to watch (and sometimes
photograph) glider and skydiving operations, and anything else that
was going on there, when I was a kid. I made sure to get pictures of
the VC-10 we flew to Entebbe in in 1964.

I've got lots of other interests (notably photography) to absorb my
time and energy. And, perhaps, I figured out early some things about
how useful general aviation was for transportation (not terribly at
the basic level), and how much money it would cost. So I've read (and
now and then posted) to aviation newsgroups for years, go to aviation
events locally, talk to pilot friends, and so forth, but never started
training. I classified it as something cool which, if it was your
overriding obsession, somebody in my income range could do. And I
didn't think it was my overriding obsession.

Maybe I would have found out it *was* going to be my overriding
obsession if I'd taken some lessons or something, maybe. I've liked
what little time I have in smaller planes, but I've actually never
been in a single-engine fixed-wing plane, and only two GA-size twins.

If I won the lottery, I'm not at all sure I'd start lessons. The
lottery would dispose of any money issues, but there are still time
issues. Plus my interest is towards planes that would take a lot of
flying to maintain competence, and the lottery would put me in the
position of being able to easily afford more plane than I could
quickly learn to fly safely.

So, I'm still here as a reasonably-friendly onlooker rather than a
pilot, and I enjoy that.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, , http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/
RKBA: http://noguns-nomoney.com/ http://www.dd-b.net/carry/
Pics: http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/ http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/
Dragaera/Steven Brust: http://dragaera.info/ Much of which is still down