On Mar 31, 12:09 am, Roger wrote:
On Fri, 30 Mar 2007 11:41:10 -0400, "Dudley Henriques"

wrote:
Rule 1 for feeling good about yourself in this life is simply this;
Don't ever allow someone else's problem to become your problem.
Dudley Henriques

To that I can only say...Yup!

snip

My daughters classmates met someone outside of
school that knows me and when they got to talking
the kid mentioned that I was a pilot for an airline and
that person (an adult) corrected them and told them
that I was not a real pilot that I only fly TOY planes.

Sounds like jealously or lack of knowledge to me.

I now have something like 1400 plus hours. I originally started to fly
in 1963, but had to take a break. Over all these years I've never had
an urge to fly for a commercial airline. I do like aerobatics and
would love to fly some of the stuff Dudley has flown.

This is one of thoes areas where size really doesn't matter. If you
fly a 747 for fun it must by definition be a toy. :-))

OTOH regruadless of the size of the toy it takes a real pilot to fly
it.! Some of those toys are much more demanding to fly than the big
airliners.

Which reminds me. I wonder if that person would consider the guys
flying for "Air America" back in the 60's and 70's as not real pilots
flying toys.
Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)www.rogerhalstead.com

Heh. When I was flying AC119K's out of NKP we'd be flying up in Laos
on a lonely, dark night, looking for friendship, when what would come
into our IR screen just south of Ban Ban but a helicopter. Quick call
on HF, no, no friendlies in the area, cleared to engage.

Well. 150knots, all your guns are on one side of the airplane, and
you're attacking a helicopter that's really not much slower than you
are.

It's not often that a gunship gets involved in air-to-air combat, but
when it happens it's like getting the chance to have sex with (insert
your favorite fantasy here).

We zoomed by the helicopter with an advantage of at least 20 knots
(and, we were descending, so we had energy management on our side) put
two 7.62 miniguns online (the other two were jammed) and unleashed our
fury.

Left wing low, little bit of right rudder for spray effect, and we
made sure we missed'em.

After all, even if everyone hated (envied?) the Air America guys, they
had a great bar in Udorn.

sigh

What fun.

--Walt
Bozeman