Almost saw someone crash

In article , Sam wrote:
Hi Jay,

You make some good points. I'm a younger guy (27) that is currently
renting, but am looking forward to buying a nice tri-pacer or cherokee
within the next couple of years.

Consider a Cessna 140. They are fun planes and inexpensive to run, and
have no bad manners even though they are taildraggers (you of course
need to learn how to use the rudder properly, but they really aren't
that difficult). In my final 2 months in the US, I flew mine coast to
coast. It's amazing how much camping gear you can stuff in one. It does
help to be in good shape though, the C140 was certainly not built for
large people (Michael made the comment about the Toyota certainly being
more comfortable than a C140, but really I didn't find cars any more or
less comfortable since I'm a good 20lbs lighter than FAA standard)

I guess I'm not really aware of the aging general aviation population.
I wanted to start flying at a much younger age, and even took a couple
of intro flights when I was around 20 and bummed right seat time
whenever I could. But I was also putting myself through college, so
money was very tight. The initial high costs of flight training put
it out of reach. I bought a new car AND motorcycle after graduating,
so I had to wait a couple more years before starting training for my
PPL.

I've never bought a new car or borrowed money to buy a car, mainly so I
could feed my aviation habit. I started learning to fly when I was 24.
I'm now 32 and have about 1100 hrs total time, all private flying,
mainly funded with the money that would have been spent servicing a car
loan and depreciation charge had I made the same car choices as many of
my friends :-)

I know of at least a couple former pilots that will tell me their
antics about scraping tree limbs on final into a dark airport,
encountering IMC, or whatever.

It's probably for the best that the ones that repeatedly have close
calls give up, they might waste a perfectly good airplane!

If you're into bikes, you should come over here for the Isle of Man TT
(which is on now, so you're a bit late for this year) which is the
ultimate motorcycling event.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"