At last, the truth...

You put your finger on one reason I sold the Maule. It took me 45 minutes
on a good day to drive to the airport. Over fairly heavily traveled 2-lane
roads that could easily add half an hour to the trip. Add in 20 minutes to
untie and pre-flight and 15 minutes to put her to bed and the entire
afternoon is gone for even a short flight.

Now George, we've been over this before. If you had been open to moving to
a more GA friendly part of the country, you, too, could have lived 30
seconds from your plane. You opted instead to remain in the congested
eastern part of the US, for purely economic reasons.

While this may have made perfect sense from a marital standpoint, it was
certainly no good reason to sell a perfectly good airplane!

:-)
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

"Jay Honeck" writes:
Flying is *not* golf, nor boating, nor motorcycling, nor anything else.
Quite simply, there is nothing else like it; so quitting -- for me --
someday, is going to be ugly, and entirely involuntary.

Back when I was into rock climbing, I quite regularly met folks who
felt that way about the sport. It is all just what you are in to...

Chris
--
Chris Colohan Email: PGP: finger
Web: www.colohan.com Phone: (412)268-4751

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:ag0Me.28191$084.26229@attbi_s22...
[...]
I don't know. But I guess if a pilot is able to "give up" flying
*without* some sort of a life-changing scary experience, then, perhaps,
they were never really that hooked on it in the first place?

But this is what I'm trying to explain to you. I know few pilots who love
flying more than I do. I know they are out there, but I still feel the
passion, and I'm sure it equals or betters that held by most. Yet, I am
still capable of contemplating quitting.

Granted, I haven't done it yet. And perhaps my passion WILL prevent me from
doing so. But I personally believe that even being able to contemplate it
suggests that I'm capable of it.

Of course, you could go with the tautological approach, and define "never
really that hooked on it in the first place" as meaning "is able to give up
flying without some sort of life-changing scary experience". But as with
all tautologies, that doesn't get you any closer to actually understanding
each pilot who gives it up.

This is another concept I cannot understand -- how can someone fly without
becoming hooked on the magic of flight? -- so perhaps I'll never be able
to fathom these folks.

As Jose already pointed out, there are people who become equally hooked on
the magic of other pursuits. There is nothing unique about flying that
makes it somehow better than other hobbies, except of course to those of us
that *believe* it to be better than other hobbies.

Flying is *not* golf, nor boating, nor motorcycling, nor anything else.

Golf is not flying, nor boating, nor motorcycling, nor anything else.

Boating is not golf, nor flying, nor motorcycline, nor anything else.

Motorcycling is not golf, nor boating, nor flying, nor anything else.

The above is equally valid for the infinite number of other things that
people develop a passion for. The fact is, each person has their own unique
outlook on what makes life all worthwhile. For any given pursuit, there's a
person out there that feels that pursuit is what gives them breath, that
that pursuit is the pinnacle of human achievement and demonstrates the very
best of humanity in a single activity. And for most of those people, they
view aviation as just another hobby, nothing special or magical at all.

It's not at all hard for me to imagine a person who tried out flying, and
perhaps even found it enjoyable enough to keep at it for awhile, but who
eventually decided there were other, more important things they needed or
wanted to do.

[...]
To simply relinquish the ability to fly of my own free will is
unthinkable, and -- since it's hard to B.S. a B.S.-er -- I always search
for deeper reasons when someone tells me they quit flying because of "the
wife" or "the job".

People imagine in others their own worst qualities. When you're a
"B.S.-er", it's hard to imagine that there are lots of people out there who
don't B.S. at all.

Pete

"Peter Duniho" wrote in message

It's not at all hard for me to imagine a person who tried out flying, and
perhaps even found it enjoyable enough to keep at it for awhile, but who
eventually decided there were other, more important things they needed or
wanted to do.

Most likely. But I see a lot of people who have an epiphany after they solo
and they realize the extent of training they must still do before their
qualifications are satisfactory to meet the expectations they had when they
signed up. Most people I talk to say they want to fly so they can travel.
In reality, that's a demanding, and expensive, proposition.

moo

Golf is not flying, nor boating, nor motorcycling, nor anything else.
SNIP
The above is equally valid for the infinite number of other things that
people develop a passion for. The fact is, each person has their own unique
outlook on what makes life all worthwhile. For any given pursuit, there's a
person out there that feels that pursuit is what gives them breath, that
that pursuit is the pinnacle of human achievement and demonstrates the very
best of humanity in a single activity.

Ohmigod, did you really come *that* close to saying that there are
people who define "golf" as the "pinnacle of human achievement"?
Whew!

:-)


People imagine in others their own worst qualities. When you're a
"B.S.-er", it's hard to imagine that there are lots of people out there who
don't B.S. at all.

You've almost got that right, Pete, but not quite. When you're a good
B.S.er, you *know* that there are no people devoid of B.S.

:-)
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

When you're a good
B.S.er, you *know* that there are no people devoid of B.S.

Oh, that's just BS.

(sorry, couldn't resist

There's one other thing to consider - one of the reasons people have for
flying is going places. You, who own the perfect plane for your
situation (family of four), can do this. Most pilots don't own =any=
kind of plane, nor do they belong to a club or partnership. They rent.

Find me a place that will rent a plane for a week at Block Island (a one
hour trip from here) and be happy with the two hours of tach time they
will be able to bill. More likely, there is a four hour per day
minimum. At a hundred dollars an hour, this brings the tab to almost
three thousand dollars for two hours of flying. A plane doesn't begin
to become useful for travel until one is at least a club member (of the
right club). There is a lot of overhead to flying, and I don't think
you realize how much that really means, since you've already done the
overhead.

Pretend for a moment that you didn't own a plane, and could not (for any
number of reasons), so that each flight was governed by the four hour
per day minimum, and whenever you wanted to schedule it, you rolled a
die every day to see if somebody else already booked it. Figure on it
being available for a week long flight maybe once or twice a year,
booked a month in advance. Figure also that you worked 9-5 M-F as an
employee, with one two-week vacation.

What would your flying be like?

Jose
--
Quantum Mechanics is like this: God =does= play dice with the universe,
except there's no God, and there's no dice. And maybe there's no universe.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Pretend for a moment that you didn't own a plane, and could not (for any
number of reasons), so that each flight was governed by the four hour
per day minimum, and whenever you wanted to schedule it, you rolled a
die every day to see if somebody else already booked it. Figure on it
being available for a week long flight maybe once or twice a year,
booked a month in advance. Figure also that you worked 9-5 M-F as an
employee, with one two-week vacation.

What would your flying be like?

Crikey, been there, done that. Renting SUCKS.

Which is what usually pushes people into the (often financially
unjustifiable) realm of ownership.

Although a good many people see partnership or flying clubs as a
logical half-step toward outright ownership.

In any event, you're right -- for family flying of any duration,
renting a plane is difficult at best.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Crikey, been there, done that. Renting SUCKS.

Which is what usually pushes people into the (often financially
unjustifiable) realm of ownership.

Or perhaps, justifiably, out of aviation. No scare needed.

Jose
--
Quantum Mechanics is like this: God =does= play dice with the universe,
except there's no God, and there's no dice. And maybe there's no universe.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

The renting and getting the training is the expensive part from what I have
seen. I was bewildered that rental insurance was as cheap as my car
insurance! So I was real happy with that.
Someone without alot of money can do it and can own their own
plane,...it just takes some work. There are several homebuilt designs that
don't cost a bundle to build. And of course the more you can do yourself the
cheaper it will be. So a person may not be able to invest alot of money into
a airplane. With alot smaller amount of cash and much more time, if a
person wants to they will have an airplane
Guess it all depends on how bad you want something! Of course if you
make 6 or 7 bucks an hour and have a few mouths to feed, it will be very
very difficult . Which is probably close to what innkeepers make here in
small motels unless they are the owners

Patrick
student SPL
aircraft structural mech

Jose wrote:

Pretend for a moment that you didn't own a plane, and could not (for any
number of reasons), so that each flight was governed by the four hour
per day minimum, and whenever you wanted to schedule it, you rolled a
die every day to see if somebody else already booked it. Figure on it
being available for a week long flight maybe once or twice a year,
booked a month in advance. Figure also that you worked 9-5 M-F as an
employee, with one two-week vacation.

Or just pretend that you manage to buy a Warrior-class aircraft. You've got that
9-5. So does your wife. You scheduled a week's vacation two months ago; it
starts August 20. If you aren't back at work on August 29, either you or your
wife (or both) may lose your job. Do you gamble your job, house, plane, etc. on
the weather, or do you start packing the car?

George Patterson
Give a person a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a person to
use the Internet and he won't bother you for weeks.