GA is priceless

Doug Spencer writes:

Affirmative. You can fly anywhere in the US with a sport pilot
certificate. You're restricted to day and VFR conditions, but otherwise
it's pretty much the same as the private.

Daytime and VFR would be quite a chafing restriction for me. Part of
the fascination of aviation for me is flying at night and in IMC.
Carefully watching and adjusting instruments for an hour or two in
zero visibility and then seeing the runway magically materialize
seconds before you land is always a fun experience.

The drivers license for sport pilot is the medical certificate. If you
lose your drivers license, you also lose your medical ability to fly
sport pilot. Why should private and recreational be different?

I don't know ... why? The driver's license notion sounds fine to me.

The pilot is the primary safety device installed in a plane, and
there's no 100% effective safety device, but the safety cage design,
energy absorbing construction, engine designed to break away in a
crash, 39kt stall speed, and ballistic parachute sure improve the odds.

As long as the pilot understands that they just improve the odds _if_
there is an accident, fine. But a lot of people take the next step
and unjustifiably assume that they can be less careful because they
have all the gadgets to keep them alive in case they do something
stupid.

Being the aeronautical expert you think you are, you have undoubtedly
seen Rod Machado's statement on energy dissipation in an airplane crash ...

No, but I've done the calculations, which are straightforward.

... he states "The minimum distance you can travel and
stay under 9 Gs when you land at 50 knots is 12.8 feet. If you travel
at least that far before coming to a stop, the cockpit should not break
apart."

A well-braced person in normal health can withstand 46 Gs without
permanent sequelae.

The real key is the integration of acceleration and time. Extremely
high accelerations are fine if they are of short duration. Lower
accelerations can be deadly if sustained (like redout). Surviving in
an accident involves limiting the peak accelerations and their
durations. Most of these peak accelerations occur when a human body
continues to move unrestrained after the compartment it is in stops;
when it hits the stopped compartment, the short-term accelerations are
much higher than they would have been if the body had moved with the
compartment as a single unit.

This is the theory behind seatbelts and harnesses. It works for any
type of vehicle.

Considering the FlightDesign CT is presently one of the most expensive
light sport planes, as well as one of the best selling, the market
apparently disagrees with you.

Perhaps it has snob appeal.

--
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Mxsmanic wrote:
Doug Spencer writes:

Considering the FlightDesign CT is presently one of the most expensive
light sport planes, as well as one of the best selling, the market
apparently disagrees with you.

Perhaps it has snob appeal.

--

Heh. Know what a Flight Design CT looks like? Not much snob appeal
there. :)

My teenage daughter thinks it's "cute".

That being said, the next brand new airplane I buy will be a CT. My big
iron, IFR days (KC135) are long behind me, and the CT fits my mission
profile nowadays, which is pretty much day VFR flying around Montana.
If I had 90 large ones laying around I'd buy one in a heartbeat.

--Walt
Bozeman, Montana

There is simply NO reason for GA flight training to be so complex --
period. Unless you intend to move onto the airlines, or fly charters,
you simply do not need to learn much of what is in the current flight
training syllabus.

That is probably the most ridiculous statement I've heard all year.

Ok, the year is new. But still... Flying is incredibly easy if nothing
goes wrong. "Push, the houses get bigger. Pull, the houses get
smaller". The training is needed for the third part: "Keep pulling,
the houses get bigger again". There is a lot to learn in aviation if
you want to know how to stay safe (and actually succeed). It's easy
once you know it (and it's also easy to forget if you don't use it).
And it's not all that difficult =to= learn it in the first place. I
don't really see what it is that you think is "so complex" about flight
training. After all, you =are= maneuvering in three dimensions,
balancing on nothing more than a blast of air whose properties are not
intuitive, and there is no pause button.

We need more pilots, and we need more aircraft owners --
and we need them NOW.

While attractive, and there is some truth to it, it is as senseless as
"we have to do =something=" in justification for the FRZ, cops and metal
detectors in schools, and patrolling the borders with UAVs.

Aviation is {fill in wonderful phrase} and I'm glad that you get to live
that to the fullest. I am somewhat envious, because even though I also
love to fly, I don't do it as much as I might like to. There are many
reasons for that; it might be useful to explore them as a proxy for why
non-pilots don't fly airplanes.

1: Although cloud dancing is fun, in and of itself, it's not the kind of
fun I would be drawn to do all the time, just for the fun value of
boring holes in the sky. That said, it is sometimes just =awesome=, and
I wouldn't miss it for (most of) the world.

2: It is expensive. It costs me on the order of a hundred dollars an
hour. It costs you the same, if you add it all up (though you probably
get the government to pick up some of the tab). So, with a finite
supply of money, I do have to balance how much of this kind of fun I
want to pursue, at the expense of that kind of fun I could be having.

3: It's usually not as useful as a car. Most of my trips are five to
twenty miles. I have to drive that far just to get to the airport;
flying twenty miles to go get groceries is not very practical where I
live. If I had to choose between a car and a plane, the car is far more
useful overall.

4: I love to share my love of flying with others. But this depends on a
supply of others who are willing and able. Schedules get in the way;
most of the people I come in contact with are not on vacation. I know
several people who are dying to get in the cockpit with me, and we still
haven't been able to arrange a ride.

5: The =usefulness= of aviation depends on having a place to go. I
suspect that most such places are invented as an excuse to fly. That's
fine; I do the same thing myself, but a $100 hamburger doesn't make the
airplane useful, it makes it entertaining. See #1 above. I don't go
places often for which an airplane is a significantly better way to get
there (but when I do, it is a boon). Recent trips (from Connecticut)
have included Georgia, Delaware, Ohio, and soon, Kentucky. But trips
like this don't come up all that often, especially since they usually
involve several days or weeks at the destination.

6: Weather is a factor too, especially in the Northeast. Although most
trips can be completed, even VFR, a schedule cannot necessarily be
relied upon. As you point out, flexibility is necessary, and sometimes
that is not an option.

Not everyone is like you. Not everyone lives next to the airport, owns
their own business, has a wife that flies, and lives in the middle of
the country (a few hours flight from most places). Just pretend for a
moment that you were someone else, say, living in NYC, working in an
office in Westchester, with most of your travel being to the DC area.
How practical would aviation be to you in that situation?

Sure, you would quit your job and open an aviation themed hotel in the
midwest instead doing that, but that's not the point. If everybody did
that, nobody would staff your hotel, deliver your goods, or make the
fuel you fly with. If you pretend you =can't= change the scenario,
maybe you'll understand that real life isn't just living in Iowa running
a business. There are other people with =real= lives that are
different, and have to deal with those differences.

Aviation is a distant fifth to those differences.

Jose


--
He who laughs, lasts.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

I'd say there is probably more complexity in a modern elevator than the
average general aviation aircraft.

The average GA aircraft has a (complex) pilot doing (relatively complex)
tasks to make it fly. If you want something to =be= simple to operate,
it is likely to be complex underneath.

Jose
--
He who laughs, lasts.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Walt writes:

That being said, the next brand new airplane I buy will be a CT. My big
iron, IFR days (KC135) are long behind me, and the CT fits my mission
profile nowadays, which is pretty much day VFR flying around Montana.
If I had 90 large ones laying around I'd buy one in a heartbeat.

If you had the means, would you go out and buy some big iron to fly,
or would you still stick with a small aircraft? Do you miss flying
large aircraft?

--
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Mxsmanic wrote:
Walt writes:

That being said, the next brand new airplane I buy will be a CT. My big
iron, IFR days (KC135) are long behind me, and the CT fits my mission
profile nowadays, which is pretty much day VFR flying around Montana.
If I had 90 large ones laying around I'd buy one in a heartbeat.

If you had the means, would you go out and buy some big iron to fly,
or would you still stick with a small aircraft? Do you miss flying
large aircraft?

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.

Miss it? In a way. But probably not in the way that you may think.
People on this list who have flown in the military probably know what I
mean. And, I have two good friends, both retired, who flew 757's and
747's for an airline. After a day of flying we have fun talking about
those days over a few beers. But, one flies a Huskie and the other
flies a restored Waco. THAT is flying.

But, fly those big things for fun? No. If I had the means I'd still be
flying a small aircraft.

--Walt

Is this an admission that you can't stay several minutes ahead of your plane?
You'd better let your wife do the flying from now on.

Ouch. That's low... ;-)

The point is, you don't have to stay that far ahead of any plane moving
at 130 knots. When you're moving at 250 knots, however, in a plane the
size of a 747, you make tiny little movements that make your aircraft
move to a spot in the sky a full minute or three ahead.

This is why simmers trying to land a 747 (myself included) usually
crash. We're trying to raise a wingtip with abrupt turns of the yoke
(as we would in a Cherokee, for example) -- and that just doesn't work
in an aircraft the size of a destroyer.

Our pro pilot NEVER made a motion that you could even see, yet the 747
ended up greasing the runway. It was fun to watch.

And, BTW, if you ever set up that little toy of yours to run Falcon 4.0, I'd be
happy to link up and blow you out of the sky in a few dogfights. In my small
circle of F-16 gamers around the world, I've become the "one to beat"
lately.(small, shameless brag)

Cool! I've not played Falcon since version 3.0 (and quickly discovered
that it is so complex that you can't play it casually), but I've heard
4.0 is THE combat sim to have.

I've fought the urge to put any combat sims on the Kiwi, simply because
I'm trying to emphasize the educational aspects of it -- but eventually
I'll have to give into the urge. (I let my son install "Need for Speed
- Most Wanted", the latest-greatest racing sim, and it's pretty
awesome...!)

But I still think that in a real F-16, my real experience in real planes would
serve me better than all the time I've spent shooting down other gamers
in Falcon 4.0.

Depends again on how "real" your flight controls are in the sim. If
you have emulated a REAL F-16, your sim time will serve you well. If
you're "flying" with a keyboard, it won't help you at all.
--
Jay Honeck
Owner/Innkeeper
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Nomen Nescio writes:

Then I realized that you confused an "ultralight" with a "hang glider".

I don't see any confusion. Experience with an ultralight is almost as
worthless in the scenario described.

All those are available with a quick look in the manual.

In that case, he can learn to fly with a quick look in the manual, and
he doesn't even need the sim.

I've flown the 747 in FS9, also. I've even done an aerobatic routine
with the 747 that would be VERY impressive if performed in the real
thing (picture a 747 doing a loop and leveling out 150 ft over the runway).

Why did you do that?

You've seen the results of an experienced 747 pilot playing a game.
Do you really think you'd get similar results if you took an experienced
"gamer" and put them in a real 747?

The results would be quite close.

If someone can't figure out how to tune a radio, they should be kept on
a leash.

Why do so many people need to be shown how to do it, then?

Is this an admission that you can't stay several minutes ahead of your plane?

Minutes? I'd be more tempted to think in terms of seconds in most
situations.

And, BTW, if you ever set up that little toy of yours to run Falcon 4.0, I'd be
happy to link up and blow you out of the sky in a few dogfights.

Lots of thrill-seeking and aggressive behavior there. Hmm.

In my small circle of F-16 gamers around the world, I've become the
"one to beat" lately.

What is the attraction to flying an F-16?

But I still think that in a real F-16, my real experience in real planes would
serve me better than all the time I've spent shooting down other gamers
in Falcon 4.0.

I don't know. Sensations are more important in fighters and aerobatic
aircraft, but there are still other factors, particularly for
fighters. And I don't think that any other aircraft you've flown has
caused you to black out.

--
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In article ,
Nomen Nescio wrote:

But I still think that in a real F-16, my real experience in real planes would
serve me better than all the time I've spent shooting down other gamers
in Falcon 4.0.

1) How do you link falcon 4 over the internet?
I would like to do that.

2) Something the home computers will not simulate is the actual control
feel and mass/inertia effect of the actual aircrafat or full motion
military sims. So, while you may be able to "fly" your home computer
simulator with your choice of input devices, you would be "toast" in the
real thing. It is easy to sit in front of you home computer and "fly"
1-g maneuvers throughout the envelope, and quite another to pull
high-g's repetitively while jinking in the real thing while looking back
over your shoulder for the guy(s) trying to get you.

In article om,
"Walt" wrote:

Mxsmanic wrote:
Walt writes:

That being said, the next brand new airplane I buy will be a CT. My big
iron, IFR days (KC135) are long behind me, and the CT fits my mission
profile nowadays, which is pretty much day VFR flying around Montana.
If I had 90 large ones laying around I'd buy one in a heartbeat.

If you had the means, would you go out and buy some big iron to fly,
or would you still stick with a small aircraft? Do you miss flying
large aircraft?

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.

Miss it? In a way. But probably not in the way that you may think.
People on this list who have flown in the military probably know what I
mean. And, I have two good friends, both retired, who flew 757's and
747's for an airline. After a day of flying we have fun talking about
those days over a few beers. But, one flies a Huskie and the other
flies a restored Waco. THAT is flying.

But, fly those big things for fun? No. If I had the means I'd still be
flying a small aircraft.

--Walt

A local friend of mine retired from United as #1 bid. He now flies a
RV-8 and a Baron and says that he never realized how much he hated the
airline job! He is having a ball!