At last, the truth...

The beauty of getting too old to fly and not pass the physical means
that I will be in my prime for competitive target shooting.
No other sport favors a person with a slow pulse, little to no movement,
and corrective lenses (telescopic sights)!

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

"Jay Honeck" wrote:

This seemingly innocent incident scared him so badly that he walked into
the FBO, sat down with his instructor, and told him he was through.

New pilot anxiety is pretty common, I suspect. I felt it to a lesser extent
myself for the first couple of hundred hours I flew, and only my extreme
addiction to flying kept me going long enough to get over it. Posters in
r.a.student mention it fairly often, too.

An airplane nut I know quit training without any scary incident to nudge him
out of the cockpit. He said he was filled with dread every time he walked
into the FBO for a lesson; nothing he could put his finger on, just general
fear. Another acquaintence completed his training all the way through the
instrument rating but now never flies. He says the fear he feels takes all
the fun out of it for him; the only reason he finished is that he prides
himself on never quitting anything he starts.

--
Dan
C-172RG at BFM

"Peter Duniho" wrote:
Quite frankly, between my own personal circumstance and what I view as a
trend toward making aviation just not worth the trouble, I have had
thoughts about just giving the whole thing up.

Pete...PETE!

Get a grip, boy! You're talkin' crazy!

The pursuit of flying is a balancing act between at least a dozen
variables; fun, travel, expense, risk, time, spouse, family, medical
etc... Some folks are fortunate to have all variables lined up in
their favor. Others may not be so fortunate. What weight you attach to
each of these variable depends on the individual. Some may quit flying
at the slightest exposure of risk. Others may continue flying even
after a near-fatal accident. Some may quit when the money runs out.
Others may sell their house to continue flying. Some may quit because
their spouse doesn't approve. Others may get a divorce. It is all a
matter of priorities, and there is no right or wrong answer.

I suspect that the person in question did not quit simply because of
the crosswind incident. He must have already had other reasons (even
subconsciously), and the crosswind incident is the one that broke the
camel's back.

Why is GA dying? It is because none of the above variables have moved
in a favorable direction in the past decade. As long as we continue to
put people in Washington who are ignorant about GA, this trend will
continue.

Jay,

Flying is relative expensive in comparison to other hobbies. In
my area, plane rental costs $100-$120/hr. The typical instructor fee is
$40/hr. To learn to fly efficiently, one needs to fly 2 or 3 hrs/week
or 10hrs/month. This means $1500/month. The sport pilot rating will
certainly bring the cost down but it will probably cost few thousand
grands to get the rating. To stay proficient, one should fly at least
once a week. This means at least $600/month.

One does not have to be super rich to fly but one needs to have
some disposable income AND the desire (supported by the family) to
spend a big chunk of it in aviation. One can buy a Ercoupe or a
C150/C152 for less than cost of a new economy car but by the time you
add up the tie-down fee, insurance cost, annual/maintemance cost etc.
and av gas at $3.50-$4/gal, one can easily spend $10K a year.

People are very cost concious when it comes to something that they
do not consider essential to their life. Heck, I just forced Rick to
forego watching CNN & Discovery channel by switching from Family to
Basic Broadcast Cable TV. We saved $35/month. I also disconnected
the second phone line to save $20/month. The total saving will get
pay for av gas for one weekend trip ;-). I was trying to recruit new
members to my rowing club and had a hard time convincing people who had
5-figure salary to spend $300/yr on this great outdoor sport. Then
again, people think that we are so cheap in not having broadband
internet connection and not having a cellphone! I finally broke down
and order a prepaid cellphone for this long trip. The plan we chose
was with Page Plus Cellular (through Verizon) for a monthly cost of
$3/month. I have a $20 prepaid AT&T phone card in my wallet which
still has several hundred minutes after one year.

About the utility of flying, yes, we do visit our friends and
relatives more often ever since owning a plane. However, timewise and
costwise, most of the time it is cheaper and sometimes faster to fly
commercial. We will be flying to Denver to visit our daughter this
weekend. The 3000nm round trip will take probably close to 30hrs. My
estimate operating expense for our C177 is $50/hr. So this will come to
$1500. Last year when we flew to Denver through AA, the round trip
tickets was $170/person. Adding the outrageously expensive parking
cost $19/day at HPN, the total cost was less than $500!

The utility of small plane makes sense when it comes to shorter or
trips with multiple hops. In our last trip,in five days, we visited
4 families in Grand Rapids/Muskegon, MI then flew to Chicago to visit a
sister family and a friend then flew back to Muskegon before flying to
visit my brother's family in Troy on the way back to NY.

It's hard to justify owning a plane or spending $50 just to punch
hole in the sky for an hour. We just have to get people to get hooked
on aviation and they will come up with their own justification. This
is why we try to convince everyone that we know to go up with us for a
fun ride.


Hai Longworth

Happy Dog wrote:

Who knows?Â*Â*DidÂ*anythingÂ*likeÂ*thatÂ*everÂ*happen *toÂ*youÂ*orÂ*anyoneÂ*elseÂ*you
know?Â*Â*DidÂ*youÂ*orÂ*theyÂ*quit?Â*Â*ThoseÂ*areÂ* binaryÂ*questions.

That's an interesting question. I'd a small scare during my PPL training.
It, combined with the love I have of preflighting in the winter, kept me
away from the airport for five months.

But I returned (when it warmed up {8^).

I wonder if the difference is two-fold: Some don't get scared (perhaps until
the hook is set {8^), and others get scared but get back into the seat.

On the other side of it, I can definitely see the "life circumstances" part.
I used to fly at least once a week, even if it was just to poke some holes.
Now, I'm at about once a month. This is from a combination of work and
family (I've a two-month-old at home).

On the upside, I'm in a club. Were I an owner, I'd be seriously concerned.
As a part owner, I trust fellow members to help me make up the slack
grin.

I'd my first son up a few times before the new pregnancy kept my wife out of
the plane (and I'm not yet brave enough to fly w/son and w/o wife {8^). I
expect, when son #2 is suffficiently old, we'll be back to our local trips
(Cape May, Boston, Nantucket, etc.). As they get older, I hope to be
heading further out.

In the meantime, son #1 and I still "play airplane". During these games,
he'll often wear his headset "for the noise".

- Andrew

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:3gULe.251379$x96.181434@attbi_s72...

Most of our guests at the hotel are not pilots. It's simply a matter of
numbers -- there are a LOT more non-pilots than there are pilots, and they
need hotel rooms, too. Many of our guests are "wannabes" or aviation
enthusiasts, however. Although we have found many people who are afraid
of flying, we have yet to meet someone who doesn't like airplanes -- and
those people are our "bread & butter."

An amazing number of guests tell me that they have taken flight lessons,
but quit flying for one reason or another. I have never been able to
understand this phenomenon, since --



I worked for a guy who took a few lessons and then quit. He was proud to
tell everyone how easy it was to fly and also once you do the take and
landing the rest is pretty boring. He liked saying this in front of me
and another pilot. I think it made him feel superior. It was probably
masking a fear he had or perhaps we was truly really bored with flying.

I think another reason that people give it up is that after the first
few lessons it looks like all you are doing is the same thing over and
over without ever seemingly making any progress. The real reason a lot
of people fly is to see stuff from the air and here they are trapped
doing stalls, slow flight, engine out, etc. I wonder if it might be more
useful that the dual XC be moved earlier in the syllabuss to keep people
interested.

Scott

--
--------------------
Scott F. Migaldi
CP-ASEL-IA
N8116B

PADI MI-150972
Join the PADI Instructor Yahoo Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PADI-Instructors/

--------------------

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.

"Andrew Gideon" wrote in

Who knows? Did anything like that ever happen to you or anyone else you
know? Did you or they quit? Those are binary questions.

That's an interesting question. I'd a small scare during my PPL training.
It, combined with the love I have of preflighting in the winter, kept me
away from the airport for five months.

It looks like this is more common than I thought. I suspected that the
scare claim was just an excuse for some more mundane reason. Anyone else
have this experience?

mo