{"id":983,"date":"2012-12-06T20:07:24","date_gmt":"2012-12-07T04:07:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.mechadigital.net\/?p=983"},"modified":"2021-08-26T20:37:59","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T20:37:59","slug":"why-we-fly-and-why-we-quit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/why-we-fly-and-why-we-quit\/","title":{"rendered":"#41 Why We Fly (and Why We Quit)"},"content":{"rendered":"

General aviation sure does encompass a \"\"<\/a>lot of different flying activities.\u00a0 But I\u2019ve always been somewhat morbidly fascinated by only one of them.\u00a0 And that one is the persistence of some folks to simply fly very conservatively from one place to another when weather permits and to do only that.\u00a0 They never deviate from the type of flying they learned in primary training.\u00a0 They always use a written checklist in a simple airplane and they avoid like the plague any maneuvering flight beyond some pretty tightly defined and \u201csafe\u201d parameters.\u00a0 I have a hunch that this kind of flying produces an ennui which eventually leads to these fliers to hanging it up.\u00a0 After all, why should you continue with a fairly boring activity which costs you a fortune and\u00a0doesn’t\u00a0give you much bang for your buck?<\/p>\n

I meet a lot of people who are former pilots.\u00a0 A lot of them.\u00a0 They all hold a pilot certificate and none of them have flown for years.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, what\u2019s the answer,\u201d you may ask. Well, there may not be an answer.\u00a0 After all, folks gotta do what folks gotta do.\u00a0 I have no responsibility to try to \u201csave\u201d former fliers.\u00a0 I do, however, have a theory that many of these folks could<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

salvage the time, energy and money they spent to earn that right to fly.\u00a0 Are you dying to know what it is?\u00a0 Well, okay.\u00a0 Yuh ready?\u00a0 Acro and soaring.\u00a0 Yup, flying aerobatics and checking out in a sailplane.\u00a0 I firmly believe that those two activities\u00a0can provide a level of stimulation that just can\u2019t be found in any other kind of flying.\u00a0 And I don\u2019t want to disappoint any of my readers by suggesting that they pursue either of these activities the way that some advocates might like them to.\u00a0 No, this may shock you, but I\u2019m not a big fan of the conventional pursuit of either aerobatics or soaring<\/p>\n

In the case of aerobatics, I don\u2019t think that competition is a worthwhile goal.\u00a0 Why not simply practice the maneuvers that give you pleasure and just work on mastering those while working on your own ability to judge \u201cG\u201d force and to manage the energy of the airplane.\u00a0 Naturally, you\u2019ll want to find a good instructor and a proper airplane in which to practice.\u00a0 It\u2019s pretty hard to beat the Citabria and Decathlon for affordable acro.<\/p>\n

Soaring robs the pilot of dependence on the engine.\u00a0 It makes him understand the air through which he flies.\u00a0 It offers the challenge of simply staying aloft.\u00a0 Now that\u2019s a kick in the pants for a lot of us. \u00a0You can get soloed in a glider at lots of soaring centers and you can find instructors you like there. \u00a0Lots of glider people<\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0are into gadgets and\u00a0gizmos\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019m not.\u00a0 My advice is to learn the fundamentals without becoming dependent on technology.\u00a0 And if you\u2019re a man who expects his wife to chase him on cross countries, you\u2019d better make sure that she shares your enthusiasm for that arrangement.\u00a0 If you\u2019re a woman, you\u2019ll probably be better at this than most of the men, so don\u2019t put up with any of their crap.<\/p>\n

So there you go.\u00a0 Acro and soaring.\u00a0 Two activities which I think share a purity and closeness to the physics that can make our flying so much fun and challenging.\u00a0 Glad I could help.<\/p>\n

Now go out there and swoop!<\/p>\n

\u00a0Brian<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I meet a lot of people who are former pilots. A lot of them. They all hold a pilot certificate and none of them have flown for years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":995,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/983"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}