Would like to learn to fly, but...

[[email protected]]

Having become dangerously addicted to MS Flight Simulator, I am
starting to develop a hankering to learn to fly for real. However I'm
having a bit of trouble reconciling this desire with my concern about
CO2 emissions and climate change. My wife and I tend to buy reasonably
fuel efficient cars and are soon to have a wind turbine installed on
our house, so to start burning aviation fuel just for fun would seem
like a bit of a step in the wrong direction.

Can anyone provide any insights to help me allay these concerns? I
don't even know how much fuel the average light aircraft consumes or
how much CO2 it puts out into the atmosphere. Is it comparable to a
car or is it a lot more? (My car gets about 50mpg, but then I spend a
lot more time driving it than I could ever afford to spend flying a
plane.)

Thanks in advance,
Colin

[Ron Hardin]

wrote:
>
> Having become dangerously addicted to MS Flight Simulator, I am
> starting to develop a hankering to learn to fly for real. However I'm
> having a bit of trouble reconciling this desire with my concern about
> CO2 emissions and climate change. My wife and I tend to buy reasonably
> fuel efficient cars and are soon to have a wind turbine installed on
> our house, so to start burning aviation fuel just for fun would seem
> like a bit of a step in the wrong direction.
>
> Can anyone provide any insights to help me allay these concerns? I
> don't even know how much fuel the average light aircraft consumes or
> how much CO2 it puts out into the atmosphere. Is it comparable to a
> car or is it a lot more? (My car gets about 50mpg, but then I spend a
> lot more time driving it than I could ever afford to spend flying a
> plane.)
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Colin

Stay with the flight simulator. It's more fun, and it's cheaper (!).
Your kidneys don't freeze, you don't wind up eating FBO airport food,
and you can go anywhere anytime, and at jet speeds, instead of being
passed by cars on the interstates.
--
Ron Hardin


On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.

[Christopher Brian Colohan]

writes:
> Having become dangerously addicted to MS Flight Simulator, I am
> starting to develop a hankering to learn to fly for real. However I'm
> having a bit of trouble reconciling this desire with my concern about
> CO2 emissions and climate change. My wife and I tend to buy reasonably
> fuel efficient cars and are soon to have a wind turbine installed on
> our house, so to start burning aviation fuel just for fun would seem
> like a bit of a step in the wrong direction.
>
> Can anyone provide any insights to help me allay these concerns? I
> don't even know how much fuel the average light aircraft consumes or
> how much CO2 it puts out into the atmosphere. Is it comparable to a
> car or is it a lot more? (My car gets about 50mpg, but then I spend a
> lot more time driving it than I could ever afford to spend flying a
> plane.)

Sorry to say, but most small airplanes burn more fuel than your car.
Also, due to their older engine design, most burn leaded fuel.

One datapoint: the plane I am training in, a Piper Tomahawk, burns 6.5
gallons of 100LL fuel per hour, holds two people, and cruises around
110mph. So that is roughly 17mpg. There are more efficient planes
(for example, I think the Diamond Katana burns less gas), and there
are less efficient ones (to overgeneralize, faster == more gas, and
older plane == more gas).

I justify my flying to myself by arguing that I fly many fewer hours
per year than most people drive (I use my bicycle as my main form of
transportation). But it is somewhat hard to make a solid
environmental argument for any form of recreation which burns gas.

Chris

[Chris.Cheney]

wrote in news:1178889791.422239.321860
@o5g2000hsb.googlegroups.com:

> Having become dangerously addicted to MS Flight Simulator,
I am
> starting to develop a hankering to learn to fly for real.
However I'm
> having a bit of trouble reconciling this desire with my
concern about
> CO2 emissions and climate change. My wife and I tend to
buy reasonably
> fuel efficient cars and are soon to have a wind turbine
installed on
> our house, so to start burning aviation fuel just for fun
would seem
> like a bit of a step in the wrong direction.
>
> Can anyone provide any insights to help me allay these
concerns? I
> don't even know how much fuel the average light aircraft
consumes or
> how much CO2 it puts out into the atmosphere. Is it
comparable to a
> car or is it a lot more? (My car gets about 50mpg, but
then I spend a
> lot more time driving it than I could ever afford to spend
flying a
> plane.)
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Colin

Have you considered flying a glider? The flight controls are
identical to powered aircraft but all those relating to the
engine are missing (so they don't distract one from the real
task of flying <G>). Although one typically consumes non-
renewable energy in the launch (by aerotow or winch), after
casting off at perhaps 2000 ft, one uses natural phenomena
(thermals, ridge lift, wave) to keep the force of gravity at
bay.

Have a look at the world gliding records
(http://records.fai.org/gliding/) - you'll probably be
surprised.

There are two downsides: there is no possibility of
performing a go-around if one screws up on the landing and
the weather plays a much larger factor.

[Orval Fairbairn]

In article om>,
wrote:

> Having become dangerously addicted to MS Flight Simulator, I am
> starting to develop a hankering to learn to fly for real. However I'm
> having a bit of trouble reconciling this desire with my concern about
> CO2 emissions and climate change. My wife and I tend to buy reasonably
> fuel efficient cars and are soon to have a wind turbine installed on
> our house, so to start burning aviation fuel just for fun would seem
> like a bit of a step in the wrong direction.
>
> Can anyone provide any insights to help me allay these concerns? I
> don't even know how much fuel the average light aircraft consumes or
> how much CO2 it puts out into the atmosphere. Is it comparable to a
> car or is it a lot more? (My car gets about 50mpg, but then I spend a
> lot more time driving it than I could ever afford to spend flying a
> plane.)
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Colin

Colin.

Go ahead and learn to fly. At the very least, you will discover that
there is a lot of open, wild country out there, which you can see only
from the air. There are some economical homebuilts out there, but you
will have to seek them out.

I am not a fan of man-caused "global warming." Over the last 40 or so
years, the environmentalist community has dithered between "global
cooling" to "global warming."

They have ascribed its cause to man's presence, while conveniently
overlooking the total changes, methods used to obtain data and
assumptions used in their modeling.

I also look at who is making the claims and would have to check for
myself if they declared that the sky is blue and that grass is green. A
lot of old-time leftists had to seek a new cause when their idol, the
Soviet Union, imploded and exposed itself as one of the world's biggest
oppressors and polluters. Environmentalism became their cause, since
capitalism and industry were their natural adversaries.

As for your efforts to save energy, the bottom line is that you are
helping your wallet at the same time, and should continue to do so.

[B A R R Y[_2_]]

Ron Hardin wrote:
>
> Stay with the flight simulator. It's more fun,

Are you a licensed pilot who's kidding, or a wannabe?

[Ron Hardin]

B A R R Y wrote:
>
> Ron Hardin wrote:
> >
> > Stay with the flight simulator. It's more fun,
>
> Are you a licensed pilot who's kidding, or a wannabe?

I have 1200 hours, from many years of flying, age 16 to 30, when
I gave it up out of boredom. ``Here I am at 2500 feet over the
Boonton reservoir again...'' Took up long distance bike riding, in
fact, which then expended the weekends where I had previously been
living in the air.

The flight sim gets rid of all the overhead, and the FAA doesn't mind
you hugging the ground as you skim the mountains inverted in a 737.


--
Ron Hardin


On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.

[Colin Caughie]

> Have you considered flying a glider?

Actually I've been there and done that. I went solo in a glider about 15
years ago, but fairly soon afterwards burned out on it in much the same
way that Ron appears to have done with powered flight. At that point I
switched to hillwalking, which was less weather dependent (if you didn't
mind getting wet) and allowed me to spend the entire day enjoying my
hobby instead of most of it pushing gliders around.

> There are two downsides: there is no possibility of
> performing a go-around if one screws up on the landing and
> the weather plays a much larger factor.

Fortunately never had a problem with landing (but then I never went
cross country, things get a bit different at that point), but living in
Scotland the weather plays an even larger factor than in most places. It
was considered a pretty good day if you managed more than about 10
minutes in the air.

Having said that I'll never forget the day I reached almost 10,000 feet
in wave. That day alone made it worth all the time, money and glider
pushing.

I'd imagined that with powered flight you'd be somewhat less at the
mercy of the weather, but I guess it comes with its own frustrations.
Maybe Ron's right and I should stick to simming. :)

Colin

[B A R R Y]

On Fri, 11 May 2007 18:26:50 GMT, Ron Hardin >
wrote:

>B A R R Y wrote:
>>
>> Ron Hardin wrote:
>> >
>> > Stay with the flight simulator. It's more fun,
>>
>> Are you a licensed pilot who's kidding, or a wannabe?
>
>I have 1200 hours, from many years of flying, age 16 to 30, when
>I gave it up out of boredom. ``Here I am at 2500 feet over the
>Boonton reservoir again...''

Why didn't you move up? Do you have any advanced ratings?

>Took up long distance bike riding, in
>fact, which then expended the weekends where I had previously been
>living in the air.

I do the same, but I fly, too. <G>

>The flight sim gets rid of all the overhead, and the FAA doesn't mind
>you hugging the ground as you skim the mountains inverted in a 737.

No argument on that one.

[Peter R.]

On 5/11/2007 2:26:52 PM, Ron Hardin wrote:

> I have 1200 hours, from many years of flying, age 16 to 30, when
> I gave it up out of boredom.

Two words: Angel Flight

Many have expressed that volunteering for Angel Flight has reinvigorated the
excitement of flying.

--
Peter

[Ron Hardin]

Peter R. wrote:
>
> On 5/11/2007 2:26:52 PM, Ron Hardin wrote:
>
> > I have 1200 hours, from many years of flying, age 16 to 30, when
> > I gave it up out of boredom.
>
> Two words: Angel Flight
>
> Many have expressed that volunteering for Angel Flight has reinvigorated the
> excitement of flying.
>
> --
> Peter

In other words, in fact, mostly it becomes pointless, particularly when compared with
other uses for your time.

Points of contact between actual flying and what the childhood idea of it is, are
very few ; occasionally they meet again, but very infrequently, and in ways hard to
repeat.

Setting some goal is a help in maintaining interest. In my own case, I got really,
really good at gusty crosswind landings, and incredibly steep slip-to-landing approaches
when that wasn't available. But you run out of things you can perfect without killing
yourself, eventually.

Ham radio operators have the same burnout. The surviving ones often imagine themselves
serving in some vastly important communications role, which is hard for me to imagine but
they convince themselves, which is all that counts, I guess.

I happened to find that long distance bike riding was a better use of weekend time -
after a couple hundred miles on a weekend, which was typical, you actually feel you've
been somewhere.

Adding things up, I've accumulated about 100,000 miles flying and 300,000 miles biking.
The biking has a sort of build-in goal that you can commute to work with it, and do
every chore, just about, as well.

Hmm.. http://home.att.net/~rhhardin4/odyssy9.jpg

--
Ron Hardin


On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.

[Thomas Borchert]

> However I'm
> having a bit of trouble reconciling this desire with my concern about
> CO2 emissions and climate change.
>

There are many recreational activities that probably have a smaller CO2
footprint. However, these things are awfully hard to calculate through
to the end. And then there are all other kinds of other possibly
negative impacts for any human activity: pollution with other stuff,
somehow indirectly furthering poverty in Africa, exploiting cheap labor
in India or China, whatever.

In the end, if you think it through, all recreational activities are
superfluous with regard to ecology. Where do you want to stop? That's
something only you can decide.

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)

[Gene Seibel]

On May 11, 8:23 am, wrote:
> Having become dangerously addicted to MS Flight Simulator, I am
> starting to develop a hankering to learn to fly for real. However I'm
> having a bit of trouble reconciling this desire with my concern about
> CO2 emissions and climate change. My wife and I tend to buy reasonably
> fuel efficient cars and are soon to have a wind turbine installed on
> our house, so to start burning aviation fuel just for fun would seem
> like a bit of a step in the wrong direction.
>
> Can anyone provide any insights to help me allay these concerns? I
> don't even know how much fuel the average light aircraft consumes or
> how much CO2 it puts out into the atmosphere. Is it comparable to a
> car or is it a lot more? (My car gets about 50mpg, but then I spend a
> lot more time driving it than I could ever afford to spend flying a
> plane.)
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Colin