Student Drop-Out Rates...why?

Aviation doesn't appeal to many of those who
can afford it.

WHY?

For the same reason that fishing doesn't.

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.

Jay Honeck wrote:
Amen. After my recent high blood pressure scare, I lost 25 pounds. (And
I've been working out regularly for several years.)

I gave blood this past Monday.
When the nurse took my bp for the screening, it was 150/84.
I had been drinking ice tea all morning and had just walked 1/4-mile to
the church where the blood drive was.

On Wed, 24 Aug 2005 21:34:49 GMT, "Jay Honeck"
wrote:

It's not crude price increases which are causing the increase in oil
industry profits lately. It's world demand for refined product (we have
to import actual gasoline now, too), and limited refinery capacity in
this country -- a supply-demand problem. The gov't could easily cause
refineries to be built with changes in environmental regulations, so the
cause of the "windfall profits" is essentially -- our gov't!

Well said.

We are dangerously low on refinery capacity, and current EPA regulations
make it essentially impossible to build any more in the U.S.

It's insane, but it's the law.

Nah. It's the Nimbys. Refineries lower property values. I like W's
suggestion to use old military bases for refineries. They're already
superfund sites.

Don
(Onizuka AFB's shutting according to this morning's news. Too small
for a refinery, though. I hope that eventually Moffet winds up as a
reliever and we can sneak in there when Palo Alto closes. We need to
keep Moffet operational for a few more years until the companies
around here start to need parking for their VLJs.).

Fair enough - you didn't mention an autopilot. But I can't concieve of
one of these being marketed without one.

I'm thinking full time wing leveler. Mooney used to do that. You had
to press a button to turn. I would add GPSS to it, and there you are.

Lots of present day pilots swear by George already.

Yup. Some of them are airline pilots. The Airbus is a tribute to this
sort of thinking. At 400 ft the autopilot goes on, and MAYBE it gets
disconnected on short final.

Don't confuse "simple" with "simplistic". It would most certainly NOT
reduce regulation

Yes it would. Once people with money started flying in quantity, they
simply would not tolerate the heavy-handedness of the FAA and all its
rules. Too many of them would have the money to hire lawyers, the
connections to have the DOT inspector general investigate the FAA (and
we know that historically the FAA can't stand that sort of scrutiny -
too many skeletons in those closets), and pretty soon the FAA would
have to back off. Way off. Not because flying would get safer
(although with some serious technology it might - cars have) but
because numbers mean political clout.

Motorcycles are just as dangerous as GA, and how much regulation is
there on them?

Even if they don't fail much, with lots of them out there, they will
fail often enough to make ATC into AAA.

No doubt. They will deal. Or they will get outsourced to LockMar and
their replacements will deal. And pilots will pay $100/year for AAA (I
mean ATC) services.

Even if they never fail, I don't see the average joe who can't
program their VCR making head or tail out of what it does when it dishes
out an "interface surprise"

The VCR was a perfect example of a lousy UI. That's why people STILL
can't program them. No need, though. We now have TiVo, and everyone
can use it.

Michael

On Wed, 24 Aug 2005 21:34:49 GMT, "Jay Honeck"
wrote in
ZJ5Pe.62754$084.27147@attbi_s22::


We are dangerously low on refinery capacity, and current EPA regulations
make it essentially impossible to build any more in the U.S.

It's insane, but it's the law.

So you wouldn't have any problem with a new refinery coming on-line up
wind of your abode?

Earl Grieda wrote:
wrote in message
oups.com...

..snip

I come from a boating family and it's enlightening to compare the two.
Boating is unregulated and almost solely recreational. Flying is
heavily regulated and has utility as a means of transportation.

Boats might be a source of fun, but they can be, and are, used for
transportation. Come visit the Chesapeake Bay area and you will see plenty
of boats out for fun, while also being used to go somewhere.

This is a marginal case. The number of trips in which a boat can beat a
car are very limited. You can drive from anywhere on the Connecticut
coast to Newport RI faster than you can go by anything short of a
cigarette boat. If you want to go across the Sound, however, even a 6kt
sailboat can beat a car that has to cover 10x the distance. Geography
defines it.

Likewise, while no one would call a 172 a traveling airplane, I get a
lot of utility out of mine living in Boston. In the summer you can do
brunch on the Vineyard, then go shopping in Nantucket, and be back in
time for dinner. Rutland, VT is ~100nm as the crow flies or 150nm by
road, so you can beat a car there door-to-door if the winds aren't too
bad. But we're still just going next door, relatively speaking.

At 150 knots, Montreal becomes a day trip from Boston. At 180-200, you
fly to Florida on Friday afternoon and come back Sunday. This is the
kind of travel capability that really gets people excited. It's also
one that in the current system demands a relatively large amount of
pilot skill, whereas steering a boat across the Chesapeake is something
most 12-year-olds could do.

-cwk.

-cwk.

Once people with money started flying in quantity, they
simply would not tolerate the heavy-handedness of the
FAA and all its rules.

I don't see that happening to the conclusion you draw. People with
money are =already= flying in quantity, just not as pilots. Air taxi
rules don't seem to have been affected.

Motorcycles are just as dangerous as GA, and how much regulation is
there on them?

Motorcycles are not as dangerous to other people as GA.

The VCR was a perfect example of a lousy UI.

It has been superseded by the GPS.

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.

Larry Dighera wrote:

Oh yeah. That was the year he was impeached, wasn't it.

Nixon was never impeached.

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.

George Patterson wrote:
wrote:

The real problem we should focus on are people who get their license
but then become inactive. There's no shortage of these, and they are
low-hanging fruit.

Ok. You help me find a job within an hour's drive of my home that requires less
than 60 hours a week and pays at least 60K a year (much more if I have to
commute to Manhattan). Preferably involving computers, since that's what my MS
is in. I'll be flying again soon after I find that job.

Move out of New Jersey. Work as a consultant and you can live anywhere
you can get a high-speed internet connection. No commute necessary and
real estate costs a lot less. I hire developers and sales people almost
without regard to location these days. If you're good, you can probably
do more than 60k and no job really offers security anymore unless it's
for the gummint.

On second thought, maybe these people don't have to be attracted back into
actively participating in aviation. As I understand it, Jay's main issue is that
we need more flyers to allow us to apply more political pressure. It is to be
hoped that that pressure will prevent airport closings and harsh restrictions.
With a few exceptions, most former aviators are likely to be friendly to our cause.

True, but former aviators do not help to keep small airports, FBOs, and
mechanics from closing for lack of business.

-cwk.

Bob Noel wrote:
In article . com,
wrote:

IMHO this is the wrong problem to focus on solving. Up through solo,
flying is all fun and no work. Then you get into the written test and
all the crap to prepare for the checkride. Now it's a chore. I'll bet
getting rid of the written would reduce the attrition rate by at least
25%, perhaps more, but it won't happen anytime soon.

I guess that depends on the order in which the student does things.
I passed my written and had my medical before the first lesson.

Planning ahead helps but my point stands. As a busy person, a flying
lesson was recreation that I looked forward to. Studying for the
written was just a PITA. It cost me at least 6 months, and I'm pretty
sure it put a friend of mine on ice who'd made it to unsupervised solo.
He just didn't have the time to get around to it, and then life got
crazy and he lost track. That was 2 years ago and it will probably be 2
more before he can start again, assuming he does. The medical is a
nuisance but if you don't need a special issuance it takes a lot less
time.

-cwk.