Gloom

I do not get this argument. I would like to understand it. But why is
the little podunk airport important?

snip

Just curious: How many long cross-country flights have you made with
your family?

me, none. If you remember from a bygone thread, my wife won't fly w/ me.

I believe this is why you see so little utility in small-town
airports. Until you've been on a bunch of long cross-country flights
with your family, and flown into small-town America from coast to
coast, it's really hard to appreciate their essential nature.

Most of our trips utilize these smaller, less used airports, and it is
always a delight to visit them. This is where "real" America still
exists, and their existence allows us, as pilots, to drop in almost
anywhere across this vast continent.

All of this is, of course, aside from all the vital financial aid your
airport brings to your community. Everything from "Flight for Life"
helicopters, to charters, to little guys like us think of your airport
as your "Front Door" -- and, quite frankly, we don't go to towns that
don't have airports.

Of course, if the pilot community continues to dwindle, there won't be
enough of us flying to bring $$$ into those small towns, and those
airports will simply close. And THEN flying in America will really
have lost it's merit.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

This is one of the reasons I've been married to the same lady for going on
22 years. She also thought the t-shirt I picked up that said, "My Ex Wanted
Me To Quit Flying" was funny.

Amen, brother. Mary and I just celebrated our 22nd anniversary while
at the Cherokee fly-in. Neither of us could have picked a better way
to celebrate our big day.

She flew in, I flew out.

:-)
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

The cost of money, or of having it tied up, and the cost of storage seem to
be the two biggest problems for the owners personally known to me. OTOH,
fuel seems to be more of a verbalized annoyance--which converts readily to a
hamberger (or omelet, depending on the time of day) flight to an airport
with less expensive fuel.

You will notice one thing about successful aircraft owners. (By
"successful" I mean that they actually FLY their planes often.)

They do not consider the cost of ownership in their equations at all.
They have factored the expense of purchasing, storing, and maintaining
their aircraft into their budgets, after which they regard it as a
zero-cost affair, only considering fuel as the cost of flying.

It's a form of mental illness, really, but it works.

:-)

The LEAST successful owners I know are the ones who run spreadsheets
on the "cost of money" and fixed expenses, because they are the ones
who constantly fret over the fact that they could have bought a nice
vacation home at the lake, rather than an airplane.

Which is the reason you'll hear so many of us bitching about the
increased cost of fuel so loudly. It's the only expense we really
"see" anymore.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Just how much is an "entry level" cherokee?

dont give me just a dollar price, give me a percentage of a persons
average income versus 20 years ago.

I don't know an average person's income versus 20 years ago, but I do
know that you can buy a nice Cherokee 140 for about $30K.

That's less than my Ford Econoline van cost new, so I don't think it's
an outrageous expense nowadays.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

because they are the ones
who constantly fret over the fact that they could have bought a nice
vacation home at the lake, rather than an airplane.

.... a vacation home they probably use two weeks out of the year.

Jose
--
You can choose whom to befriend, but you cannot choose whom to love.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Gary writes:

Joking, no. Wrong, yes.

I hope I'm wrong. But remember that a key driver of serious simulation is a
lack of resources needed to fly for real, and so the more people who cannot
fly for real, the more who will resort to simulators. And simulation is doing
very well, even if real GA is not.

El Maximo writes:

I find it interesting that you are the only poster here who thinks a
simulator can replace primary flight instruction.

Most people here are pretty set in their ways.

If all of your aviation is in a simulator, you don't need any other
instruction. And if you lose your medical (or if any one of a hundred other
things come up to impede your ability to fly for real), that's where all your
aviation is going to be.

Skylune writes:

Sometimes, fearful Americans move to France, where they receive
coddling and can play video games all day on their computer.

Not really. Fearful people don't move at all. They just watch CNN and fear
terrorists who don't exist, and they sign away their freedoms one after
another in the hope that they'll be more secure. Eventually they end up
neither secure nor free.

Mxsmanic wrote in
:

Skylune writes:

Sometimes, fearful Americans move to France, where they receive
coddling and can play video games all day on their computer.

Not really. Fearful people don't move at all.

Like you


Bertie

Mxsmanic wrote in
:

Gary writes:

Joking, no. Wrong, yes.

I hope I'm wrong. But remember that a key driver of serious
simulation is a lack of resources needed to fly for real,

Oxymoron. here's no such thng as Serious simulation,

Fjukwit.


Bertie