#learningtofly

Before the last post here I was a little disappointed that I hadn’t put anything up for about a month or so, after promising to post “regularly”... well, it’s probably best I wasn’t holding myself to that because it’s now 2018, nearly three years later. Woo, consistency. I actually had another blog for a while with some pictures of an electric car, and a mongrel Ikea desk design that worked pretty well, but it was self-hosted and I got bored patching it, so it’s gone to blog heaven now.

I’ve recently started learning to fly - having spent the best part of 30 years with my head in the clouds (and about 16 years playing PC flight simulators) I was convinced to actually finally go for it through encouragement and vouchers for intro lessons from Kat, and discovering a bunch of Youtube channels about aviation for reasons other than airline flying (Flightchops and Matt Guthmiller being the main culprits). Turns out I’m not completely insane, although maybe just a little in an Irish context.

It started with some email back-and-forth with NFC in Weston, and a chat over coffee with one of the instructors there about what’s involved, as well as a class 2 medical exam in a clinic in town. I’ve done two lessons (didn’t get to fly during one of them, damn Irish weather, but poked and prodded at the plane and still learned a lot), and really am still just at the start of the whole process.

2 and three-whole-quarter hours logged in that blue book so far!

My plan is, roughly, get my PPL, fly for fun a little on rental aircraft rates (there’s a bunch of places in Ireland you can visit in a little aeroplane that you could definitely get to by other means, but flying there is just more fun), build some hours in my logbook, maybe look at getting an instrument rating and one or two longer trips, and just be happy with it as a hobby. An insanely expensive and almost impossible to fund hobby, but a hobby nonetheless.

I have no real interest in a commercial licence right now, although who knows a few years down the line. I’m pretty certain I won’t ever want to go the airline pilot route, but there might be other options when I start getting old and jaded about computers.

Of course it might not work out at all (it costs a tonne and there are plenty of exams and tests to screw up along the way) but at least I can say I’ve tried it.

This lovely horse took me on my last lesson - everything’s even still attached.

So far I’m enjoying the learning curve. From the outside it kind of seems like it should be like a more intense version of learning to drive, but it feels more like a college course with all the theory (between studying the book and the classroom sessions, I’ve only spent maybe 10% of the time investment so far actually in the cockpit). And the officlal theory part hasn’t even actually started yet, there are a few weeks of structured pre-exam ground school lessons to do too.