Conversation
 

I had a conversation with a farm kid the other day. He an I own adjoining property and we are working together to pipe my irrigation water under the driveway he was building. It turns out that last year he blew a fortune to get his helicopter private license. His goal was to be a professional but he quit at the private.

He went on to tell me that his instructor one day laid out for him the next ten years of his life as a pilot. He told him that if he was "lucky" he would instruct for a few years then move to the south to fly for the oil rigs and eventually be able to move on to something else. All the while living in tents and making low wages.

He did not know my background as an airline pilot when I asked him "why he decided to quit". He then told me that he could not understand why he would go through all that to make such miserable wages when he could stay home and continue to split land and make far more money while doing much less. It just did not make sense to him.

Besides all that he told me that he still needed another 50 to 80K or so to finish. Why he could "buy another 20 acres with that", he said.

SkyHigh

Simple - guess he would rather work with his land than fly aircraft.
Like we keep saying - to each hos own.
I'd rather fly than buy 20 acres.

I'm Just sayin
 

I was just sharing a chat I had with a neighbor is all.

Skyhigh

i'd rather buy the 20 acres, and fly when I want to............

I have not posted here in a while but I just had to since I am really confused. Do pilots really like flying ALL THAT MUCH? or are they in denial and now that they pay QOL is so bad they have come up with some excuse why they are not moving on from this career. Rather than admit that they made the wrong decission by becoming a pilot they preffer to defend their possition by any means necessary. I'd rather fly than be at home with my family... Seriously, is flying that much fun after you have been doing it for a while? I mean driving a car for the first month was fun but then it got boring. How much is it to sit in a aluminum can for hours at end while staring at an empty sky? Spare me the typical speech "sunrise from a cockpit is better than sitting in front of a cubicle" I'd rather sleep through the sunset and get up at reasonable hour to go my cubicle and be home 8 hours later with my wife. Is flying with some stranger sitting right next to you that much more satisfying than spending time at home with a family? Oh, and may I mention that at the end of that exciting 4 day you come home to unpaid bills and realization that your neighbor working construction makes more than you do? Is flying really that much fun?

By the nature of some posts and the grammar and spelling involved, some should stick to splitting the land rather than fly :D
The only way I could ever strike up such conversations is if I asked, or the guy doing the work dropped a comment.

Here is what I think happened:

There was this sweaty kid outside ripping through 4 inches of concrete, when skyhigh decided to walk out in his uniform and say:

Skyhigh: "Hi, you know, I'm a Pilot!"
Other guy: "Oh, really?"
Skyhigh: "Yeah, I've got a long list of hours and all the ratings, but I no longer fly"
Other: "That sucks, what happened?"
Skyhigh: "Oh, there was this kid that came up to the flightdeck and I asked if he had ever seen a grown man naked"
Other: "Yeah, that takes care of it"
Skyhigh: "Do you fly?"
Other: "Oh yeah, I have 4000 hours in Helicopters on Flight Simulator"
Skyhigh: "So why are you doing this?"
Other: "Oh, I've got no clue, I have 9 kids from 10 different women, and gotta make those alimony payments"
Skyhigh: "Wow, that sucks!"
Skyhigh: "Are you guys hiring?"

Never ran into anyone that was either able to recognize me as a pilot, nor have I ever had an conversation with a stranger and found out through it that the other guy was a pilot.

:D I was having a similar conversation with one of our young simulator operators the other day. He was talking about going to ERU and wanting to be a professional pilot and I found myself laying out much the same career path that you spoke to your neighbor about - including all the pitfalls along the way! No doubt education is important.

USMCFLYR

It is hard not to know that your neighbor is a pilot....

Learflyer -

I hear you on this. The problem with me on this is that I can't do the TYPE of flying that I want to do unless I'm doing it for someone else :) Owning 20 acres of land and flying when I want to would be fun if all I wanted to do was to take my light twin (like I could even afford that!) for a cruise down the beach to a nice dinner (weekend) somewhere for example; but at this point I still have aspirations of something bigger. I can't own that 20 acres and still fly a nice bizjet all over the US, Canada, and the Caribbean and maybe someday/somewhere internationally. That day will come I think. I have always loved flying more than what I fly and I hope the day is in my future when I can be happy with that recreational flying that I miss so much right now.

USMCFLYR

That day WILL come for you. Just wait these bad times out. I've had that day, now I just do it part time!:)