Very early into the ground
school, I ended up buying
an airplane - a project that I
thought was the greatest thing
ever. It was a Cessna 150 that
had been written off after it
was in a hangar collapse in
a very big storm. The wings
were crushed but the fuselage
was virtually untouched and
the insurance company had
kept the engine and prop.
That is one of the reasons why
I didn’t start flying during the
ground school. I thought I
would have this plane done
and use it for my flight training. Well, that sure didn’t
work out as planned. The
airplane project turned out to
be a way bigger ordeal than
I had ever expected and it’s
still not done three years later.
Anyway, I completed ground
school and after realizing my
plane was taking a lot longer
than I had expected, I started
taking the actual flying lessons. I found most of it quite
easy as I had spent quite a bit
of time in small airplanes. I
definitely found that I worried
most about breaking some
rule or missing some instruc-
tion or communication from
the tower. Although they were
pretty nice for the most part,
when they were busy, they
could be pretty scary.
The flight training took me
about a year to get my required 45 hours and it went
by pretty quick as well. I was
always eager to fly when I
could. My job and family life
stretched it out a little longer than I thought it would
take, but I was happy with
it. I really remeber my first
solo flight and how much the
plane seemed to jump off the
runway with only me in it. I
was flying Cessna 152’s for all
of my flight training and my
instructors were all big guys,
as was I. I chose to take my license in the 152 as it was very
similar to my 150 that planned
to fly. It cost about $8000 for
me to get my private license
and I try to fly once a week or
so using a rental aiplane from
my training school. I am fortunate that the flight school I
go to has many other Cessna’s
that I was able to get checked
out on and fly. They have
many 152’s, 172’s, and couple
of 172RG’s that I can fly and a
really nice 182. The RG’s and
the 182 aren’t really training
planes, so I get to take them
most often.
I am very pleased that I was
able to get my private license
and am able to fly planes
around for work and for
fun. Now that my family has
become more comfortable
in and around small planes,
we’ve been able to have some
great flying adventures together. We went on a holiday
down into the U.S. and that is
still one of my favorite flying
memories so far. I would
really recommend to anyone
that has interest in flying to go
for a discovery flight at your
nearest flight school and see if
flying is for you. I think you’ll
like it.
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