From a Prowler to a 172 ...You are slowing down in your old age.

Cut his shirttail off!



Congrats!

Aeronautical version of a rocking chair?

Congrats, Allen!

Well, to be fair. I did solo before but it was in the last century Lot of fun getting back into flying but it's sure not the $32 an hour Piper Warrior I used to rent. Actually, the plane is about the same, the price sure isn't!

I have not missed the Navy but I have sure missed flying.

What's a 172 go for an hour now? (Been awhile since I had a check ride too...)

Congratulations Pugs!!

Fly it like you stole it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes sir. Congratulations and thank you for your military aviation service

Congrats! What airport you flying out of?

We used to get a Cessna 150 for $15 an hour at the AF Aero Club. But then $15 was hard to come by washing dishes after school (college so that had to cover partying too). Damn I've gotten old somewhere along the line!

Got my lic. in 1984. I forgot how much a 152 went for back then. It wasn't too bad, even given the instructor rate then too for required dual time. Maybe $55 an hour with instructor?

Never rented many planes after I got my license though... Had a friend that was in the aircraft business. He had a sales business as well as an FBO. He'd let me take whatever he had in the hangar if I kept the tank full.... Plus, I had to go pickup or deliver aircraft that he bought and sold. Got plenty of hours that way.

Congrats on getting your wings back Pugs. I just know we'll be hearing from one of our members about some wildman in a 172 buzzing then while they were hunting out in the boonies somewhere, won't we Pugs?

What't the armament load?

Got my Private SEL in 1971, Dad had to drive me to the exam. Funny, could fly a plane but not old enough to get a driver's license yet. Don't remember what the hourly rates were then, AF aero club again with AF instructor pilots picking up a little change on the side. Those guys were tough, no fooling around. Much more demanding of precision than the civilian instructors I had.

Five pounds of flour bombs.

I was thinking 2 bolt guns, a couple pistols and a brace of rods and reels and tackle box...

Congratulations!!

$145 an hour and you get a $200 credit if you fly 10 hours a month. They are a little nicer. Fuel injected, 180 Hp, GPS and such but still beat up rental planes. Flying out of Frederick MD and sharing the pattern with a wide mix of stuff. Love to hear the Gulfstream V being told to hold for me. We go through life balancing time and money and it's finally aligned for me at age 54. Retired from the Navy in 07 and don't miss any aspect of the Navy but I've missed flying terribly and SWMBO told me "stop looking up at every single airplane, go do this" so who am I to argue? As a plus, I've not seen a SAM go by me on any of these flights but I've not gotten to shoot a HARM either.

My instructor did wonder why I thought an engine failure passing 5000 feet AGL with no relight we should eject but he got over it. Actually, he's a retired USMC A-4 and AV-8A guy so very cool and kind of gets me even though he never flew with a Naval Flight Officer being a single seat puke.

I suspect I'll end up looking at joining one of several local clubs for the time we have left in MD (<5 years) and then we'll see what I do once we retire to central NH. It's either mind boggling how cheap airplanes have become or my perception of cheap has changed over time.

If I were still 54, I'd think about it. But turning 71? With something like 40 years since I last flew? Too much to relearn.

Congrats, Pugs. Maybe you can take me up some time.

Only have my multi-engine rating to go before heading to Compass. Started out in a T41C (essentially a C172, but with 210hp) @ $93 an hour, then went to the T41D (210hp, constant speed prop, IFR, Garmin 430 and ADSB installed) @ $99/hr. Then moved up to the 182RG ($145/hr), which feels like a real plane and not some little kit plane like a 172. Now on to the 300hp per side (upgraded from 265 I believe), Baron @ $244/hr. All current wet rates.

Lot of former AF pilots out here, even had an instructor who was a Thunderbird pilot.

Try to mix it up with different airports, airspaces, get out of a set route and go have fun. Been to
Goodland KS
Wichita Falls, Kickapoo TX
Laramie, Cheyenne WY
Rocky Mountain Regional, Centennial, Fort Collins, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, LaJunta, Lamar, Limon, Fremont County, Spanish Peaks, Salida, Montrose, Gunnison, Trinidad, Durango, Telluride, Aspen, and Leadville, CO
Taos, Raton NM

Favorite of all of those was Telluride. VFR corridor up to Fort Colins takes you right by downtown Denver for a pretty good view. Only thing I don't like about flying the Colorado mountains is the turbulence. It can get bad. Great way to spot elk though.

Rock on!

Front seater now!

Congrats, Pugs!

Smilin' here.

You need any prop wash lemme know.

Great pics. I miss flying out west. One of the local flying clubs has a 172, 182, an 182 RG and a RV-12. The other has is low-wing centric and has a Warrior, Archer, Arrow and Tobago. I'll have to figure to what to do after the the license. Both are considerably cheaper than renting but both are inside the capital SFRA area so more of a pain to fly from.

I'm thinkin he's gonna need a few yards of flight line too...

Congrats Pugs!!! Didn't know they fitted them things with booster seats and extensions on the rudder pedals.

Congrats on the re-solo, Pugs! That's a pretty nice feeling.

I started flying in 2013 at the ripe age of 60. I had no prior aviation experience, but a colleague who's ex-AF talked me into it. I got my PP not quite 2 years ago, after accumulating 135 hours of flight time (65 with instructor, fwiw). Not having an aviation background and being a stickler for understanding the principles that underlie the rules, I deliberately took a LOT more time than the FAA requires before taking my check ride. I am convinced that was the smart way to go for me as an older pilot. I've had a couple of potentially scary situations since then that weren't really all that scary because I took the time to get the greater experience prior to my PP.

I started my training by joining a local flying club, and that was a relatively cheap way to start out, but it has its limitations... beat-up aircraft, limited availability of aircraft, etc. Then the Club went bankrupt and I had to rent for a while, but as you know it's not much better than flying Club airplanes. Fortunately a nice low-hours Cessna popped up locally, the price was right, and I bought it.

Since I got my PP I've racked up another 200+ hours, almost all in 172's, mostly my own '77 172XP "Super Chicken" (195 HP Continental). It's all steam gauges, the only glass in my cockpit is in my handhelds, but that's no impediment. Last year Kamo_Gari saw pics of me and STXHunter flying in my plane to Ltppowell's dove hunt and dubbed it the "Oblivion Falcon". The name suits, so it stuck.

My costs for flying the Oblivion Falcon run about $100/hr, wet and hangared. I could do it for a bit less, but that's a false economy if you look at it over time. Smartest thing I did was buy this plane when I was about 80 hours in... I find I fly a lot more in my own plane than I did in the Club's planes, and way LOTS more than when I was renting. FWIW, a lot of people had told me this would happen, and sonofagun they were right. So let me echo their sentiments and advise you to buy a used airplane rather than continuing to rent. If you haven't looked at the market, you can get a quite decent 1980's vintage 172 or Cherokee 160 for under $50K, and after you've flown it for 300-400 hours it will still be worth what you paid for it.

If you're moving to NH, you should be able to find a nice small airport with hangar space, and the less crowded airspace will be a joy to fly in. I love the fact that I can fly the 2.5 hour trip to my other job in west Texas every month and rarely see another airplane the whole way, even with ATC advising me of traffic.

Anyways, good on yer, mate. Glad to hear you're back in the air.

Mighty proud I got these:

SNJ5 by Sharps Man, on Flickr

As well you should be! My Grandfather was a USAF Contract AT-6 Instructor in Columbus AFB MS after his Army Air Corp time prior to going to Eastern in 52.

Doc - looking forward to talking to you at the pig hunt. Hangars around here are a 2+ year wait and I can't see spending the money on an airplane and then having it sit outside. In NH my home field (if all goes as planned!) will be Laconia and it's a nice field with lots of hangars and a lot of great flying to do with the Maine coast and such right there.

The two clubs I'm interested in at this point are http://www.tssflyingclub.org and http://octopusflyingclub.com/octopus/ - Even if I end up buying it would be nice to have some time a variety of airplanes to form an opinion. It is should be noted our poster that spilled the beans (Roof) not only bought me a beer afterwards but has already been pushing his BIL to sell me on Moony's like he has.

Allen,

You are more than welcome to fly in my plane at no cost to you.

Steve

Well, I know you don't use it much.....

I can totally see the value of belonging to a club. When they work, they're great. When they don't... well, I lost almost $10K in investment when the local club went bankrupt. That's not a common flying club story, but it does happen!

But if you can limit your membership costs (if you have the option of not buying into the capital assets of the club, i.e. the airplanes) it's a decent way to go for a couple of years. I don't personally subscribe to the idea that you will learn anything of value by bouncing around from one airplane to another... the "exposure" to different platforms doesn't really give you anything of value, and you lose a lot of valuable learning time adjusting and re-adjusting to the different controls and flight characteristics. In my experience, and a lot of other pilots agree, if you can get into one aircraft and fly the s h i t out of it, you'll build and retain skills much more efficiently. So if you go with the club with the Cessna 172, 182, and 182 RG plus others, try to stay in either the 172 or the 182; ditto with the Pipers.

Once you get up to NH, your options will open up nicely. At that point you might just skip buying the 172 trainer and buy a REAL airplane, like that Mooney. Interesting choice! Not an airplane for noobs, as you probably know. Mooneys haven't killed as many people as Bonanzas, but that's mostly because Beech has built a LOT more Bonanzas. (Not entirely... the Mooney passenger compartment cage is state-of-the-art.) I believe enough in the Mooney mission that I'm planning to purchase a used Mooney myself, hopefully this year but more likely next.

I've only got 2 hours total time in one Mooneys, and 2 hours in Bonanzas, but that's enough for me to be able to appreciate the basics of the airframes. Most of what I'll need to know about flying a Mooney will be learned when I buy my own Mooney and start building hours. I've got a relationship with a couple Mooney guys, and my plan is to get a minimum of 10 hours with an instructor in the first month I own the airplane, interspersed with roughly 10 hours of solo time, before I start taking it out for recreation and business travel.

Anyways, good luck and good flying, amigo!

Have always loved the look of Mooneys. And the flight numbers. Once in a while I go online and drool at some of the ones for sale.

Damn. I'm talking myself into this, aren't I?

Worse things could happen, Rock.

Lemme see... 170 KIAS cruise/185 KIAS max, cruise at 11 gph, service ceiling 18,000 MSL, lowest crash injury rate of any single-engine light airplane, and you can buy a good used 80's model for about what you'd spend on a new Mercedes Benz automobile without having to deal with the depreciation. Fly from Forth Worth to Chicago Executive in 3 hours. And that's just the normally aspirated 201K. Once you put a turbo on it, look out...

Dance with the one that brung ya Rocky. Perhaps a little different than back in the day.

https://www.trade-a-plane.com/searc...p;listing_id=2310086&s-type=aircraft

I flew a 172 a couple days ago with an instructor. It was an absolute blast!

1975 MOONEY M20F
General Specs
Sale Status: For Sale
Year: 1975
Make/Model:MOONEY M20F
Registration #: N6848V
Serial #: 22-1241
Location: Kokomo, IN USA

Price: $49,900 USD

Aircraft Ownership Solutions
http://www.aircraftownershipsolutions.com
(765) 456-1772
Fax: (765) 456-1782
Aaron Bollhoefer

3603 E 400 N

Kokomo, IN 46901 USA


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Price: $49,900 USD


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I should point out Joe, that with you as a licensed private pilot who is very close to finishing his instrument rating this could easily be yours too!

SNJ5 by Sharps Man,

Gorgeous.

My dad and his T-6 in 1951... he loved flying acrobatics in it.

Im not so sure that IFR in a single engine piston is the best idea. I personally wouldnt be comfy with it. Just my 2¢

A turbo 337, huh, Pugs? For only $229K. I think I'll pass. I could buy three nice Mooneys for that.

IFR in a single-engine plane is no bigger deal than in anything else.

Until you shed that single alternator,vacuum pump, or a jug or two

in 1964 it cost me $500.oo bucks to get my licence in a Cessna 150.

norm

Congrats, shipmate! Looking forward to next year when you bring in your own bird to "Birdfest"!

Flew 5.7 in a Baron B55 today split in two different flights, damn that thing is sweet! Very nimble and responsive.

Congratulations! Soloing is a big day no matter what you do it in. If you can get up to the Adirondacks in NY, come on up and we’ll go flying.

Frank