The Stingy Pilot

I haven't posted in a while (over 5 years 😬) because it occurred to me that no one really wants to read a blog about flight training from someone who isn't actually flight training. Well, I'm still not technically actually flight training yet, but I'm finally getting really serious about it. I'm in the process of talking to CFIs and flight schools, I finished ground school, I have my costs all budgeted out, most of it saved up, and a plan for how the rest will be saved up. I'm actually ready to start training now, unfortunately my flight school isn't ready for me yet... Its probably still going to be a few months before my actual flight, but I'm going to try to crank out as many blog posts as I can between now and then, because once I actually start flying, things are going to get really  busy and I won't have as much time to write. Anyway, just wanted to drop a quick post just to let you (my imaginary readers) know that I'm getting started back

The Demo Flight (also known as the introductory flight, or discovery flight) is the first flight that you take at a flight school. In my opinion, the purpose of the demo flight is twofold: 1) to experience what it is like to fly, and 2) to learn if you like the flight school and instructor. If you are toying with the idea of learning to fly, I highly recommend that you look up a flight school near you and take one of these introductory flights just to get an idea of what it is like. One of the great things about the demo flight, is that it often comes with a discount. It's really in the flight school's best interest to give you a good deal on the demo flight because the more people they get to take a demo flight, the more long term customers they get. I have heard that at some flight schools, you can even get a demo flight for free, particularly on International Learn to Fly Day, which is an event that the  Aircraft Owners and Pilot's Association (AOPA)  came up to encour

Disclaimer How much does it cost to learn to fly? It turns out that this is a pretty complicated question to answer and no two people will tell you the same thing. In fact, I suppose you could say that most of this blog is going to be devoted to answering this question, so I won't attempt to make a complete answer in this post. The total cost of getting a pilot's license is dependent on the individual, the location, the year, the instructor, what sort of license you're getting, and many many other factors. In this post, I am just going to explain the basic things you will likely be paying for. I will throw in some numbers, but that's just to give you a ballpark estimate of the price. The actual price you will pay will be different depending on where you live, and of course theres no way of telling what the prices will be several years from now. For the sake of this post, we'll just be talking about the Private Pilots License (PPL). There are other licenses that we

This doesn't necessarily fit into the scope of this blog. But I carved a pumpkin for halloween this year and I'm very proud of it so I wanted to share it with my readers. Here it is, and F-35B Lightning II And in case you're curious, this is what it looks like in the light. Doesn't look as good this way, but you can get a little bit of a better feel for how I did it.

Before you begin your pilot training or make any other big financial decision regarding aviation, you must consider what your mission is. There is no single right way to be a pilot and the decisions that each individual must make largely depend on what he or she wants to get out of flying. There are countless things you can do with aviation and there's no sense focussing your training on any of the aspects of aviation that really aren't that important to you. So before you start looking at any flight schools or planes or airports or anything, take a moment and decide what your mission is. It might even help to write it down and prioritize the various parts of your mission. The purpose of this post is to give you some ideas of what sort of questions you might ask yourself and to give you some ideas of what sorts of things you might want to do as a pilot so that you can decide how important each one is to you specifically. One of the first things you should ask yourself is &q

Before we dive into topics about how to save money on aviation, I wanted to give my readers some background on myself and why I'm interested in aviation. If you don't care about me and just want to hear advice on flight training, go ahead and skip this post. Stay tuned though, I promise my later posts will be less personal and more applicable to all of the other stingy pilots out there. There's no explaining why we as aviation enthusiasts have a need to fly; sure we'll try to justify it by saying its a quick way to get from one place to another, but its really a lot more than that. We are inflicted with a disease which pilots refer to as "the bug" and once we're infected, we just have to get up in the air. I can't say for sure when I contracted the bug, but it was before I can remember. I have pictures that show of me snuggling my fighter jet blanket (with F-14s and F-4s and I can't remember what else) when I was still young enough to be using