RBBailey
Pre-Flight
Hello all,
I'm new to this forum, so I thought I'd introduce myself. I'm in the Portland, Oregon, area, and I fly out of KTTD.
I've got about 625 hours total time, most of it single engine. I did do some instructing, and other freelance stuff. I owned my own plane and towed banners with it for a while. It was a '69 Cessna 150 with a tailwheel conversion, 150hp, climb prop, tundra tires, drooped tips, modified leading edge, stall gates, flap gaps.... it was rad.
If you want to know why all of that is in the past-tense, read on. Long story with a question at the end. EDIT: I now see that there is a good section for medical stuff, so I'll copy this over to there.
I started flying here when I was 16, in 1990. Being in high school, it took me about average flight hours to get my license, but I think a full year and a half on the calendar. I progressed through instrument and twin and all that. After high school, because I thought that since I couldn't be a military pilot, I couldn't be a pilot at all, and went off to college to do something different. I quit college after two years, and came back to flying. That's when I bought the plane and the banner tow company, and started some photography and tailwheel checkrides to pay the bills.
However, flying was different in those days in several ways. First, we were still pretty much analogue. And second, no matter how hard you worked, there were only so many jobs or places to make money as a pilot unless you were already in the military, doing airlines, or in someplace like Alaska or Florida. I was newly married, I owned my own banner tow company, and I worked full time on my own. We were 27 years old, we had just bought a house for sub-$100k in Portland, and my wife had just gotten her first job as a teacher. But still, after paying the bills at the beginning of each month, we often only had $50 left in cash. No heat, no ac in the house, one car, and.... remember how I said I owned my own company, and worked full time as a banner tow pilot (and other side-gigs)? Well I never made enough money to pay myself. I had a job for two years, but never got paid. Portland is a bad area to try to make a living as a pilot. There are niches, but they are full with waiting lines. To fly for the airlines back then meant starting salary of $18k, no benefits, and you couldn't even apply till you got to about 1200 hours.
So at that point I quit flying to go back to college and I became a high school teacher. But we were so pour that I needed to sell everything and do a hard stop. I simply walked away from aviation.
This did end up solving our financial problems, over the course of the next two years, we slowly pulled out and managed to scratch ourselves a normal living in Portland. We have two kids, and are doing really well now -- 20 years on.
Which leads to this: I am now 47 years old. It goes by in a flash. My kids are moving on to college, and I have (just barely!) the financial means to get back into flying. Over the past 20 years I've been up in a plane 6 or 7 times, but I think about flying every single day. From kindergarten on up, being a pilot was what I was going to do. That's it. So I honestly feel like I'm still waiting to grow up and become a pilot. Strange, I know.
Over the course of the last five or six years, I've been able to get some flying lessons for my son, but we could never pay for it all unless he got a job to help, but he was already too busy with other things. So one day I asked the instructor if i could just fly right seat in a 172. By the end of the next few hours, she had signed me off for my biannual PPL. I thought I was actually on my way to being back in the air! I started planning to get more flight instruction to catch up on new regs and procedures, because although I was signed off, I didn't feel "safe". I started look for a partnership to possibly purchase a plane, and.... but this is where it all hit the fan....
I went to a local doctor and got my physical done for a Class III, and all went well. However, in 2015, due to being about 10 pounds over-weight, the long-slow stress of my job, and because I was drinking too much alcohol and coffee, I had three episodes where my heart went crazy for a few minutes and left me feeling totally drained. Because of my age, and because nothing like this had ever happened, I was scared, and went to the emergency room. I went through a battery of tests. The works. All the tests. And at the end of a year of constant testing, the cardiologist literally told me to stop wasting his time because there was nothing wrong with me--it was all due to lifestyle. Since then, I've changed my diet, my habits, and my weight. I started running again. I'm 47, and I run 6 miles per day at 9 minute miles. It turns out the heart issues were basically just indigestion. No, really. The pressure of the indigestion triggers a particular nerve that causes my heart to beat rapidly and erratically. Since my lifestyle changes, I've not had any of these episodes, I'm in good physical shape, I'm not on any meds (I did take 6mg of metropolol each day for that year of testing.) and my resting heart rate is 47-50 bpm.
However, this was enough for the FAA to tell me NO on my medical. And it was a big NO. They gave me one chance to get the certificate reviewed by having me send in over 150 pages of testing materials that I had had done on my heart (none of it showing any signs of any problems), but they still gave me a negative on the certificate. I can't get them on the phone. I can't get any more tests done because insurance won't allow it, especially with COVID issues at hospitals these days. The one time I did get the FAA on the phone, the guy I talked to told me that I could fake an issue to get insurance to pay for more tests, but that they would see that as another heart episode, and even if the tests showed no problem, it would be another mark against me on my FAA records--Oh, and that they would charge me with fraud. There was a long silence on the line after he said that. Then he asked if I had any more questions, and closed my case.
It's been a year of just being busy with life and not knowing how to proceed. So now I'm hoping that I can get advice. I would love to get back into flying. My minimum goal would be to just go rent a plane for an hour each month and have some fun. But because of all of this, I can't even apply for a light sport license, let alone a Class III medical.
I'd appreciate any advice, because right now I'm relegated to living vicariously through YouTube channels, and it's just not working for me. Especially when half the people I see flying at 20 years older than me, overweight, out of breath just trying to get in the plane, and....... I'm probably a little sensitive about the whole thing, sorry!
Thanks!
I'm new to this forum, so I thought I'd introduce myself. I'm in the Portland, Oregon, area, and I fly out of KTTD.
I've got about 625 hours total time, most of it single engine. I did do some instructing, and other freelance stuff. I owned my own plane and towed banners with it for a while. It was a '69 Cessna 150 with a tailwheel conversion, 150hp, climb prop, tundra tires, drooped tips, modified leading edge, stall gates, flap gaps.... it was rad.
If you want to know why all of that is in the past-tense, read on. Long story with a question at the end. EDIT: I now see that there is a good section for medical stuff, so I'll copy this over to there.
I started flying here when I was 16, in 1990. Being in high school, it took me about average flight hours to get my license, but I think a full year and a half on the calendar. I progressed through instrument and twin and all that. After high school, because I thought that since I couldn't be a military pilot, I couldn't be a pilot at all, and went off to college to do something different. I quit college after two years, and came back to flying. That's when I bought the plane and the banner tow company, and started some photography and tailwheel checkrides to pay the bills.
However, flying was different in those days in several ways. First, we were still pretty much analogue. And second, no matter how hard you worked, there were only so many jobs or places to make money as a pilot unless you were already in the military, doing airlines, or in someplace like Alaska or Florida. I was newly married, I owned my own banner tow company, and I worked full time on my own. We were 27 years old, we had just bought a house for sub-$100k in Portland, and my wife had just gotten her first job as a teacher. But still, after paying the bills at the beginning of each month, we often only had $50 left in cash. No heat, no ac in the house, one car, and.... remember how I said I owned my own company, and worked full time as a banner tow pilot (and other side-gigs)? Well I never made enough money to pay myself. I had a job for two years, but never got paid. Portland is a bad area to try to make a living as a pilot. There are niches, but they are full with waiting lines. To fly for the airlines back then meant starting salary of $18k, no benefits, and you couldn't even apply till you got to about 1200 hours.
So at that point I quit flying to go back to college and I became a high school teacher. But we were so pour that I needed to sell everything and do a hard stop. I simply walked away from aviation.
This did end up solving our financial problems, over the course of the next two years, we slowly pulled out and managed to scratch ourselves a normal living in Portland. We have two kids, and are doing really well now -- 20 years on.
Which leads to this: I am now 47 years old. It goes by in a flash. My kids are moving on to college, and I have (just barely!) the financial means to get back into flying. Over the past 20 years I've been up in a plane 6 or 7 times, but I think about flying every single day. From kindergarten on up, being a pilot was what I was going to do. That's it. So I honestly feel like I'm still waiting to grow up and become a pilot. Strange, I know.
Over the course of the last five or six years, I've been able to get some flying lessons for my son, but we could never pay for it all unless he got a job to help, but he was already too busy with other things. So one day I asked the instructor if i could just fly right seat in a 172. By the end of the next few hours, she had signed me off for my biannual PPL. I thought I was actually on my way to being back in the air! I started planning to get more flight instruction to catch up on new regs and procedures, because although I was signed off, I didn't feel "safe". I started look for a partnership to possibly purchase a plane, and.... but this is where it all hit the fan....
I went to a local doctor and got my physical done for a Class III, and all went well. However, in 2015, due to being about 10 pounds over-weight, the long-slow stress of my job, and because I was drinking too much alcohol and coffee, I had three episodes where my heart went crazy for a few minutes and left me feeling totally drained. Because of my age, and because nothing like this had ever happened, I was scared, and went to the emergency room. I went through a battery of tests. The works. All the tests. And at the end of a year of constant testing, the cardiologist literally told me to stop wasting his time because there was nothing wrong with me--it was all due to lifestyle. Since then, I've changed my diet, my habits, and my weight. I started running again. I'm 47, and I run 6 miles per day at 9 minute miles. It turns out the heart issues were basically just indigestion. No, really. The pressure of the indigestion triggers a particular nerve that causes my heart to beat rapidly and erratically. Since my lifestyle changes, I've not had any of these episodes, I'm in good physical shape, I'm not on any meds (I did take 6mg of metropolol each day for that year of testing.) and my resting heart rate is 47-50 bpm.
However, this was enough for the FAA to tell me NO on my medical. And it was a big NO. They gave me one chance to get the certificate reviewed by having me send in over 150 pages of testing materials that I had had done on my heart (none of it showing any signs of any problems), but they still gave me a negative on the certificate. I can't get them on the phone. I can't get any more tests done because insurance won't allow it, especially with COVID issues at hospitals these days. The one time I did get the FAA on the phone, the guy I talked to told me that I could fake an issue to get insurance to pay for more tests, but that they would see that as another heart episode, and even if the tests showed no problem, it would be another mark against me on my FAA records--Oh, and that they would charge me with fraud. There was a long silence on the line after he said that. Then he asked if I had any more questions, and closed my case.
It's been a year of just being busy with life and not knowing how to proceed. So now I'm hoping that I can get advice. I would love to get back into flying. My minimum goal would be to just go rent a plane for an hour each month and have some fun. But because of all of this, I can't even apply for a light sport license, let alone a Class III medical.
I'd appreciate any advice, because right now I'm relegated to living vicariously through YouTube channels, and it's just not working for me. Especially when half the people I see flying at 20 years older than me, overweight, out of breath just trying to get in the plane, and....... I'm probably a little sensitive about the whole thing, sorry!
Thanks!
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