When is it time to hang it up

brien23

brien23

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Brien
When is it time to hang up the goggles and get in the lazy boy chair with my blanket on and rember the good old days.
1.When you count on using the checklist if you could only rember whare you put it.
2.People you use to fly with come up with all sorts of excuses not to fly with you anymore.
3.Seems like the tower keeps asking you every time you go out whare are you going while you taxie around the airport.
4.You count on the autopilot more and more to get you from A-B and the GPS if you could only rember how to turn it on.
5.You long for the days or reporting points and transponders without Altitude squealers and uncontroled Airspace everyware except big cities.
6.The price of avgas is reletive to the time period I rember when I thought fifty cents a gallon was outrages for avgas and autogas was twenty nine cents a gallon.
7. Airplanes havent changed that much their are still a lot of fifty year old planes flying around. The Avionics has changed and that is problably for the best as the old Narco Superhomer with 5 transmiting Xtals and generators instead of altenators is progress for the good.
 
brien23 said:
7. Airplanes havent changed that much their are still a lot of fifty year old planes flying around. The Avionics has changed and that is problably for the best as the old Narco Superhomer with 5 transmiting Xtals and generators instead of altenators is progress for the good.
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The Superhomer was never certified for IFR. You had to use the Omnigator, which had 27 transmitting crystals and whistle-stop receiver tuning. I remember it like yesterday flying a back course approach into KOKC in a driving, very windy winter rainstorm using an Omnigator in a twin Apache, circa 1960.

Oh, Sectionals were 25 cents. :)
 
aterpster said:
The Superhomer was never certified for IFR. You had to use the Omnigator, which had 27 transmitting crystals and whistle-stop receiver tuning. I remember it like yesterday flying a back course approach into KOKC in a driving, very windy winter rainstorm using an Omnigator in a twin Apache, circa 1960.

Oh, Sectionals were 25 cents. :)
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So was fuel. :)

If we keep printing billions, who knows what it will be next year....
 
When you run out of money, or credit...
 
Don't pay any attention to the bureaucrats who say pilots get too old to fly :).
 
My dad quit flying when he landed on 17L after being cleared for 17R. He had struggled to pass the hearing portion of the class3 and knew it was time to go.
 
Approximately 98% of the population seem to be getting along OK without it, as are a high percentage of posters on aviation forums. For many pilots "hanging it up" doesn't mean they no longer fly, just that they no longer fly alone.

As a guy who is old enough to think about tossing the keys, I submit that once a pilot reaches the point that he knows he should have somebody else in the cockpit, the decision isn't nearly as difficult as some might think. It won't be for me.



geneseib said:
For me it's neither. Just a question of what it would be like to live without flight.
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wabower said:
Approximately 98% of the population seem to be getting along OK without it, as are a high percentage of posters on aviation forums. For many pilots "hanging it up" doesn't mean they no longer fly, just that they no longer fly alone.

As a guy who is old enough to think about tossing the keys, I submit that once a pilot reaches the point that he knows he should have somebody else in the cockpit, the decision isn't nearly as difficult as some might think. It won't be for me.
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There are a few old guys that will fly on habit until they throw dirt on their box.

My self? I see no reason to maintain my proficiency in Tailwheel, after the 24 goes away, I'll simply do the easy stuff, and stay current.
 
This is a question I have asked myself. I don't know the answer but I hope I know the time when it arrives. I don't fly as often as I used to of course, but my approaches, (hand flying), are still good and I make it a point to take an IPC every year despite the fact I'm current. I am contemplating moving into a higher performance plane when my wife retires and we get serious about travel. I hope I can still hack the workload there, but plan to create a recurrent training schedule whether the insurance guys want one or not.
 
When you don't enjoy it anymore ,when its more a chore to get the plane ready than to fly.
 
For me it was lack of flying time. I absolutely loved the plane I have been flying for the past years. I also could not have had a better owner to fly for. The owner simply did not fly enough for me to stay proficient to fly at the level I expected. We were down to about 75 hours per year. After discussing it with him over a 3 month period he finally agreed it was time to make a change. I do miss it.
 
Flying the plane never changes. The Cessna 180 that I own now flies almost exactly like the one in which I learned 50+ years ago and the check list and book performance numbers could be used in either plane. As a result, I would jokingly suggest that I "can fly the box it came in" and can still make it go where I want it to go with what seems to be no change in effort or results.

The rules, regs, definitions, requirements, procedures, interpretations, equipment and myriads of other things continue to evolve. The need to precisely stay on top of each is less compelling since I again fly only for myself and am no longer in a perpetual training routine. To make matters worse, very few memories are as good at 70-something as 20-something, so when they come for my airplane keys we may not be able to find them.
 
Tom-D said:
There are a few old guys that will fly on habit until they throw dirt on their box.

My self? I see no reason to maintain my proficiency in Tailwheel, after the 24 goes away, I'll simply do the easy stuff, and stay current.
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Tom, do it in a nosepuller. Take the ride seriously, but the Inspector is really trying to fill a box. Help him fill it. Get some dual in a 175 or the like and say, "yes sir". You've had a lot of experience doing that. Call upon it!
 
wabower said:
.... For many pilots "hanging it up" doesn't mean they no longer fly, just that they no longer fly alone.

As a guy who is old enough to think about tossing the keys, I submit that once a pilot reaches the point that he knows he should have somebody else in the cockpit,.....
Click to expand...

There a several older pilots around here that have thrown in the towel.. I make it a habit of calling them every few months and take them up for a ride or fly them for breakfast /lunch... The smile on their faces are priceless....:wink2:

We gotta look out for fellow pilots who are timing out.:yes:
 
This reminds me of that old joke about how every pilot will experience one of two possible outcomes to their flying career:

One day they will go flying for the last time. Some will know it before they take off, some will not.
 
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