What Cost Flying
From Matronics
by Austin Tinckler
Got my medical and heart thing renewed today. Cost, ever rising, was about $150 or so. I have no complaints. Here I am in the sunset of the logbook, cleared to go and for another two years , free to get up there and watch for the eagles and things and see the map of the world in its real colors spread out as far as these old eyes can appreciate.
Airplanes have been sold and pilots standing down for whatever the reason may be and airspace is constantly under review and now, where we used to be free to buzz over wherever our friends wanted to meet up and join, you best watch for the Blackhawks of Homeland Security who will intercept and scare you some even if you have talked to all who need to know who you are and where...but, that is OK too as the world is not the same anymore and cheap gas will never return. But surely as a hormone driven young lad is compelled to pursue love, an old and incurable flight lover will fly on until the cost is the killer.
And even then, as long as one can drive or bus out to the field where engine sounds are ever rising and falling, airplanes or any part of the flying experience will draw the faithful.
Spring has not yet made up its mind to stay or wait awhile, so a warm sunny day is followed by one which almost demands Special VFR...here comes a black and ominous blanket of cloud pushing pelting rain before it and a fair bit of bouncing around, but I remember such a day long ago, as..here I am up here and in no position to bargain. five of us set out on a cross country and I see none of them and luckily, a single ray of sunshine, much like a beam from a flashlight comes from the cloud and I can see my grass strip and land for coffee, a breather, and an oath of the old refrain of being glad to be down here wishing I was up there rather than being up there and wishing I was down here .. The fresh West wind blows the system farther up the valley where granite yields not at all and I am free to go home, where I find the other 4 have long since been and although I have garnered some brownie points for judgement, I feel not so much the dumbbell, but the graduate..Nature is at once awful and beautiful and another day away is a completely different canvas. This is why I have always marveled at the cost of the roll of the dice of many I have known who have bought the farm one day, and 24 hours later, or less, could have been around to stay another few or many years if the weather was not as it was that day.
Doc says to me, fly as long as you can and don't do anything stupid. Well, I have done, and will likely do again, something stupid, but each time I did learn and was less and less a gambler. Another benefit is that it has been a very long time since the tower guys have asked me to phone them after I shutdown. Ah ! those innocent days when I landed on the taxi way at San Jose thinking that all that new blacktop just had to be the new strip. They were nice to me though. Much nicer than they had to be because you see, they thought I was a student from over the hills who don't know how to use a radio, if it works, and answer " Roger " to everything, even if it is a directive to crash and burn... About that radio, does anyone today know how to use an Aldis lamp and do what it wants you to do ?
As with building my RV, I will never know the cost, real and imagined, and do not have the answer to the two most irritating questions, other than " is that a canoe "..like how much has it cost and how long will it take ? Does it matter ? A good friend has proclaimed that the cost of the glass goodies he wants in his panel really is not what he wants to talk about since he " can't take it with him " and other issues are more worrisome....All in all, flying and anything associated with it is, as the ad says, " priceless " and we are lucky we can still do it in this country, even if we have to keep fighting to do so.
Oh, and one other thing, there is one thing which has changed not a whit since I first found it at the dawn of time, and that is that flyers and pilots are accorded a welcome, a shelter, the use of a car, a lunch, a helping hand, especially in the far away, that I would not be quick to expect if I were not a flyer.
Cost of being a flyer ?.......
What else would I do ?
