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Finding Time for Flying

I will let you know about my top 7 strategies:

1. Ask your partner if she or he would like to make a pilot license together with you right from the beginning. This will help you to avoid being in flight school over weekends, while the other is alone at home.

2. Talk always about the motivation for flying: to go to nice places for vacation or short trips with full flexibility.

3. Tell that you will never ever have to spend a vacation with rainy weather, because you are so flexible to move wherever it is sunny in few hours.

4. Collect nice places where to fly to and don‘t talk about. So that you are always able to put on on the table spontaneous when you are discussing what to do next weekend.

5. Buy an airplane with the full flexibility to land on nearly most kind of airstrips (grass and concrete), because the smaller an airfield is, the more your partner will get the feeling, that you can really reach special places.

6. Try to keep the flights smooth to create a feeling of safety during the whole flight.

7. Make photobooks even after short trips, so that your partner has something to show around and keep as a memory for the flight.

So hopefully this will give you much time to fly as much as you want, together with your family. And if you even need strategies on top for your partner her is a very special:

1. Invite your partner to buy a dog.
2. Make your partner fall in love with the dog that much, that it is unbelievable to go into vacation without the dog.
3. Speak much about how difficult or impossible it is to take the dog into a commercial aircraft. And it is dangerous to put the dog into the baggage compartment of an airliner.
4. Tell your partner, that it is very easy, save and uncomplicated to go to destinations by private plane with dog.
5. Choose a really dog friendly destination for the first flight.

You have won forever. :-)

Last Edited by eddsPeter at 08 Sep 05:47
EDDS , Germany

@eddsPeter you are a genius

Lots of great replies and ideas here. Very much appreciated.

However there has been a thread drift into “Making your wife want to fly with you”. I am not currently in a position to have my family fly with me even if they wanted to. I need a lot more experience and currency before I’d consider flying with them. I’d also need a new plane and that may well mean another airfield. To make the next step I need to get flying first and that means finding time.

The purpose of the thread was to get people to share their time management strategies. I’m sure a lot of us might benefit from some ideas.

Some people I know are absolutely ruthless with their time to the point they come across as selfish and rude. Examples are not recycling their trash as it takes too long or taking people’s time for help with a project but not giving the time back and instead offering to pay someone else who will do it in their place.

Others are just very efficient. They internet shop their weekly groceries and never pick up a newspaper.

What do you do?

S57
EGBJ, United Kingdom

Stay single. Best time saver ever.
I know that isn’t an option for you though…

Give yourself a flying date every week. Everyone at work knows, your wife knows, everyone knows… Tuesday evenings, S57 goes flying.

That way everyone gets used to it, everyone expects it and it becomes part of your life without work every week.
People at work will be (usually) be curious about it the next day, your wife will appreciate your increased happiness at home (if flying really is good for you) and you won’t have to keep fighting scheduling hell to try to make a flight.

You can always cancel these evenings if you desire, but everyone knows it’s your option and your time.

Lots of executives do this with golf. They’re all very transparent about it and everyone in the office knows not to impede on that time.

Not so much staying single as not having a family

Your life follows a different path to people who have a family. One can argue this exactly both ways, whether you have a more interesting life one way or the other. You certainly end up doing different things – in most cases in N Europe, anyway.

Re time management, I try to fly once a week. Not more (would get bored) and not much less. And I try to make each flight count. If it is a local then I try to fly a local ILS for practice. We get food delivered (especially now with CV19; haven’t been to a supermarket since March) and rarely buy a newspaper. However I do have my own business, with a great (priceless) office manageress and without her I would not do much flying at all.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Ah ! Now we know Peter’s secret

To me, it’s not the fact of being single that gives you time, it’s because we men live a very simple life when single (less cooking, less socializing, etc..).

The idea to block some time in the week is good. Weather/availability won’t allow a flight each week, but those evenings will be extra spent with the family. Expect a long pause in winter though. In winter, you must follow the weather’s agenda, not yours. I found an average of 4-5 beautiful evenings per winter month.
Picking up your groceries ordered online looks great to me (if you don’t hate eating the same thing regularly).

Last Edited by Jujupilote at 10 Sep 06:49
LFOU, France

I was divorced 21 years ago.

I think you will find that single women live a “simple life” too

Single people organise their life so they do only the things they want to do. This is great fun if you are in your 20s / 30s / 40s (I so much wish internet dating existed when I was in my 20s; I was done for after that ) but unless you are in great demand you find yourself increasingly lonely and hanging out in the company of increasingly decrepit and grumpy and cynical old people

A relationship is a much more efficient way to live. Pick someone with their own projects and then you will both get an implicit allowance for doing your own stuff.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

S57 wrote:

The purpose of the thread was to get people to share their time management strategies. I’m sure a lot of us might benefit from some ideas.

I understand what you were getting at.

Personally, I am terrible at time management. But then again, my time is anyways determined by others, almost 100% of it.

As a doctor, I work 7.30am to 4.30pm every day, unless I am on call, then it’s 7.30am to 7.30 am. Sometimes I have a “late shift” from 12pm to 9pm, but I’ve found that flying before that is very stressful, as I cannot be at the airfield before 10am and thus only get very little flight time in if at all. I also often work on weekends.

Basically all my remaining time (I.e. not much) is spent with my family. I managed to get my wife to spend a few hours at the airfield this year, with me flying while she takes care of the kids, but there is only so much to do and see for two Kindergarteners at the airfield, so I can fly one hour max.
Also, as a renter, I am constrained by availability of the plane.

I like the concept posted by @AF above, that you set a fixed day for flying. This can indeed help to gain acceptance. For me it’s impossible because I can be on call on any day of the week.

I try to get some flying in on free days during the week, which I sometimes get as compensation for working weekends. These are rare though and often I will have to do some other chores on them.

Low-hours pilot
EDVM Hildesheim, Germany

MedEwok wrote:

Basically all my remaining time (I.e. not much) is spent with my family. I managed to get my wife to spend a few hours at the airfield this year, with me flying while she takes care of the kids, but there is only so much to do and see for two Kindergarteners at the airfield, so I can fly one hour max.

Frankly, that sounds quite terrible. Do you really have to spend all your free time together? Why?

Mainz (EDFZ) & Egelsbach (EDFE), Germany

@MedEwok maybe take care of everything yourself on Saturday and send Mrs to full day in Spa, then on Sunday go and have whole day for yourself flying (hopefully you checked the weather on Friday and you are dead sure it’s CAVOK )

Good luck, worst case you will get to fly more when the kids grow up

Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom
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