Ibra wrote:
I was expecting “In the US, a doctor flies an A36 Bonanza and get to see patients at FBOs”
“Sees Basic Med patients in his hangar for free” would be closer to the truth. (Basic Med allows any US state licensed physician to sign off on a form that provides medical certification)
For me it hasn’t been the time, but maintenance downtime that have affected my hours. I work in academia so I have good flexibility during the flying season, a wife that complains that she hasn’t got enough utility from my plane and wants to fly more, and now my kids are old enough to sit in the back for 2-3 hours completely underwhelmed by the amazing privilege they get to benefit from. 3 years ago when I bought the plane it was tougher to get away, but the gods conspired to keep me grounded for much of that time.
It is extraordinary that doctors in these regions support socialist health policies.
Clearly, they are not a greedy group, and should be shown a good deal of respect for their public service.
Socialist health policy? Sorry, but that’s a disqualifying statement if you speak of Austria.
Social market economy used to be the term. Do you perhaps mean Cuba? Whatever…
Average salary of doctors in Austria is around 100k Euro.
Dentists and specialists (private consultants) are obviously making much more. 30k Euro a month.
There’s some room for improvement in clinics (working hours).
As a side note, studying medicine is free in Austria.
And, one is also free to move to the USA afterwards and make really big bucks (by ripping of those people who prove by their votes that they are too stupid to realize they are actually the ones most in need of public health insurance), all without a dime in student loans.
I should have done it. As they say: I wanted to become a doctor, but I didn’t have the patience.
Right about now I’d trade in my 22T for the vision jet (fully tax deductible as I‘d need it for visiting my patients).
Technicians working with me, most of whom are only technicians versus laborers by virtue of work experience, (no education beyond age 17 or 18) make about that salary, plus full benefits.
“good flexibility during the flying season“
There’s a season for flying? I thought that was all year long ;-). Reading this I am Re-comforted by my choice to refuse to have kids (for various reasons) and making that very clear early on in my relationship. (Been married for 23y’s at the end of this month)
LFHNflightstudent wrote:
Reading this I am Re-comforted by my choice to refuse to have kids (for various reasons) and making that very clear early on in my relationship. (Been married for 23y’s at the end of this month)
The discussion “having kids vs not having them” is ages old and probably affects all men and women in existence who have a long term partner, and can probably be found in all hobbyist forums and many more.
However, we have several people in this forum, some in this very thread, who made flying + kids a workable reality, so one cannot draw the conclusion that it is impossible to enjoy GA as a hobby and be a (good) parent at the same time.
What S57 has pointed out is that his OP was about how to manage your time to get enough flying out of it, rather than whether or not to do it with a partner/kids.
MedeWok, the Vans builder forum is full of such threads. « I have 2 young kids and a mortgage, can I build an RV? » I read them with interest and the result of these discussions is a mystery.
Most (around 80-90%) builders say it is impossible without loosing your family, your job, your sanity or something else major. They recommend waiting for the kids to grow up.
Very few say it is the best experience they ever had and that one must start as soon as possible. Example
It becomes even more difficult to grasp when some of the first category say that their kids have now left the house and their last small motivation to build is the hope to take their grand kids flying some day.
My conclusion as of now is that it is a mystery. Some seem to make it happen somehow, most don’t. What makes the successful ones succeed, I am still looking for. Because I anticipate this situation 
Jujupilote wrote:
What makes the successful ones succeed, I am still looking for.
Check out the GP-4 article here A friend of mine built one of these over a 13 year period, then as a single man, completed it in 1998 and still flies it often today. A GP-4 is very labor intensive project than makes an RV look simple… the experienced builder in the article worked 15 hour days, seven days a week in a cordoned off section of his business instead, for two years, which must be the record for a GP-4.
A super experienced local builder with more projects than I could count behind him does it similarly, he and his wife run their aircraft related business at the airport with him hands on, alternating between engineering activity for the business and the project. He’s got a pretty good situation but none the less says says “you just neglect your life until it’s done” (with a smile). He spends six days a week, maybe 10 hrs a day at the airport because that’s what he wants to do. He grew up in a hangar and today his little girl is often at the airport with her parents too (she thinks rolls in a TB-30 are what average people do for fun)
I think in actuality you have to find a way to integrate long hours of building with the rest of your life in a non-competing fashion, and all parties have to be devoted to completion of the project. Aviation has to be a lifestyle for a period, not a hobby. If that is not a possibility for individual or work-related or cultural reasons or anything else, forget it and buy somebody else’s completed project instead.
I’ve just had this discussion with Justine 
One gets a lot of men who complain that they have no time for their hobbies anymore, due to family taking up all the time and their wife not supporting them. But the flip side of that debate is that the wife doesn’t have time for anything if the husband buggers off to fly and leaves her to look after the kids (which is a full time job, for 10-15 years)
In between the two extremes you get various situations, including plenty where the woman was fully planning from the outset to totally devote herself to family stuff (quite common, given the deadline of ~40 approaching), hoped to “mould” the generally somewhat reluctant man into a full time “family man” and – predictably – failed. As the 100+ year old saying goes: the man hopes the woman won’t change, but she does, and the woman hopes the man will change, but he doesn’t
This stuff is rarely easy if you have kids, unless (a) there is enough money available, and (b) there is an acceptance of the idea of getting a babysitter.
I wonder how @jwoolard is getting on with his RV build? He is one of the young builders I have known.
