I owned a Taifun 17E, they are wonderful very nice harmony in flight controls. I flew it about six times from Belgium to Hungary. The systems are complex specially the gear retract mechanism it has flaperons and electric CS prop. With flaps negative you can go relatively fast for a TMG. The standard Limbach engine is a bit under powered but you can get more powerful engines. Mine had a sauer engine which had the hydraulic lifters!
Dear Mooney_Driver,
Here is a fellow Mooney flyer who doesn’t live far away, and if you were to drop me a PM, I’d be happy to respond and meet you for a coffee somewhere in the CH/F/D triagle and talk a little bit about pilots, planes, dreams and bad coffee in that area. Oh, and about time too !
If you don’t have the time to do so, I understand … with some sadness, because you fell victim to a modern disease, or shall I say a human disease ?
So, let me remind you, “perception of time is time”. Physics and synchronized pendulums have nothing to do with our life’s time. And any orderly, beautifully balanced schedule (which you seem to have), intended to make good use of the available time, creates the very real illusion of “time keeps flying”, and “I don’t have time”. The better you get at organizing your time, even worse, the more you allow other people to fill your “shared” Google calendar, the worse it gets. But back up in the air this all vanishes within seconds. You could also climb a Swiss mountain for the same effect. But you might better get up really, really early (I have seen the hordes of rushed tourists and their headlamps on the Matterhorn as early as 4am before dawn). And this mountain, or the mountain is anyway as far away from your home as the airport. I wish you all the best for the little time that we all have left. Cheers !
Ibra wrote:
For benchmarking, here is something recently published (sort of serious study), the numbers turns out to be inline with some of my emprical observations
Thanks for sharing that link.
For benchmarking, here is something recently published (sort of serious study), the numbers turns out to be inline with some of my emprical observations:
https://chessintheair.com/the-risk-of-dying-doing-what-we-love
@lbra a good approach in that link, for the 60+ flying 100 hours a year then the mortality or morbidity actuarial table dominates :) Hopefully your AME gets you to hang up your headset before you hurt yourself.
RobertL18C wrote:
for the 60+ flying 100 hours a year then the mortality or morbidity actuarial table dominates
I have no idea what this means, but what I do understand is this: each one of us, 60++ or 60— and of course living in a high income country will most likely die in one of the following ways:
In the meantime we analyze the statistics of people dying suddenly from different events, and find out that backcountry skiing is 22.85714 times less “risky” than GA … and “much too early” [weeping].
GIVE ME A BREAK
Basically over 60 your mortality table (likelihood of dying that year) goes above 1%, and converges on 100% as you get older.
Flying GA 100 hours a year seems to have less than 1% risk according to the link.
Hopefully an actuary will point out the crudeness of this thesis.
Looking at people I have known, I would put it slightly differently:
One big problem is that if you have a range of health issues, you will probably lose your medical long before these really affect you. So “your” flying life is going to be a lot shorter than your relatively healthy (driving a car, etc) life. A lot of men (women too but they get it about 5 years later) lose their medical to cardiac issues, and then you are looking at the bigger part of 10k to get it back. Most don’t bother. And most of them are smart enough to not go down the “UK NPPL medical self declaration” / “French UL no-medical-needed” route.
So enjoy it while you can. You are probably just one dodgy ECG away from the end.
And go plant based 
Hi Peter,
I am sitting at home, thick IMC, and I am glad some people (like you) keep their heads on their shoulders.
Of course we do agree of the food issues, no surprise here. But I’d like to add two anecdotes for your entertainment.
1) years ago, I live in northern Alabama back then, and meet an old aviator. He owns his own little airfield, and he is about 85. Flies every other day. They have taken his medical away when he was seventy, for cardiac issues. He kept flying, got a few fines, kept flying. Strictly in and out of his barn. I am not recommending to do this in terra-burrocratis Europe (the rr in burro is no accident). But his flying kills were … a pleasure to see.
2) Moving back to Germany. At the local airport I meet the owner of a huge hangar, he is 88 back then. Flies his MTG alone in and out of that grass field (dangerous stuff by statistics). He started flying age 14 for German Luftwaffe. This year alone he flew 60 hours solo. He is convinced that there is one thing in the world which has kept him healthy. I guess you know what I mean … and the fine-grained statistics for 60- and 60+ pilots and scuba-divers may not apply.
And what does he do when he flies ? He watches for traffic like a hawk – every minute – throughout the windows! I wish I could say the same thing about the Airfrance captain / FI I flew with last year, or the young aviators, with good hearts and good eyes, and a fondness for digital equipment.
And I think we owe some better moral support to our fellow pilots (who think about hanging it up), then quoting statistics.
RobertL18C wrote:
Basically over 60 your mortality table (likelihood of dying that year) goes above 1%, and converges on 100% as you get older.Flying GA 100 hours a year seems to have less than 1% risk according to the link.
Now I see, thank you !!
