“Where exactly do you draw the line between enjoyment and thrill?”
With coastal cruising, (sail, power, and canoe), aqualung diving, and at present flying and off road walking, all my “scary” moments have come from unforeseen happenings.
If I’d been deliberately trying to go near to my perceived limits of my skill and equipment, the unforseen events might have been accidents.
Maoraigh wrote:
Doing an activity for enjoyment is much safer than doing it for “status”, i.e. aiming to be the fastest, most admired, etc. And doing them for thrills is more dangerous still
Where exactly do you draw the line between enjoyment and thrill? If you are not aware of the risks, and don’t know how to handle them, that’s the danger IMO.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Thanks. Well, that lesson is quite well known.
All too obviously it is NOT quite well known.
Oh yea… @Maoraigh I would never do anything for thrills or status. Simply not me.
I simply enjoy flying to destinations. Local flying just like that has never interested me much, other than training. But right now I would need training to get my revalidation and then some flying on my own to get back into the routine. But right now, I don’t even have the time to start up my pc sim to do some stuff there…. well, at the moment, the dour season here has started anyhow. From experience, November is solid IMC here in the forecast, so no plans are possible. Maybe in the new year.
For most or all of the activities rated, your personal attitude will have a major influence. Doing an activity for enjoyment is much safer than doing it for “status”, i.e. aiming to be the fastest, most admired, etc. And doing them for thrills is more dangerous still.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
It’s for people around me that I am anxious to expose them to risks, particularly my kid. But I will also have to realize that I will have to let go of that otherwise it will be damaging to her.
I guess it is better to settle for few memorable flights with kids than do a lot of it 
As for time, life gets busy, I am sure same bunch will be around when are back 
Mooney_Driver wrote:
I’ve seen lots of mates disappear from the face of the aviation world to re-emerge 15 years later.
Indeed! Witness my user name! Although it was 17 years in my case.
AJ wrote:
. I wish you all the best for the little time that we all have left.
Thanks. Well, that lesson is quite well known. It however presumes that you have control over your time, which I have not… or not sufficiently.
One of my workmates saw this thread… so much for annonymity and reminded me that most of us worker bees with small children have the same problem. And that while it may look doom and gloom, it actually is just the normal thing to experience being married with children and working 100%. Well, I suppose he’s right. I’ve seen lots of mates disappear from the face of the aviation world to re-emerge 15 years later. So maybe I just have to adjust to that and forget aviation for a while, only I will be in my 70ties then.
As for fear of dying… I don’t actually experience that at all for myself, in fact I could not care less. It’s for people around me that I am anxious to expose them to risks, particularly my kid. But I will also have to realize that I will have to let go of that otherwise it will be damaging to her. One of the frustrations is that now I understand why my mother used to drive me crazy with being overzealous herself… maybe I inherited that.
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 !!
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.
