carlmeek wrote:
Forget the idea of keeping it at home and taking it to a strip. It takes far too long to take wings on and off, and the horizontal stabilizer too.
I’m sure @europaxs will disagree…
And then of course: Do it! Finish it!
S57 wrote:
There are lots of threads here about the numbers who give up after PPL.
Maybe. Probably we talk about these too much. Probably this is true for many other hobbies, too. But most people on this forum didn’t give up, but kept going instead and have great stories to tell. I didn’t give up and I’m still flying. From the few lines I read from you, I don’t think you’ll give up either. And if you do, that’s fine, too. Then it’s nice to have been a pilot once (rather than having been half a pilot once). You know, the “what you regret on your deathbed” thing again. 
Yes, the novelty of the local bimble wears of, but there’s so many things to do, places to explore, niches of aviation to dive into… You’d have to hurry to get bored by the time you loose your medical, in my opinion.
Most people do give up but the way to avoid it is really simple: get your PPL and get out of the school environment, and then get out of the burger run environment which is most peoples’ next (and last) stage. Start with nice high-value day trips, and fly to meet-ups with other pilots. Also fly with other – preferably more experienced – pilots because, for most, that is a real eye-opener. Then you will never go back.
I used to do mentoring and would do it again. Ground school and then some flying.
Of course I disagree, Patrick. Rigging the Europa and keeping it on a trailer is no big deal, when you get used to it after a couple of months. At least this is my experience after more then six years of ownerschip. Incidentally I know a couple of Europa owners, who keep it at home on a trailer, too. However one should keep in mind, that a good trailer costs some thousend Euro on top, if not sold together with the plane.
I think the Europa can also be flown IFR, depending on the country of registration.
I agree 100% on the Rotax suggestion 
100% agree with what Peter said in #12.
It’s difficult to stay motivated if you’re renting: busybodies sticking their noses into your plans, having a lot of difficulty making a trip because someone’s got the plane for 2 hours on Sunday morning etc.
A lot of people try to boil down the decision between owning and renting to a purely monetary one, and quite a few people – especially in flight schools – will try and deter you from owning on the basis of finance. However, if you find an aircraft you can comfortably afford to run, even if the per-hour cost ends up being more than renting an equivalent aircraft, there are certain things about ownership that are really hard to put a monetary value on:
The Europa is a good choice, by the way, if you want a permit aircraft and are comfortable doing your own maintenance (to be honest, for me, half the fun is getting my hands dirty). I’ve only got a few hours in a Europa tri-gear – a friend had one with the turbocharged Rotax, and I got to fly it solo a few times and the performance was excellent – 1800fpm climb at 60kt – and then you throttle back to a 130 knot cruise burning very little fuel, and it’s a nimble little aircraft.
As for the IR it’s probably less important than you might think unless you’re planning to fly for business or planning to do definite trips on definite days. I know Peter will disagree :-) but personally I would only do about 1 or 2 trips a year more if my aircraft was instrument capable (I’ve seen both sides, I do have an FAA IR and when I lived in Texas I did quite a bit of IFR flying). The thing is for me – I only want to really go somewhere if the weather’s going to be good anyway, because I tend to want to do outdoors stuff when I get wherever I’m going – so if the weather’s IMC, I probably wouldn’t bother even if I owned an IFR plane just because it wouldn’t be much fun when I got there. While it is true the IR is very useful for longer trips, if you’re VFR and just plan to go where the weather is good, you can have some fantastic trips and you’ll make serendipitous discoveries of interesting places you’d never have thought have going to, had you not stopped there because it happened to be where the weather is nice. And you can do very long trips VFR, I flew a Cessna 140 coast to coast in the United States (about 100 hours of flying) – I would decide where my next stop in the journey and the timing of it purely from what the weather was doing rather than planning it all out in minute detail before leaving home (and good flight planning software makes it much more convenient today than it was in 2002, when I had to lay out sectional charts on the floor of the FBO, or sometimes the apron in some of the more remote places, and draw lines!)
As for the airfield, it may be worth searching around (see if you can have a look at someone’s quarter mil chart, or at Skydemon) to see if there are some private airfields/farm strips etc – you may find one who’s willing to rent you a parking place which means you don’t have that hour long drive to the airfield.
I know Peter will disagree
Actually I would not disagree
IFR is a huge hassle and worth doing only if you have a long range plane and the money to throw on avgas for doing long trips. It also greatly increases the amount you have to pay for a suitable plane. Also the European IR required a test every year, plus the audiogram although there are now some concessions on that one.
Long-range means 3 hrs + IFR reserves
Do it definitely. If you can’t afford enough flying in certain period of your life due to financials or other priorities, you can always extend your priviledges/ratings with check rides and wait for better days to come. I started my PPL 27 years ago (after flying gliders for 7 years) and had to make long break (due to war in Yugoslavia) but I returned to flying that very moment when I could afford finishing PPL.
Since the Porsche has gone up in value (assuming you’ve had it some time) and I predict an imminent fall in classic car prices, sell the Porsche while you’re ahead and use the money to finish the course and see what happens from there.
You don’t say where you are but are you sure there’s nothing closer than you think?
@alioth
That was a great description of the flexibility of VFR flying. South of the Alps the weather is often great for VFR from spring through autumn. Yes, you have to be flexible, but I have never had to cancel a long trip because of weather! (Of course, those long trips sometimes launch in the opposite direction from that planned (Wife: “You said the Riviera! Why are in in a Rumanian village?”), but that is fun too!
Regarding giving up, one can only speculate of course. IMO most “give up” due to one or several of 4 reasons
I think all of us have felt one or the other. For me it is number 2 I also do feel from time to time on number 1 and 3. Let’s face it, a light aircraft has little to no useful value, in the sense of utility, investment or any other practical stuff. A light aircraft works best as a recreational toy, something you use in your spare time and pay money to do it. Luckily for me, I’m an aviation enthusiast. I just love aircraft and flying. I have no need or urge to “go places” or make up some fake “reason” to fly. One our in the air beats an hour on the ground, plain and simple. I also like to build aircraft just as much as flying them (much more when counting hours )
Anyway, for whatever reason of those four (we all feel them in from time to time, depending on time and space in life), I think it’s productive to figure out what you like to do. An Europa, or any other experimental aircraft, is truly yours. You can maintain and fix it as you want, without all the fuzz and bureaucracy of a certified aircraft. An Europa is also en excellent travelling machine, fast and very efficient. All in all I think point 1, 3 and 4 will be gone with an Europa, no matter how you use (bimbling or around the world trips), which only leaves number 2. Number 2 is purely a priority thing, some things have to be sacrificed to obtain other things. But you do have to like fiddling with an aircraft, and not be afraid of “opening things up”, if it’s only to see what’s inside.
