How different was flying many years ago?

Peter wrote:

the dodgy parts of the world were less dodgy or entirely peaceful

And some of the peaceful parts of the world were dodgy or entirely violent!

….and AvGas didn’t leave carbon deposits on Continental C-90s, we had that nice 80/87…my gas and go Continental needs some valve work on a couple of cylinders after only five years despite leaning it.

Peter wrote:

… how different flying was say 30-40 years ago.

Although I am missing two years to qualify to answer this question (started gliding 38 and powered flying 28 years ago), I will try my best, biased of course for my home country:

Peter wrote:

there was less CAS

There is much less CAS around here now than when I started. 90 percent of the military airspace is gone. All the military low flying corridors are gone. The ADIZ (air defense identification zone) is gone (yippie!), even from wikipedia, so I can’t post a link for those who have never heard about it. The “Black forest wall”, a large military airspace all along the black forest from ground up to FL180 (IIRC) is gone. This made east-west flying impossible over a stretch of almost 100km in the south-western part of Germany.

Peter wrote:

there was less radar surveillance so busts were not picked up

Around here, there was more radar surveillance then. All along the Rhine there were military bases of “foreign” countries on German territory (France, Canada, USA, UK) each with their own radar, interceptors and anti-air guns. Along the east border there was the same stuff but with Russian, East German (DDR), Polish and Czech Airforces, some of them supposedly quite trigger-happy. But a bit slow sometimes as well when I think of madman Matthias Rust’s landing on the Red Place in Moscow in a C172.

Peter wrote:

there was no GPS so loads more people were busting but nobody worried (more than today)

No idea about the statistics of busts and related prosecutions.

Peter wrote:

there was no workable notam system so no possible breaches

The NOTAM system has not changed at all during my flying time.

Peter wrote:

the dodgy parts of the world were less dodgy or entirely peaceful

There have been some shifts in dodginess, but overall the changes are minor. I remember that for decades, Albania was a white spot on the Jeppesen route chart which only said “Albania prohibited”. Now you can fly there just like anywhere else. And of course, the “iron curtain” made flights to the east almost impossible for us until 1989. I know a doctor (eye surgeon) who flew his own piston single throughout the 80ies and 90ies. Every year there was a medical congress in Dresden and every year, 6 months in advance, he filed a formal application with the East German Authorties for a private flight from Stuttgart to Dresden. Every year this application made big circles around the East German Administration until very high up (after all, he had a “Professor” title on his letterhead so they had to take him seriously) as could be seen from all the stamps and signatures on his applications which of course was denied every time. But he did it again and again just to throw a little sand into their gears…

Peter wrote:

if you looked crazy (e.g. flying a plane) people would laugh and give you food, whereas today they might kidnap you, or just kill you for a laugh

Not around here, not then and not now. Don’t know where you have to fly to get yourselves killed for a laugh. Maybe if you fly low-level from Colombia to Florida without answering radio calls the US coast guard will use you as training target for their AA guns. But this hasn’t changed much in the last decades I guess.

Peter wrote:

This is all pre-internet of course, so how did people get weather say 30 years ago, for a trip UK to Greece?

Oh, the good old days with face-to-face weather briefing and flight information service If you want to get a sample of this, fly to places like RAF Northolt or Narssarssuaq. Real living people will explain the weather sitauation for you and work out the best course to fly through or around it. Other living people will assist you with flight planning, filing of flight plans, getting relevant NOTAMS and they might even obtain you approach plates for airfields outside your Jeppesen subscription. Smaller airfields had hotline-telephones (one picked up the receiver and was instantly on line with the MET or AIS staff) and a remote printer to which your briefing package was sent. All that came free of charge (of course!). In France they were more technologically advanced and offered a similar service through “MINITEL” (french people will certainly remember…) terminals which could be found on almost every airfield. Once one had figured out how to use it and where to find the keys on the keyboard, the service was almost as good as today on the internet.

While mostly about ferry flying, I found this book an excellent read that gets across some of the “GA feeling” that may have existed in these days.

Me, I learned to fly at age 22 in 2005, so I cannot really comment …

Peter wrote:

the dodgy parts of the world were less dodgy or entirely peaceful

Hmm, in the mid 80s I was in the Air Force as a aircraft mechanic, arming sidewinders and guns of F-16s before launching them to intercept “peaceful” USSR nuclear bombers penetrating Norwegian airspace. In periods it happened several times per day, so we had to sleep and eat in the aircraft shelters (the pilots sat in the planes). They came back with lots of cool pictures and “stories” though

I got my PPL in 1992. The largest difference is CAS and busting (there were no such thing as busting even until a few years ago), and of course “security” on airports that came in early-mid 2000.

Just a few:

• No yellow jackets.
• Land at Luton for Avgas.
• No gps so every flight involved a moment or two of sheer terror as landmarks refused to co-operate.
• Most flights seemed to involve being shouted at by someone with a handlebar moustache.
• No forums to get the news – when they started, I was often asked “how do you know that”?
• Little Chef map acceptable (not really, but had enough dots on it for practical navigation)

Aveling wrote:

No gps so every flight involved a moment or two of sheer terror as landmarks refused to co-operate.

That brought a vivid memory back. Flying my Chipmunk, not much room for the map, so tucked away under my thigh, to be brought out at critical moments. Saw some power stacks through a deepening haze. Crap, or thoughts to that effect, what are those, and importantly, where am I? Four minutes of being lost, as I frantically searched the map for said power stacks. Found them, eventually, and got back on course. Ah, the winds aloft…..

I first flew in the US around 1980. My experiences from then and there would say…

1) More people flying then and the average production plane pilot was more ambitious in his flying
2) They had to be because navigation was difficult – portable GPS in particular has made a huge difference.
3) There was much more homebuilt innovation then, with exciting new designs every five minutes and lots of fly-ins. Homebuilding is more mature now, an industry versus a movement.
4) Lettered airspace was introduced in the early nineties and is better than the ‘control zone’ and ‘terminal control area’ stuff that was previously in the US.

Otherwise not much different, airspace and flying in the US are both fairly stable. Like Robert L18C I miss 80/87 avgas, which was still available here and there when I resumed flying in 2002.

PS headsets in 1980 weren’t as good and Americans mostly flew without them.