It has begun
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The days of pining for motorcycle rides has started. There is white fluffy shit outside, and i'm stuck inside doing homework and finishing off my semester.
I'm keeping this video on one of my screens to remind me of a better time. Before my crashes, before 2020, before, well, a LOT of shit.
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Time to buy a snowmobile.
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@peter_black dont remind me... I'm getting the itch to drive my Vette again
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@cb you have seen my place. where TF am I going to A: keep a sled and B: use it?!
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@peter_black said in It has begun:
@cb you have seen my place. where TF am I going to A: keep a sled and B: use it?!
Buy 2 and bring them up to my place! (I'm on the oppomap) You could go out all day right from my house.
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Seriously winter started in Montana in mid october, there is already like 4' of snow at the ski area and I have not driven on a dry road in a month.
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@ibrad i'm trying to find the oppomap right now..I should have bookmarked that bastard
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I just searched 'oppomap' in the search bar on this site and it took me there
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@peter_black This is the time of year when living in Louisiana ain’t bad. I’m wearing shorts and a polo and it’s just about perfect outside. Now if I just had a motorcycle to ride.
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Sorry guys, I can only smile and poke at ya a bit. 72F here with a nice breeze and sunny skies in S GA...
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@bicyclebuck Then you'd be motorcyclebuck
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@peter_black I feel you. The Roadster's last run was Nov. 5th which was very late this year.
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@poor_sh this is excellent Oppo!
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@bicyclebuck said in It has begun:
@peter_black This is the time of year when living in Louisiana ain’t bad. I’m wearing shorts and a polo and it’s just about perfect outside. Now if I just had a motorcycle to ride.
That is a very solvable problem...
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@jminer In this case, it’s a matter of priorities. The motorcycle wouldn’t be worth listening to my wife be upset about it all the time.
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@bicyclebuck said in It has begun:
@jminer In this case, it’s a matter of priorities. The motorcycle wouldn’t be worth listening to my wife be upset about it all the time.
Very fair point. It took me some convincing of my wife to let me get back on a bike. When we met (as teenagers) I rode dirt bikes. We got married and I couldn’t afford that anymore/had no place to. Then in 2007 gas prices exploded so she let me buy a scooter for around town stuff. Couple years of that and I was able to convince her to let me buy a real bike.
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@jminer We were shopping for a bike shortly after we got married. I was ready to pull the trigger on a VFR or Daytona when several things happened. One, my wife got pregnant. Two, one of my flying buddies was paralyzed in a hang-gliding accident. And three, 9/11 happened.
That effectively ended all of my adventurous hobbies. No more hang-gliding. No more SCUBA. And definitely no motorcycle.
She’s a asked up a bit since then. Now I have my pilot cert. I’m driving a zippy car. I tested the waters a few weeks ago by mentioning a new motorcycle. The answer was a hard NO.
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@BicycleBuck A pilots license has been my dream for years and I was very jealous of you when you finished yours. I had the go ahead this year to start mine, but then a global pandemic hit and it all of a sudden seemed like a bad a idea to both spend that kind of dough on something that would likely never earn me money and spend that much time cooped up in a Cessna with another person. Hoping sometime late next year to be able to start it - we’re in a more expensive area now, but still should be able to swing it.
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This is why cars are good. Its like 2 motorcycles stuck together with a little house.
*I hope people get this reference -
@jminer I’m looking forward to your success! There are several free ground school programs. I didn’t go that route, but it might save you some time, some money and will keep you out of a crowded classroom. No matter what you choose, be sure to KNOW the material before you get in the cockpit so your aren’t wasting time with an instructor covering stuff you should know from ground school. Also, if you have the choice, choose a less expensive plane to fly. It will be slower, but getting certified is about time, not distance covered. I saved at least $20/hr by flying a Cherokee 140 instead of a Warrior or Cessna 172.
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@bicyclebuck thanks! As I get closer to starting I'll ping you with some questions I'm sure. I was looking at some of the online ground schools though. There is a lot more options for planes to train in out here in the Bay area. Back in St Louis there wasn't much outside the 150/2 or 172. Even one place I looked at did training in tail draggers.
Any thought on the rent vs buy something cheap to train in? I see a lot of folks online advocating for buying a sub $20k 152 for your training then you only have to pay the instructor (outside of flying costs). It's a tempting thought especially since I see myself buying one eventually anyway.
Without a doubt to get started I'll rent at the school, just wondering if that thought entered your mind when training.
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@jminer I seriously considered buying, especially when I thought my son was going to get certified too. Then I looked at the market. A plane for less than $20k will need work. Lots of work. The biggest risk is the engine. Even the small 4-cyl in the 150 costs $20k. Then there’s the hangar fees (if you can find one) or parking on the tarmac. And then comes the insurance.
All this is for a plane that’s old and slow and doesn’t have much useful load. The useful load in a 150 is about 475 lbs. fill it with 26 gallons of fuel, about 156 lbs, and you’re left with about 320 lbs of load. That’s fine for an adult and a kid or maybe solo with some gear, but two adults is pushing it, especially on a hot day.
That may not seem like a big deal, but it can cause issues. I had done the calculations in preparation for my check ride, but someone at the school didn’t get my message and filled the tanks on the Cherokee. The school had to drain off fuel so the DPE and I, both big guys, could fly without exceeding the maximum takeoff weight. If you buy a 150, you’ll always have to be really careful about your fuel when flying with an instructor.
If the budget is closer to $30k, you’ll have an easier time finding something that only needs cosmetic work. If you go up to $45k you can get something that needs little or no work.
The expensive parts are the engine and instruments. Even at $30k, you’re going to get old instruments. Seriously consider the airspace you’ll be operating in. Two of my pilot friends fly out of rural, in towered airports and rarely enter controlled airspace. They need the basics but probably don’t need the latest/greatest instrument panels. I trained in highly controlled airspace and decent instrumentation was critical. Especially the radios. Don’t go cheap on the radios. We had a few flights in the 140 when the radios weren’t working well and it was never a good time. Even so, the instruments in the 140 were fairly old. The good thing was redundancy and a more complete package, including everything needed for instrument flight (IFR).
I’m sure you weren’t expecting such a long response. There’s a lot to think about before investing in a plane.
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@bicyclebuck this is a perfect length reply, thanks for all the info. I'm not a small dude so the payload of a 152 is a problem for sure.
I'll admit I ultimately would love to buy someone else's homebuilt so I can work on it myself (while still paying someone else to certify and check).
You're probably right that at $20k is doesn't make sense and swinging up towards $30k or more it makes the value of buying to save in training less in my head. I can probably afford that $6k over a year or so to rent and kind of eat it plus rental when we fly later.
