Pilot guitarists unite!

roundthebend

ManWithoutSkin said:

roundthebend said:

I'm soon to turn 46 and my youthful ambitions to be a pilot are still burning away.
I know that employers can't discriminate on age (unless there's a valid reason, e.g. modelling children's clothes) so I could be tempted to give it a go and make a career change.
Realistically, I suspect that the recruitment process might favour younger people. Maybe not. Do we have any anecdotal information about that?

I think I've written elsewhere in this thread, I work in a training department for an airline teaching people how to fly a 737.

 In my training centre we do a lot of initial type ratings, so new pilots joining the company. The vast majority of the people we train are brand new pilots, so people who have never flown commercially before and are starting their career.  The vast majority of these new pilots starting with us are in their 20s and 30s. However, over the last year I've had several guys in their 40s. 

I think the biggest advantage younger people have is they generally have less commitments outside of training.  They can focus solely on training, their not distracted by kids, paying bills, their partner or life at home.  Some of the aptitude tests airlines are require to do are more suited to younger people, things like reaction times.  The other issue is as we get older and we start to face health issues, it may be harder to obtain and keep a medical.

I'm lucky enough to currently be in very good health and always have been. My eyes are not as good as they once were.
And my kids are grown up, flown the nest, I might even be mortgage free soon so I'm potentially in a very good position.
It's tempting indeed.
Thank you for the insight.

merlin

Simon le Bon's brother Jonathan is a physiotherapist and pilot. 
just thought I'd throw that in ....

topdog91

greggreg66 said:

topdog91 

(BTW, as OP, wanted to say I'm now in the circuit and close to first solo, just need to get the final flare sorted and keep my eye on airspeed all the way on final to not come in hard and fast, ooer.)

Fabulous! That’s exciting. The one thing that helped me with the flare is to remind myself to keep the back pressure and just keep racking it back. That’s very exciting about the solo coming up, good luck with it and enjoy it - where are you learning?

I’ve now got my QXC this Saturday hopefully. I’m at 43hrs, after the cross country flight I’ll be at minimum hours but only around 8hrs solo so need to get that to 10 and then hopefully onto mock tests. 

One other weird thing is that I have an Insta account for my flying and one of my videos of a recent dodgy landing in strong cross winds went viral with (currently) 225k views… and loads of unhelpful comments too ha!! 

Good stuff! I'm learning at Elstree. Flare-wise, at first I sometimes flared too late, then sometimes it a bit too much and ballooned, now I have that bit down but I tend to stop looking at the airspeed too soon, then come in a bit faster (higher) than expected, so too much energy to bleed off. But I'm pretty sure it's getting there!

Dodge

merlin said:

Simon le Bon's brother Jonathan is a physiotherapist and pilot. 
just thought I'd throw that in ....

I've flown with him - nice fella.

manicguitarist

strumjoughlamps said:

Damn I was only thinking the other day about the pilot who also made guitars, I think he even donated a LP Jr to the (old)forum raffle. I think @thomasross20 won it 

Morgan.
I had an explorer made by him.

greggreg66

topdog91 said:

greggreg66 said:

topdog91 

(BTW, as OP, wanted to say I'm now in the circuit and close to first solo, just need to get the final flare sorted and keep my eye on airspeed all the way on final to not come in hard and fast, ooer.)

Fabulous! That’s exciting. The one thing that helped me with the flare is to remind myself to keep the back pressure and just keep racking it back. That’s very exciting about the solo coming up, good luck with it and enjoy it - where are you learning?

I’ve now got my QXC this Saturday hopefully. I’m at 43hrs, after the cross country flight I’ll be at minimum hours but only around 8hrs solo so need to get that to 10 and then hopefully onto mock tests. 

One other weird thing is that I have an Insta account for my flying and one of my videos of a recent dodgy landing in strong cross winds went viral with (currently) 225k views… and loads of unhelpful comments too ha!! 

Good stuff! I'm learning at Elstree. Flare-wise, at first I sometimes flared too late, then sometimes it a bit too much and ballooned, now I have that bit down but I tend to stop looking at the airspeed too soon, then come in a bit faster (higher) than expected, so too much energy to bleed off. But I'm pretty sure it's getting there!

Cool, it does start to click more... but you'll also still have terrible landings! Sounds like it's starting to click though. 

I did my QXC on Saturday and it was so good. I flew from North Weald > Shoreham > Southend > North Weald. My first landings was a total beaut, second one was still good but maybe not quite as nice, but my third one was a bit ropey ha!

Flying is the best!