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And as far as you being " awfully premature ", I'm looking for a plane and don't have my Pilots license yet. You cant get more premature that that!!
Well, that makes two of us then! I don't have my pilot's license yet either...haven't even gotten properly started yet, except for reading voraciously. (I had a few lessons years ago in CO as an impecunious newlywed, but just couldn't afford to continue. At long last, almost 20 years later, it looks like I may finally have the means.) I had been seriously investigating the possibilities of coming home to learn to fly in America on one of those intensive fast track options, until a problem with one of our children put the kybosh on it. It would seem unwise to be gone for 6-8 weeks under the circumstances. So I have had to reluctantly turn my eyes to learning here which will be considerably more expensive (user fees and all that, plus a higher cost of things generally.) The local club ony offers flight training on a Piper Tomahawk (how are they?), whereas I was really keen to learn on a Cessna 150 or 152 because that is what I myself hope to own and fly regularly (maybe a 140 if I am the lucky winner of the Dakota Territory Air Museum Sweepstakes! They are raffling off tickets for one...the annual raffle helps support the museum...a worthy cause and very akin to the work of the Kjeller Aviation History Society which I belong to and am active in here in Norway.
But I think it is more probable that the plane I have in the future will be one I have earned and bought myself...there are no free lunches in this world! And people may laugh if they will, but for me, the little Cessna 150s with their slim waists, swept tails and light controls are a thing of beauty....spam can insults notwithstanding! So to carry my warped thinking to its conclusion, I thought if I could manage it and had my own plane of the type I wanted to fly, maybe I could learn to fly really well, whether it were a conventional gear or tricarriage. (WOuld like ultimately to be able to master both.) And if I found one that was strong enough also to tow the club gliders and maybe be used as a beginning trainer for a sort of basic-aerobatics-for safety-and-to-improve-your-flying form of training (rather like what Catherine does)maybe the club would be interested in helping to maintain it. It would be a privately owned aircraft that the club could use for towing and more advanced training people who already had their licenses but wanted to take it a little further.
(I am thinking aloud here...have not broached my nutty thinking to anyone over here)....I am not even a pilot yet and already I have launched into exotic plans!! But there is more: there is a club near Kongsvinger where my husband's people come from that needs life blown into it again after they crashed their only plane. I am not saying I should offer the replacement, but we need to stop the closure of the few local airfields Norway has by making sure there is activity. The Society is making a good start by flying in the Tiger Moth we restored along with a Piper Cub and a Bird Dog, possibly a Fairchild Cornell in a sort of historical marking of the early days of Norwegian military aviation (the TM and Cornell were used as trainers before the war, the Tiger Moth before the Germans invaded, the Cornell at the Little Norway training camp in Canada during the war where young Norwegian men who managed to escape their occupied country went to train before joining the Norwegian squadrons in the RAF.
So as a novice and eager "wannabe", I leaped on the questions you posted and followed closely, noting the responses of the members, their suggestions and tips, the suggested threads and leads....gosh you can learn alot here! And if I can see my way clear to getting to Clinton, like you I will learn more (as well as having a jolly good time doing it! I can't wait to try tossing a nerf!)
