Do you regret giving up flying?

Have read and enjoyed all the comments. S What is clear is that we all are different individuals, different missions, different goals, and we’re getting older. When I no longer am enjoying my plane(cross country visits to family or vacations), I will sell it. Like others, I enjoy the magic carpet the airplane affords, but when that is gone, no tail dragger, circuits around the pattern, 200 dollar hamburgers. Whether I try RVing, travel by car stopping at motel 6, commercial aviation or smaller day trips, I will try them all and choose not to look back. When I lose my medical/insurance, stop flying instruments, my wife stops flying with me, stop flying 100 hrs a year, or lose my skills(hopefully wife, kids, friend, FAA will tell me), hopefully I quit.

will not have to tell me
 
Checkout_my_Six said:
yup....I had the same thought....then I didn't. ;)
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Buddy bought a 5th wheel for about $25k. Right off bat paid for 4 brand new Michelin tires, paid to have the wheel bearings and brakes serviced. Paid to have his truck fitted with the hitch. The truck is capable of towing it but it has its own gremlins somewhere in the suspension or driveline,

Get it home and finds the floor is soft in several spots, slide leaks, and some other things.

Ends up towing it about 200 miles one way to a shop to fix those items at around $8k.

Let us not forget how crowded the interstates are and how windy it gets when towing these
 
Lndwarrior said:
I rarely ask for people's opinions on this forum, but this is one time I would like to hear so other people's thoughts on the issue. The idea of making a final decision on this is eating at me. Flying has been my over-riding passion for over 35 years. How the hell do I walk away from flying????
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Hi.
It does not have to be a total disconnect. Try some PC Flight simulators, at this stage I would only use XPlane11, stay away from XPlane 12 it has too many problems, and or MSFS 2020. You will need a decent CPU(i9 @ 4.3+) and Video board (RTX 3070+) to have a good experience.
With some of the new hardware and possibly using VR (more expensive $4-500 but not nearly a Real World) it can be very useful, and at some point you may want to get back in it.
I've done both, Sims and Real World flying for many years, since before PC existed, and found them very useful.
Post here if you want / need more details.
 
My partner and I are selling our Ercoupe after it gets out of annual. He wants my ultralight and I have a Aventura HP kit to finish. Both of us are in our 80’s and still like flyIng but the Ercoupe needs to move on. So we’ll still be in the air but at a lower level.

I’ll still be able to take my girlfriend for local trips around the area of the Home Drome via rental but since I introduced her to travel in First Class, any distance travel will be at the front of the big aluminum tube.

So there’s lots of flying left to do but the cash flow will be much lower (until I run out of the couple of million or so FF miles I still have).

Just another avenue to explore as a pilot and not a RV owner.
 
Lndwarrior said:
......What I am beginning to understand is that a used RV will likely put me in the same boat.
........
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in some cases a used RV might be better than new. We bought ours new, and DIY repairs and projects started night 1. Warranty work famously takes a long time in the RV world...and often it's just faster and easier to do it yourself. The workmanship is shockingly bad. Might be exceptions with the most ultra high end custom Prevost busses, but most everything else as I understand it is a lot like mine. I think the manufacturers purposely don't do a lot of QC, passing that sort of stuff off to the dealers and post sale service....and I think count on a big percentage of things just getting fixed DIY. It's really sad.
That said, most of it I've enjoyed because it gave me something to do when sitting in the "trailer park" ;)
I'd say that generally after the first year or so of not full timing, just holiday and weekend warrior trips, the surprise repair projects tapered off
and I don't mean to talk you out of it. RVing can be a great way to travel, even with the down sides..... something good to do for a few years.
Grum.Man said:
Ahhh yes, RVing. Leaving your nice house in a good neighborhood to stay in a trailer park down the road :lol:.
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That points to a thought I've had for a while...and that is how to define camping.
first I find it funny when people call RVing "camping", but a lot of folks do.
As best as I can tell, camping in most folks minds, really just amounts to "roughing it" at some level below their normal standards of living....and yeah..trailer park sums it up well

About hanging up the flying....
seems to me that maybe you'd be happier selling your experimental and getting a certified bird...maybe something simple that requires less maintenance by an A&P.

I gave up flying temporarily after realizing that renting makes little sense. Over paying for poorly maintained rental aircraft with horrible availability. I decided the only way it made sense to keep flying was to buy my own...so I started off on a plan to buy a plane....then got laid off from work, had kids, and basically life happened....and many trips around the sun later I'm still daydreaming about it.

I've thought that renting something like an RV to try it out would be a similar bad experience...so it's not something I recommend. Seems to me that it won't be the floor plan that fits you, it won't be set up the way you like it with your stuff sorted out.... etc.... and you won't know how anything works so little minor or even non-issues that come up will be magnified.... so it just won't be nearly the same experience unless you are very lucky.
 
Eldorado said:
What is clear is that we all are different individuals, different missions, different goals, and we’re getting older. When I no longer am enjoying my plane(cross country visits to family or vacations), I will sell it. Like others, I enjoy the magic carpet the airplane affords, but when that is gone, no tail dragger, circuits around the pattern, 200 dollar hamburgers
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Yep, all different. If I was just going places in a plane I think I'd get bored quickly. I may make the occasional 100 or 200 mile cross country, but most of my flying is around the local area for the sheer enjoyment of it... including, yes, circuits around the pattern in an antique taildragger just because it's fun. I don't see myself ever losing interest, though the specifics may change. I flew ultralights before the current string of biplanes, and may well go back to ultralights when I get older and poorer. Or a glider certificate or seaplane rating could be in my future... who knows?

RV's... you can spend boku bucks on a 30-10' class A or 5th wheel, but you can also do it on the cheap. Ours (my wife would say it's hers, she uses it solo more often than with me) is old, 16' long, and can fit anywhere a car can go. We bought it sight unseen, flew the aluminum tube to CA to pick it up, and drove it home 3000 miles to CT. Yes, we've had the occasional adventures with mechanical trouble over the past few years, but we paid less than $10K for it.

And sometimes I fly to meet her.

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Salty said:
For the price of a nice class A motor home you could rent one for about 1,500 days and come out ahead - without having to maintain it. Think about it. That’s 5 months of the year for 10 years You could be using it , while letting someone else fix it in between trips.
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But its nice to know who or what was in that bed before you jump in!

I'd love to fly and now have all the time in the world but had to take a ssdi and retire because of my back issues. Haven't been able to renew my medical becuase of it. Dealing wth docs and pain mangement and cant get into appointments for months on end. God help you if they say they called you becuase if you dont get the message, your put back out in left field for months. There is your pain management for you.

My plane or partnership rather has been for sale, just really dont know where to list it anymore. Hung flyers at the local airports but basically just had wing walkers call. I quess everyone does facebook now but i never used it, no one needs to know what i am up to every minute of the day. Where does everyone have the best luck advertising their partnership?

I need to make a flight to pick up a relative for xmas and it sucks to have it sitting in the hanger and have to ask a partner to fly so they can hold my hand and work around another schedule.
 
Since our budget would limit us to a +/- 10 year old Minni Winni or similar, the reality of the maintenance issues is a deal breaker. Physically I'm not able to do it and I get zero joy out of vehicle maintenance.

I'm going to keep the plane and rent an RV when we get the urge for an adventure.
 
Lndwarrior said:
Since our budget would limit us to a +/- 10 year old Minni Winni or similar, the reality of the maintenance issues is a deal breaker. Physically I'm not able to do it and I get zero joy out of vehicle maintenance.

I'm going to keep the plane and rent an RV when we get the urge for an adventure.
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I owned a used Minnie Winnie for about 3 years. Not that big a deal on the maintenance side.
 
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