I started this endeavor about 4 months ago \u00e2\u20ac\u201c September 1998. I was going to see a different kind of instructor \u00e2\u20ac\u201c my golf pro. He canceled on me, so I thought I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d stop in at a nearby airport (Whiteman \u00e2\u20ac\u201c WHP) a look around. Walked in to a flight school there and started asking questions. Before I knew it, I was on an intro flight, and loving ALL of it. Bought a pile of training stuff \u00e2\u20ac\u201c they could have said, “you need to buy a Cessna 172 now”, and I would have called the bank. They would have turned me down, but I would have called.<\/p>\n
Raced home a told my wife \u00e2\u20ac\u201c “I knew I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like it, but I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d LOVE it. I want to get my private pilot\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s license.” Holding our 1-year-old, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m pretty sure it sounded more like “I know we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have nearly enough life insurance, but I want to zip around in a tiny plane in the busiest airspace in the country. Oh, and by the way \u00e2\u20ac\u201c it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s real expensive.” Overall, she was supportive \u00e2\u20ac\u201c she could see how excited I was.<\/p>\n
But the reality was that I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really have the TIME to get started yet. In May I started a software company, and the travel now involved was tremendous. It would need to wait. With the support of my wife, and the kind folks in rec.aviation.student, I started studying to pass the time. Even with CD-ROM, books, Internet sites, newsgroups and talking to other pilots \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the time passed VERY slowly. I decided I would start my training around my birthday \u00e2\u20ac\u201c in January.<\/p>\n
An added bonus of waiting was that I came in contact with a flying club at a local airport (Van Nuys \u00e2\u20ac\u201c VNY) and joined. This will cut my training cost, considering the average 172 rents for over $50\/hour Hobbs time, and the club 172 goes for $34\/hour Tach time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I started this endeavor about 4 months ago \u00e2\u20ac\u201c September 1998. I was going to see a different kind of instructor \u00e2\u20ac\u201c my golf pro. He canceled on me, so I thought I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d stop in at a nearby airport (Whiteman \u00e2\u20ac\u201c WHP) a look around. Walked in to a flight school there and started asking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-private-pilot-training"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kellybakst.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kellybakst.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kellybakst.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kellybakst.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kellybakst.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kellybakst.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kellybakst.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kellybakst.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kellybakst.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}