Joining a sailplane club is likely the least cost entry into flying. My solo licence cost about $3k Cdn including 40 tows, 40 plane rentals ( various ) club membership, insurance and instructions.
You do have some club duties but I joined early August and was solo in Sept and still a few weeks of good flying into October.
Now prices are up but still the least cost to a formal pilots licence that can easily transform to power ( for much much greater cost ).
IF you decide to expand beyond club flights then the costs can get much higher but even clubs can arrange wave soaring adventures.
I think the record for height for a sailplane is some 76,000 feet …yeah you read that right.
You’ve got hours in there with nothing to do but pick through looking for your preferred size, gender, and state of cleanliness. Maybe live a little and try something different for a change?
The NTSB said Wednesday that Boeing had documented in 2011 there were four previous failures of a part that helps secure the MD-11’s engines to the wings on three different planes, but at that point the plane manufacturer “determined it would not result in a safety of flight condition.” These planes were actually built by McDonnell Douglas, which was later bought by Boeing.
I heard about some clever thieves who got a very large suitcase, big enough for one of the thieves (presumably quite small and light) to fit inside. They’d get a ticket for a bus trip from the airport to a nearby town, and all the suitcases would be stashed in the underfloor cargo compartment. During the trip, the one in the suitcase would come out and search through the other luggage for valuables. At the end of the trip, his larger, stronger partner would pick up the suitcase again and carry him away.
Not your fault, but I think “Perplexity” pretty well describes the current state of AI. It’s an automated generator of perplexedness for humans. Maybe somebody should come up with one named “Magic 8-Ball”. Tagline: “This time for sure it’ll work!”
It’s a big document, but pages 20-24 or maybe -26 covers the meat and is fairly readable. There’s also an executive summary on pages 5-6 which they cleverly left out of their table of contents.
Bottom line IMO: they’re assuming things can happen much faster than they ever have in the long drawn-out saga of leaded avgas phaseout. Yes, we’re closer to the end of the beginning than we ever have been. But there’s a lot more beginning still ahead of us. And the beginning part is where all the scientific and engineering uncertainty lies.
Good luck to them, but I see this plan sliding a good ways to the right, and that’s before we add any political silliness.
