Now what?
The next few hundred hours are predictable: First, every member of our family and all of our friends are taken for rides. Then we begin a systematic search to root out every eatery that's located on an airport anywhere within an hour's flying time. Fly-ins are added to the go-to list. Then maybe we plan that long cross-country we've always dreamed about.
Then what?
Unfortunately, after a few years of this, some of us start to find other things drawing our interest. Soon, we don't go to the airport as often as we did, and we drift away. We've done what we can do within the limits of what we learned while earning our certificate and, as impossible as it sounds, some of us get a little bored.
Some folks are bound to say that it's impossible to get bored, no matter what kind of flying you're doing-and, in their case, they may be right. But that's not the way it is with everyone. Many are attracted to aviation because of the challenge of learning and because it opens new horizons. Once the challenge goes away and they've explored as much as they can explore, they go looking for new challenges and new horizons. Too often they look outside of aviation for that, when in fact aviation is so varied that a person can spend a lifetime exploring it and never experience it all.
The private pilot certificate should be seen as the ticket to Disney World, opening the doors to untold experiences, each totally different from the last. And just as Disney World is separated into kingdoms, each with its unique rides and experiences, so is aviation.
Mainstream general aviation is your Cessna/Piper/Beech variety that includes all the basic flight training and cross-country families of airplanes. Recreational aviation includes everything that's done to either scratch an itch, illicit a grin, or generally make the pilot feel good. This also includes sport aviation activities such as homebuilts, antiques, classics, warbirds, and ultralights.
Where mainstream general aviation is fairly narrow in terms of airplane types (Cessna/Piper/Beech) and purposes (transportation and the occasional $100 hamburger), recreational aviation covers an impossibly broad world of types and experiences. (This division of recreational versus mainstream is an arbitrary categorization we just made up, so don't go to your Aeronautical Information Manual to find a definition.
Regardless of how you try to categorize aviation, the important factor to recognize is that there is absolutely no way anyone should ever get bored within the confines of aviation. None! This diverse world is so varied in terms of aircraft types, financial requirements, experiences offered, and training required that nearly every pilot will find at least a couple of niches that fit them like a well-worn pair of high-quality boots.
Out-of-the-mainstream aviating
Some of the non-mainstream forms of aviation have been around for generations and are formally recognized with ratings. A few others are farther down the FAA-recognition chart and require endorsements. Others thrive in their own worlds, almost as if the FAA doesn't know that they exist.
Most required logbook endorsements pertain to different airplane configurations, not types. For instance, the need for a glider rating is obvious. It's a different type of flying machine. The tailwheel endorsement is a minor configuration change that introduces a few new skills which are applicable to a broad range of similarly configured airplanes; for example, get your tailwheel endorsement in a Citabria and, as far as the FAA is concerned, you are good to go in everything from Taylorcrafts to Pitts S-2A Specials.
In some cases just going for the required rating is good for a solid dose of interest-raising adrenaline. The helicopter rating is one of those. You may never set foot in another helicopter after you earn the rating, and they aren't usually used to chase hamburgers, but just the challenge of the experience will keep you fired up for a long time.
A few experiences, such as aerobatics and bush flying, aren't recognized by the FAA as being so special that an endorsement is required. Common sense, however, says that some specialized training is in order. Plus, each of these skills is central to yet another new world to explore.
Some of the subcategories of sport aviation, like classics, require the tailwheel endorsement if you expect to sample all that the category has to offer-but once you have the endorsement, you're standing in the doorway to a kingdom of aviation that is as wide and as varied as mainstream aviation ever thought about being.
We're going to attempt to give a brief tour of some of our favorite, out-of-the-mainstream aviation experiences and worlds. Use the following as a checklist and work your way down it, faithfully sampling all each selection has to offer until you're satisfied you've learned all there is to learn in each. If, after you finish this list, you start to lose interest in aviation, that's perfectly OK. By then you'll be 153 years old and it'll probably be about time to find something else to do anyway.
Skills, ratings, and endorsements
You'll notice we've purposely left the multiengine and the instrument ratings off of our list. Even though they do a lot to develop a pilot's skill and maintain a person's interest, they are very much a part of mainstream aviation. These other types of flying that require ratings or endorsements aren't quite so mainstream, however.
Helicopters. Of all the things we're going to mention, this one probably requires more cash and presents a greater challenge than any other. While flying a helicopter is flying, it borrows only a little from other types of flying and invents whole new concepts that challenge you both mentally and physically. The good news, however, is that it's not an impossible skill, just one that keeps you working. Thanks to the introduction of the Robinson R22 to the training fleet, many more helicopter schools have popped up and the costs have come down.
Gliders. If you're a certificated pilot you may be able to earn your glider rating in a long weekend, although it often takes a little longer. Some will solo a glider in a morning. Glider schools are less common in parts of the country, but they are plentiful enough that a pilgrimage to the Southwest isn't required. The cost is what you want to make it, with each flight costing about $70-so you can fly as much as your pocketbook will allow. The rating will run about $2,200.
Floatplanes. Depending on where you live, you'll probably have to travel to find this training. Fortunately, because floats require water and water generally means a resort environment, float training schools are often located in places where you'd want to vacation anyway. Beware: Float flying can become addictive. In some parts of the country, it opens up countless new places to visit and things to do. Although floats raise the price of acquisition of any airplane and can complicate its care and feeding, once you've been infected, many people wouldn't fly any other way.
Tailwheel endorsement. If you want to get into nonmainstream aviation, the tailwheel endorsement is probably the place to start. Just about every really interesting airplane-and most of the nonmainstream activities-involve the tailwheel. For some unknown reason, the tailwheel has gained an unfair reputation for being difficult to master, when it isn't. Six to 12 hours of dual training-give or take a little-will do it for most pilots. It'll make you a much better pilot and gives you access to so many interesting airplanes that you otherwise never would be able to fly. The tailwheel requires a new set of skills, but it is crucial to widening your horizons.
Aerobatics. These days almost any city of any size has at least one aerobatic school, although they tend to cluster in places where the sun shines a lot. Aerobatics can be as addictive as float flying, especially because many of the training airplanes-usually Pitts, Extra, or Citabria/Decathalon models-offer a peek into a world of serious performance. It's hard to climb back into a Cessna once you've flown something like a Pitts or an Extra. Aerobatics requires nothing in the form of an endorsement or rating. It's a giggle thing done for the heck of it-that and the fact that it'll make you a much better pilot. Depending on the airplane being used, figure $100-$350 per hour, and you can spend as much or as little as you want.
Skis. You don't see a lot of schools teaching ski flying these days in the Lower 48, although Andover Flight Academy in Andover, New Jersey, is one that comes to mind. However, this is one skill that, like floats, is truly fun and worth learning. It's a non-endorsement skill that you won't use much in the southern tier, but if you happen to live in the snowbelt, you may be able to make it through the long winters knowing that you can get a flying fix even if they haven't plowed the runway. Costs are about the same as any dual instruction.
Bush flying. Again, Andover Flight Academy is the only place we know in the Lower 48 that actually offers a bush-oriented training program to the public, and it's worth the price of admission. Serious bush flying, where runways are in the 500-to-800-foot range, is really fun-not to mention that it demands the pilot know how to make the airplane go where he or she wants it to. The really hardcore stuff is guaranteed to get your attention. There is something magical about coming to a halt on a sloping, rocky piece of real estate that doesn't look large enough to stand on, much less land on. It'll raise all of your piloting skills and, at the same time, make you yearn for a trip north.
The world of sport aviation
The airplanes that comprise sport aviation vary so much in type, condition, capabilities, and price that there has to be one for every bored pilot looking for an alternative to mainstream flying. If you can't find something, you probably haven't tried hard enough.
Contemporary classics
We'll define the contemporary classic as the mid- to late-1950s birds, almost all of which bled over into the 1960s. This is the period that gave birth to just about every single-engine, fixed-gear airplane ever made by Cessna. Airplanes like the old square-tail 172s and 182s offer classic appearances and grace with absolutely modern utility.
Piper products of the same period are a mixed bag because Piper was making the fabric-covered Tri-Pacer at the same time that the all-metal Comanche was born.
Classics
One definition of a classic airplane is anything built during the decade right after World War II. There are some gray areas here since some prewar airplanes considered antiques (the Beech Staggerwing, for instance) were produced in some numbers after the war, and many aircraft in production during the early 1950s soldiered on into the sixties. Still, the majority of the classic genre are the result of the gross miscalculation by the aircraft manufacturing community that dumped more than 38,000 airplanes on the market in 1946. Most of those were two-place personal flivvers ranging from the super-basic Piper Cub to the super-sophisticated (relatively speaking) Globe Swift. At the same time, however, don't forget that the Beech Model 35 Bonanza is part of this same pack, along with Cessna's sprightly 170 and burly 195.
Classics offer affordable little entry-level two-placers from the bottom-of-the-totem-pole Aeronca Chief and Taylorcraft ($10,000-$20,000) to middle-of-the-road birds with modern utility like the Beech Model 35 Bonanza ($35,000-$50,000), to birds like the Cessna 195, a Packard-like limousine for $75,000, give or take a little.
You name it and it exists within the classic category, but you'd better get that tailwheel endorsement because only a few classics, like the Alon Ercoupe, were built with a nosewheel.
Antiques
We'll lump together everything that was produced before World War II as antiques, although that's not entirely accurate. The smaller antiques-the very first Cubs, Taylorcrafts, and Luscombes produced after the war-are affordable and relatively plentiful. As you go back to the first half of the 1930s, however, you get into similar-sized airplanes with older engines and technology that are harder to support. The same thing is true of some bigger, radial-engined antiques like Travelairs and Staggerwings. Big antiques are airplanes best attended to by serious people with serious money.
Homebuilts
While homebuilt airplanes used to be looked down upon as crude imitations of flying machines, they have matured to the point that some of the best recent technology in general aviation has come out of the homebuilt field. They lead the way in composite materials and high performance.
Although the high-performance birds like the RVs, Lancairs, and Glasairs are the most visible because of their performance, the homebuilt category contains more than 500 designs that to varying degrees can be built in your garage. They range from the 75-mph Pietenpol to the fire-breathing Pitts Special to the ultra-utilitarian, four-place Bearhawk and the 300-mph, pressurized Lancair IV. From scratch-built to ready-to-assemble kits, there is a wide variety from which to choose.
As an aside: The aircraft homebuilding community has exploded and developed a sub-industry aimed at educating potential builders that they are working as part of a community, rather than having to figure stuff out for themselves.
Warbirds
No, the word warbird doesn't automatically mean big bucks and muscular performance. In fact, military versions of Cubs, Aeroncas, and Cessnas of the liaison breed are rapidly becoming great entry-level airplanes as well as affordable warbirds. Of course, if you have $300,000 burning a hole in your pocket, you can buy any one of a bunch of ex-military jets. Getting into the P-51 Mustang game, however, is going to cost you a cool mil if you're going to do it right.
Ultralights
Even though the weight limits still are supposed to define what is and isn't an ultralight, the type has mutated and given birth to a bunch of in-between airplanes that are heavy enough to require that they be registered as aircraft with the FAA and receive N numbers; these are more real airplane than ultralight.
Sport planes to come
The really big news in the small-airplane field is the expected approval by the FAA of the new Light Sport Aircraft category. If that happens, little airplanes like Cubs and myriad other smaller homebuilts could be flown after a streamlined training program (of course, the sport pilots flying them will have more operating limitations than private or recreational pilots). There is a possibility that sport pilots will not have to maintain a current FAA medical certificate. The sport pilot concept also opens the doors for manufacturers to build a new generation of complete aircraft to the new category's weight and performance specifications.
The bottom line is that there should never a reason to be bored or lose interest in aviation. In fact, it's frustrating when you realize there's so much aviation that we'll never get to experience it all. Aviation is so broad that it would take several lifetimes to become a functioning part of it all. That isn't a problem, however-that's a challenge. It's all out there for the asking.
Budd Davisson is an aviation writer/photographer and magazine editor who has written approximately 2,200 articles and has flown more than 300 different types of aircraft. A CFI for 36 years, he teaches about 30 hours a month in his Pitts S-2A Special. Visit his Web site.
Want to know more?
The following resources offer additional information on topics discussed in this article:
- Find updates on the status of the Sport Pilot rule at AOPA Online.
- Read about aerobatic training in the February AOPA Flight Training.
- Visit the Soaring Society of America's Web site; read more about gliders in the May 2002 AOPA Flight Training.
- Find out more about seaplanes at AOPA Online; visit the Seaplane Pilots Association's Web site.
- Get contact information for Andover Flight Academy.
- Visit the Experimental Aircraft Association Web site.
Links to these resources are available on AOPA Online.
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