stickshaker

Definetely, and it's not about making money, just making it affordable. Say, $20k/yr lessons, costs $25k = $5k/yr loss but tons of hours - great. $15-20k a year is just too expensive, that's a big chunk (nearly all really) that would go to savings. I'm not someone who is happy to spend everything they make, one eye on having fun now however one eye on the future. My job hardly existed 10 yrs ago, so making financial decisions as if it'll still be in big demand in 10 yrs is quite unwise. You're right it's a while off, it'll be months before I can even do my second lesson. Simply scoping out possible options.

Money in aviation? More if there was a way to make say, $20k/yr revenue doing part-time lessons or whatever work, or even fly someone else's plane for free doing whatever for them, could gain a lot of experience and hours at an affordable cost. Basically, getting consistent flights without losing as much money, if there's a possible way it'd be an ideal world. Mitigating costs opposed to making money.

Flight Instructor Rating from what I saw. The industry has a LOT of abbreviations! Really I'd rather do nothing, however it'll be hard to go up often paying out of pocket as it's quite an expensive hobby. If there was a way to gain experience, or cover the a significant amount of the costs that'd be great. Pretty much like everyone which is a big reason why the pay is peanuts!

Closest FIR I could find is ~200km away which is a bit of a hike. For sure, however I like to plan out all the options before deciding which path to take. Also relates to the work I do (what can we do now, what can we sort later, what can we add later with little overhead vs what will be a large expense to change course and so forth. Map out all the options, pros & cons, make decision. A bit of planning now saves a mountain of headache later). I have always liked the procedural side of things. Logic makes sense, and gives a good feeling of control :) I only wing things that are still controllable - like sure, rock up to a foreign country with 0 plans, but if you have your passport & money, nothing is a problem. It's a controllable 'no plan'. Not a no plan, no plan!

Thanks. Someone had mentioned you can get flight instructor rating for RPC, the ones I can find require commercial licenses. Is there information about that? Anything further would be a while off just good to know. Edit: I mean, I can find lots of threads talking about it, just no schools with the info about getting it. Such as: "Do your self a favour - spend the extra $$ on decent training (even a "quicky" instructor rating should be 30 hours flying and 6 weeks theory - more would be better). You will only realise that it is money well spent when you finish." Surely you'd need more than 30 hrs flying and 6 weeks theory to teach people? That is "one chapter ahead in the book" style! You're meant to do 100 hrs log book just to even drive a car on your own. I'd spend more time & effort getting something more advanced if I could turn it into a paid hobby. Thankfully I can shuffle work hrs around (IT), so no hassle to work til 2pm, do a lesson, then work a few more hrs afterwards. Whereas the inconsistency would be difficult if it was only income.

Perfect!

From what I could tell in google, a lot of the theory involved weather, human factors (which is interesting, has been touched on in the Air Crash series) and so forth - general theory. Relevant but not 'actual flying skills'. These would be good things to learn? I couldn't actually find a syllabus - if there even is one - with what's covered. I did find this: http://pilot.ftaonline.com.au/guide/FTAONLINE-GUIDE.pdf Shows Rec/Private/Commerical differences. Seems very comprehensive compared to most flying schools I saw. The flying school websites vary quite a lot in flying & theory time included, hard to know the real values. I did send an email to the closest flying school which is in Maryborough to find out what's involved, did some googling and he seems to be good & active in the community which is great. Though still a while off before I can do any of that.

Some great photos, the Hervey Bay marina looks really good from the air.

I'm overseas for a while still. I did a TIF last year. There is tons of information on the internet, might have to look if there's a "structure training plan", as who knows where to start! I could do 6 months of theory and practice in a little Cessna in X-Plane, should hit the ground running later.

That's exactly it, the chances of becoming a captain are slim to none. At this stage I'm on track for a decent future so really don't want to rock the boat there, albeit in some country town or fringe capital as property is very expensive! But house is paid off, working for a retirement kitty now. Hmm that's good thinking, too bad everything I do is easily remote, but I wonder if I could get some meet and greets in. "yeah sorry shared desktop isn't working, I'll fly on over!". Anything logic based I can pick up quite quickly, if there's work in that field especially on weekends that would work a treat.

No training to date, I just play around in a simulator from time to time. I have done an hour flight but it was all very basics. Sometimes with missions the planes change around so it can be hard to judge the right height, speed and so forth. It all works out fine, in real life the plane would be pretty stressed! + some passengers who aren't coming back haha. More that if I was accepted, most likely that would be what I'd be doing. At a slightly faster speed!

Relatively speaking, still looking at ~$150-200/hr for single hire and need 200 hrs total! Probably some more wiggle room in larger cities, in smaller towns if there's only 1 place that does it not many options.

Fair enough, wouldn't want some rookie doing it. Too bad I'm not interested in video games or something a bit cheaper!

I wouldn't be opposed to 'free work' if it meant avoiding CPL, or if those hrs could be used towards CPL (as the biggest cost seems to simply be getting so many hrs).

Can you? Based on https://www.casa.gov.au/regulations-and-policy/standard-page/flight-instructor-ratings seemed like you needed 200 hrs, and needed a teaching diploma, then a FIR course. Sounded more for a late career role than a starter. Actually based on what I can find you need a Commercial license to do anything, which is $70k+. That sucks.

Overshooting runways, in MS Flight :) Quite easy to do, often too short or too long. Flight SIMs seem harder because it's not "real". Definetely, until I have a license I wouldn't buy a plane. The difference being with a car I can drive around on arrival. Seems if you fly somewhere you'd often be stuck once landed. I've done a trial flight and it was good, I would have been a pilot after school but for some reason air force said no, then I asked someone else later and they said my scores were all good so they don't know why I was rejected (in what you'd call, "stage one" I guess. Went for a day, did tests and whatnot). And here we are years later.

I currently work online in the web industry. I'm reasonably flexible with hours, and would love to fly around. As such, I could easily do 9-5 at an airport with a few random hours of flying work throughout the day. Those particular hours would pay far worse but it isn't about the money. However on the same token, I'm not going to throw a $100k job out the window to make less than McDonalds just for flying! Ideally I can have the best of both worlds. Is there work out there like that? It seems almost ideal, if you could have a staff member who is only paid for hrs in the air, vs someone who needs consistent $/real job. I assume though you'd need a fair number of hours before anyone is willing to hire.

For sure, most likely I'd set something like 6 months of training & hiring, at the end of that if I'm doing enough hours to justify then can look at buying. It's a bit more expensive to buy and not use then say a gym membership :D Thanks for the info about ASIC, that didn't even cross my mind. Yep only interested in RAAus at the moment, more restrictive but far easier for a casual. Although, definetely want to follow through with training and doing proper flight SIM practice (not oh no overshooting runway, just nose down into vertical dive and level out right at the end stuff I usually do!) before going off on any adventures. Stunts would be fun, that'd be more as a hobby/with someone tandem. Can't afford a stunt plane, let alone what I imagine the insurance would run on them. Ideally there'd be some way of picking up $10k of work a year to cover a fair bit of the cost and get quality hours experience at the start, however short of instructor training I can't find too many avenues like that, seems more all or nothing than 'freelance work'.

I'm not sure, is Hervey Bay controlled? From what I can tell under 8500 feet seems ok along the whole east coast area. If not, at least until I have a number of hours up I wouldn't. Do all hours count towards a license or only hours with instructor? It was a bit hard to take it all in, I do remember the rec license being ~20 hrs whereas instruments, controlled airspace were a lot more hours. That's good to hear, most of the time it would be just around the area, however if we can do 'weekends away' it'll give a lot more practical uses. I've had a look and we do have some family with an airport close by so that'd be a lot more fun than driving!

One thing that seems good is resale value. If you buy a $70k car and sell it in 5 years, you'll get $30k if you're lucky. With planes it seems like you'll get not that far off what you paid?

I'm a dreamist pilot from Hervey Bay, QLD. If there was a decent career in aviation it's what I'd be doing, but alas... I've been thinking about buying a plane, although there's a lot of time to sit on it & do lessons before committing to anything. I've got a number of questions: - Rough hangar costs for Hervey bay? I've found there's no landing fees for the airport, no luck finding tie down or hangar costs though - Planes, must be a big difference between Cessna's and co, and Jabiru's? Visually they look about the same, but you're getting a 40 yr old Cessna for the price of a new Jabiru roughly so there must be a lot more than meets the eye - What license level would you need to fly out of Hervey Bay? - How good is travelling/weekends away? I'm just imagining great, fly to some place, but then what? Hire car place is miles away in town, just doesn't work well in reality. This is actually the biggest thing, there needs to be practical applications as simply going up & doing loops of the area - despite it being a nice spot - ultimately isn't going to be a weekly thing thus no point having a plane.