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Astronomers and flight...


ollypenrice

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I haven't flown in a long time, but love the feeling you get from it.

Was well into the process for my PPL then started building a home for SWMBO and the young request givers. Only lacked about 10 more hours to finish. That was in a Cessna 150.

I actually got started flying an phantom ultralight.  Less than 250 pounds weight, less than 100mph and only holds 5 gal gasoline.

440cc 2 stroke engine, 52 inch prop. 28ft wingspan, 20 ft long. Would take off at 28mph.

Took three hours of training in the cessna. One hour basic flying, one hour of stalls, one hour takeoff and landings.

Woke up feeling confident.

Solo'd the ultralight with only that 3 hours training. 

SWMBO claims my "I can do that" mentality will get me killed, but I think it will be her!

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I am sure the correlation between astro and PPL is a selection effect due to @ollypenrice location. I will test this at my Astro Soc agm by asking how many members have PPLs. I predict using Bassian statistic the answer will be zero. This is using myself as the prior!

Regards Andrew 

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2 hours ago, andrew s said:

I am sure the correlation between astro and PPL is a selection effect due to @ollypenrice location. I will test this at my Astro Soc agm by asking how many members have PPLs. I predict using Bassian statistic the answer will be zero. This is using myself as the prior!

Regards Andrew 

Maybe my sample is one made up not of 'astronomers, some of whom fly,' but of 'people who come to my place, some of whom fly.' If this is so then it would be instructive to know how many people going to other gites in this area also fly. Since flight is a major sport in this area we would have to exclude anyone who had come here for that purpose, since none of my flying guests has ever come here to fly as well as astronomize. 

I'm sorry, but I cannot believe that your average local gite will, in the last 12 years, have hosted three RAF pilots, one Swedish air force fast jet pilot turned airline captain, four builders-and-flyers of their own aircraft, two glider pilots, three helicopter pilots, four PPLs wise enough to prefer professionally built aircraft, two sailplane pilots, two microlight flyers and numerous paraglider pilots. That cannot be an average slice through gite customers in the Hautes Alpes, can it? Unfortunately the two other gite owners I know locally cater specifically for the free flying market so asking them won't get me very far!

And... the grandfather of astronomy holiday rentals abroad is, himself, a PPL. I speak of that talented fellow, Mr Bev Ewan-Smith of COAA.

Nope, I think there is a disproportionate number of flyers in our astro community.

Olly

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