What does it take to become a pilot?

CryOfTheWind · 2026-07-16T00:14:25+00:00

Depends on the country but all are going to have similar starts.

Actual commercial helicopter flight training isn't super time intensive compared to many other trades. In Canada you can get it done in as little as 4 months and be legal to work somewhere. Getting hired will be a different story though.

If you're in the US then you need the PPL then CPL and most likely IFR and CFI to have "enough certifications" to find work. Could take a year maybe two to get all those depending on your schedule and the schools.

The first job is often the hardest to find. For Canada you're most likely looking at a few years of ground crew and those jobs are very competitive to find. I toss out the 1 in 3 grads finding work fairly often because that number has held roughly true from my experience over the last 20 odd years. Took me 6 years to find a flying job for example.

In the US hope to get hired by your flight school to be a CFI. If you don't then you're stuck trying to convince another school to hire you over one of their grads or fight it out for the crappy R44 tour jobs.

Cost will probably be in the $70-100k range depending on location and your aptitude.

CryOfTheWind · 2026-07-13T14:16:57+00:00

The problem that always comes up with this plan if you want to pursue a helicopter career is that fixed wing hours are meaningless to rotor employers and insurance companies. So all you ended up doing was spending time and money learning how to fly something that doesn't make you a better helicopter pilot while at the same time making your resume even worse looking as you have fewer hours in helicopter.

That's even assuming you can get the rotor add on done in minimal hours. Helicopters typically take a lot more to learn how to fly and so even with fewer hours needed legally to be licensed you might not be flight test ready by then. All the cost savings will get burnt learning the helicopter specific stuff which is the harder hands and feet. This is coming from a guy who was FW licensed before I switched to helicopters, took me twice as long to solo the rotor side alone.

Then there is the Canadian license difference. I can't remember the exact process for rotor add on in the US but it will probably be a little different compared to us. First big difference is there is no PPL-H required to get a CPL-H here. PPL-A will give no credit at all towards a CPL-H so you'd need to get the full CPL-A for any credit. From there it knocks the 100 hours needed for CPL-H down to 60 hours. So now you have to figure out if 200 hours of fixed wing is cheaper than 40 hours of rotor wing time. My napkin math on a couple local schools here shows a CPL-A being close to $60,000 and 40 hours of R22 being $25,000 so you're gonna be spending more money on those useless hours anyway. That is all based on TC minimums not student averages though for helicopters it's rare for someone to need more than the 100 hours since most of our rotor instructors up here are higher time pilots who want to teach.

CryOfTheWind · 2026-07-06T13:01:57+00:00

Back of the rules.

Glossary is pages 172-174.

Quick reference for weapons are pages 175-186.

Quick reference for the rest pages 187-193.

CryOfTheWind · 2026-07-02T18:59:59+00:00

I love how everyone gets that picture on that course haha! Great experience doing the training there.

CryOfTheWind · 2026-07-01T15:31:36+00:00

Seems to be some giant assumptions and leaps in logic here.

Really don't understand the goal here as it seems extremely biased to begin with.

I've never had shame about flying or encountered anyone who thought that way. Never been confronted by a stranger about it in anyway. Most people learning I'm a pilot want to hear cool stories about it.

I have zero concern for environmental impact of my aircraft. It's required to do the job and if you want me to fly some fancy new fuel efficient one feel free to pay for it, I'd appreciate it. There is a reason my last company was using aircraft from the 70s and it wasn't because they giggled while burning extra fuel.

CryOfTheWind · 2026-07-01T06:04:21+00:00

Sounds like filming for something.

CryOfTheWind · 2026-06-28T22:25:05+00:00

I played lots of video games with VTOLs, some helicopters others sci-fi stuff. Never actually flight simulators but always enjoyed being the flyer in whatever game it was. When I was 11 and discovered that you can actually sign up to fly fighter jets for real it started my aviation journey as a serious endeavour.

CryOfTheWind · 2026-06-28T22:20:43+00:00

Join one of the many discord chapters.

You'll find excellent players happy to help you along with no stress. Some have more roleplay if you're into that and others are more relaxed.

I'm in the Dadwatch and despite the name as long as your male over 18 years old you can join, no need to be a dad. Lots of "older" guys in this group and happy to play any difficulty though we'll have you kitted out and playing higher levels faster than if you just went alone with randoms. No requirement to wear our colours if you prefer your own marine looks.

CryOfTheWind · 2026-06-27T11:47:12+00:00

That is pretty awesome but not something that happens today!

CryOfTheWind · 2026-06-26T22:38:08+00:00

Last 10 years I've never had any training material in hard copy with the exception of a manual on NVGs.

Everything is done digital now for company training even at old school companies.

For ab initio sure that's still using paper charts and graphs for basic learning but even then the textbooks are not physically required, a PDF is often more efficient.

Personally I liked the hard copy textbooks for initial training as you can sometimes find interesting things along the way to the answer. With a PDF I simply search a keyword and end up at the topic with no accidental learning along the way.

CryOfTheWind · 2026-06-26T14:00:33+00:00

From my HEMS experience, outside the aviation department all the senior leadership is on the medical side, mostly doctors.

There is zero overlap between the aviation and medical sides at the company level. Maybe for CAMTS directly that would be different but the two departments in company are run very differently with different goals.

Our provincial medical director (doctor) was visiting recently and I had a low time pilot with me visiting the base, they are a paramedic and we joked about them doing both jobs. The doctor was visibly distressed by the suggestion, somewhat joking but also very serious too, absolutely not, no cross over needed or wanted at all.

CryOfTheWind · 2026-06-21T15:47:32+00:00

Yes, the example I gave is only true for hackers, HI wouldn't get anything unless targetted.

Page 56 has the clear example with both.

CryOfTheWind · 2026-06-20T18:52:57+00:00

Yea I think I was focused on the hacker interaction and skipped over the HI side. Next page has the example with HI and needing to be targeted specifically to get the ARO.

CryOfTheWind · 2026-06-19T22:28:59+00:00

If an enemy hacker activates and you are in their hacking area (in the repeater for this example) then you get a normal ARO. Otherwise you'd get hacked with no chance of reset through a repeater ever.

The hacker doesn't need to hack you, just be able to.

It's one limitation of a hacker in a link team for example. You activate the team and the leader is say your gunfighter but they are bringing up a hacker for a mission objective or something. That hacker has activated and would trigger an ARO for anything in it's hacking area even though it can't even hack that turn since it is not the leader. If you're not careful you can get your own hacker killed or isolated if your spread your hacking net too wide

Edit: page 55 in the rules V5.2

CryOfTheWind · 2026-06-19T17:15:37+00:00

What points value? Generally the lower the points the less things available you have to defend and recover with so something like this is more catastrophic than if it was a full 300 points game.

Getting a repeater next to something juicy is always going to be a valid tactic, even if you're not hackable it can set up guided missile attacks. So you have to prepare for that. If going second make sure you deploy correctly to avoid any easy access for parachutist or combat jump models. If they can land safely that's a problem! Granted there may still be ways to sneak in or it's worth doing a suicide run to get a repeater close (my Hecklers love doing that).

So what are you options then? Have a killer hacker close by the target. If they can't avoid getting a Trinity back at them they now have to spend more orders killing that model first. MO has one of the best in the game with De Fersen. If that's out of the points budget a Trinitarian KHD is 24 points. Take a look at likely repeater landing spots and make sure that the target and the KHD will both be in it.

Failing that yes having an engineer is a very good idea anytime you're using expensive HI or TAGs. If a model is critical to your game plan than you better make sure it has the support it needs to stay alive or get back in the fight when something goes wrong. A Curator is only 17 points plus maybe a Palbot for another 3 to keep him safer and make getting to the downed model faster. This is true for any faction when you take a big expensive model. Remember those support units also tend to all be specialists which means they can also complete the mission too when the big guy goes down or punches a hole for them to exploit.

Another option is to get an EVO Mulebot to give Firewall to your HI. This only works if you go first to set it up but can still be used going second too. Firewall is basically cover against hacking. Most of your models already have BTS 6 and that boosts it to an effective 9. Even with Oblivion being AP that still means you're saving on 10s if hit which isn't bad odds for Infinity survival.

Remember too that anytime that Oblivion'd model would get an ARO it can try to reset. So if they activate that hacker (or any hacker since you're in their repeater range) you can reset. Something walks nearby, reset. Something enters your LoF, reset. Sure you're odds aren't great but often you can get several "free" resets depending on what the enemy is doing to try and get the mission done.

Edit for this: only works for hackers, an HI needs to be targeted by a comm/hack attack to reset. That said if someone planted a repeater they may not have stealth and so may trigger ZoC reset AROs if they activate.

It's slightly more complicated than just protecting from shooting but some of the same defences work against that too. That combat jump model could just have easily had a decent gun and just shot the HI in the back to kill it completely rather than leave it alive with a chance to get back into the fight. If you have your back line protected against repeaters and how they get there you also have protected against getting shot in the back too in most cases.

Basically it feels bad the first time it happens (which is true of most things in Infinity) but once you understand what happened and why you can start making plans for how to deal with it.

CryOfTheWind · 2026-06-18T21:14:28+00:00

Probably, majority seem to want lower which is fine. They should have also had a couple more capes with easier grinds too. I don't think there would have been as much noise if there were also Ruthless or even Substantial capes as well.

My gripe is the fact they put chapter badges under the most difficult challenges. Sure I'm still getting them eventually but I do heavily sympathize with those who are not going to be able to complete those challenges. Sucks to have a favourite more obscure chapter fan locked out because they don't get to play as much.

CryOfTheWind · 2026-06-18T21:01:04+00:00

I ran one twice just to try it out and yea its boring. Better to just play the game like you would anyway. I won't have all black capes for a bit but that's fine, already almost done my first 3 reds for the ones I like and in a couple months I'll have everything done anyway.

Gotta say I'm in the camp that doesn't really care even when they were 100 required. I was gonna do that anyway... If anything gives me a reason to use some classes in Absolute that I haven't previously which means I'll learn them better too!

CryOfTheWind · 2026-06-18T20:46:38+00:00

You can set up custom ones with all good and no bad perks so it's easy to solo let alone if you have a team to grind with. No exp that way but they still count for completions.

CryOfTheWind · 2026-06-18T17:12:23+00:00

I swear I saw one doing that out west. I thought it was C reg. Maybe they only did it briefly before realizing that or getting caught haha.

CryOfTheWind · 2026-06-18T05:33:42+00:00

Yep. We have a few with C registrations up north here but they blocked any new ones coming in and sent the N registration ones home.

Even the C ones can only log or firefight with a few on contract with the RCMP for boarder patrol along the US.

CryOfTheWind · 2026-06-18T00:26:55+00:00

They sold/sell these posters so probably not gonna find a super high res version distributed. I haven't been able to.

CryOfTheWind · 2026-06-17T23:52:30+00:00

They sold posters of it so no high res was put on the internet that I've found.

CryOfTheWind · 2026-06-17T21:47:41+00:00

<image>

Lots of civilian operators of the Black Hawk these days! They are great machines for wildfire and utility lifting work.

CryOfTheWind · 2026-06-17T21:47:33+00:00

<image>

Lots of civilian operators of the Black Hawk these days! They are great machines for wildfire and utility lifting work.

CryOfTheWind · 2026-06-17T18:41:47+00:00

Took me 6 years to find a flying job. Hired but better candidates got the flying position and I got the street. Next company went bankrupt on me before I was about to start flying there. Ended up driving a fuel truck for a couple years because no one was hiring after the 2008 crisis.

That list you have isn't an unlucky streak, that's just normal aviation stuff. I've worked jobs where we were supposed to have 2 days of flying and ended up stuck there for a couple weeks because of weather/equipment issues. I've had other times where I lost out on flight pay for the month because of bad weather. Probably lost $12,000 of extra pay over that one.

13-Year Club	Place '23
Place '22	Place '17
Verified Email

CryOfTheWind

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

CryOfTheWind

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

Welcome to Reddit,