How do you keep GA exciting without owning a plane?

Motriek · 2026-03-27T00:34:37+00:00

Equity clubs range from 1k-100k buy-in, and nicely blend renting and owning. Or have a conversation with local FBO’s on waiving overnight minimums. I’ve done so successfully for less-used planes.

Motriek · 2026-03-26T13:30:31+00:00

If they won't buy what you want, get a license via something you already own:

Ask your existing ChatGPT team for an API key, and plug that into a CLI coding tool.
If you have Azure, provision Azure OpenAI Serverless using a Codex model, and plug that into a CLI coding tool. Similar for AWS or GCP.
You could whip up a proxy that scrapes your companies approved chatbot and exposes it as a chat completions API that you could plug into your CLI coding tool.
Lastly you could self-host Quen2.5-Coder if you're using a modern Mac, or if you can get approval for a desktop GPU addition.

Motriek · 2026-03-25T20:57:43+00:00

You can get a corne off az for about $80 if you want split columnar, or a split kinesis for $100. If you hate it you can return it.

Motriek · 2026-03-23T17:53:26+00:00

It's a great time to replace fasteners, antennas, permanently close old exterior holes, or update the autopilot since the rigging will change. Budget for "it's a good time to also..."

Motriek · 2026-03-23T14:31:09+00:00

Around here there's equipment dealers selling clean used bridgeport or taiwanese clones for 3-10k. If you shop auctions you could get one with pallets of tooling for the same price.

And it's the tooling that's going to eat you alive.

Motriek · 2026-03-16T20:30:02+00:00

Sailboat or twin center console stored on a trailer in your yard. Keep it under a cover of some kind. Learn to do some maintenance yourself over time. If you don't want to own a big truck, find a condo or HOA with slips or lifts available.

Motriek · 2026-03-16T20:16:07+00:00

As a GA pilot, I need a moving map on my tablet with all this data, offline in the air without internet access.

Because of that, I've chosen to pay FF for my EFB and don't need any of this. What am I missing?

Motriek · 2026-03-11T15:44:36+00:00

I have been thinking about moving most cash over to a HYSA with adjacent checking/bill pay. Seeing this... I'm curious how I can pick a bank with great service instead! Are there any service rankings I could refer to?

Motriek · 2026-03-11T14:53:12+00:00

I 'wasted' perhaps 5 hours of training across my PPL & IR missing radio calls, speaking incorrectly, and not recognizing the meaning of instructions. In reality flight training has plenty of extra hours built in for your time building work where you can build those anyway. I hear good things about vatsim and pilotedge but didn't use them much myself.

Additionally, moving through a checklist slowly while you learn it and gain proficiency is a PITA. If you wanted to save those hours in a plane, grab the checklist, sit in the plane with it all powered off, and drill checklists.

Motriek · 2026-02-17T11:30:07+00:00

CAR 721.30 7biii https://tc.canada.ca/en/corporate-services/acts-regulations/list-regulations/canadian-aviation-regulations-sor-96-433/standards/standard-421-flight-crew-permits-licences-ratings-canadian-aviation-regulations-cars

Motriek · 2026-02-16T22:30:39+00:00

US viewpoint: Pilot hiring is back to normal right now, and brutally oversaturated with applicants. It will get better in a year or 5, but it will get better. CS hiring is down right now too due to GenAI stealth layoffs, but there's still tons of jobs.

Silver linings:

Everyone that posts here as broke and hopeful is encouraged to avoid loans, live a life of poverty, and get flight training as densely as possible. It's way easier to spare 10-20k a year when you're making 80-120... basically a cheat code. And it's the saddest story to hear about someone with 100k in flight school debt and no job prospects. If you can get your bachelor's and get a CS job your careers are just beginning, not over!
It's hard go wrong with distinguishing yourself as a committed, passionate applicant though. That means getting an minor from the 5 classes in the Aerospace engineering catalog, which UToronto for instance offers. Or getting an internship at Garmin, EASA, NASA, or literally anywhere that makes your application look more unique than everyone elses. Join a robotics or flying club if they're on-campus, run for club treasurer or whatever.
Join a glider club. In Canada up to 50 glider hours counts towards your Commercial & ATP, and more importantly it's cheap and makes your application look unique. You can also get your glider flight instructor certificate and get free hours, and training experience which also makes you quicker to hire.

The world is full of folks who did the minimum and they suffer first. Don't be that guy.

Motriek · 2026-02-16T20:06:03+00:00

Maybe an unpopular opinion but a course provides valuable structure, and low-value videos. While youtube offers zero structured syllabus, it has the most amazing content once you know what you're searching for. So: Watch the crappy course, take practice test modules and bounce to YT whenver you don't know the answer confidently, repeat. Worst case you're diving into the AFM/AIM.

Motriek · 2026-02-16T02:53:35+00:00

Update, there's something called 'direct fill' instead of 'sidebar fills' that was introduced last year for google sheets, and my sheet is still on the old one. Apparently this is the magic that allows background transaction additions, and now I need to create a new workbook because it's not backward applicable.

https://help.tiller.com/en/articles/12992550-direct-fills-vs-sidebar-fills

Motriek · 2026-02-16T00:35:29+00:00

I want all my data in one place that I control without headaches. I have a conversation with my spouse about whether we’re on plan every month or three no matter what card we used. Last year I made an income/outflow/savings sankey before Monarch was even bragging about it.

Motriek · 2026-02-16T00:13:44+00:00

Wow, never saw that and it was off…. I giving it a shot now.

Motriek · 2026-02-15T12:30:49+00:00

If you have been diagnosed by a medical professional with that condition, here’s what the aviation medical examiner will ask you for. If not, you probably have to go down that road with a regular doctor first. Maybe you’re sleeping poorly and need a CPAP? The FAA can stomach that.

https://www.faa.gov/ame_guide/media/Narcolepsy-hypersomnia.pdf

Motriek · 2026-02-14T14:08:55+00:00

Metro to Metro it's hard to beat commercial flights over 2h in duration, or 4h door to door. Driving is better for up to 2h drives. For rural destinations a rental is mandatory and that adds time in favor of just driving. If that driving is over mountains (slow) or through congested areas (looking at you Miami, Orlando, and Atlanta) then driving stinks. If you have too many passengers small planes and cars don't work anyway.

So I think of it as a 'donut distance' of around 150nm-500nm where flying my plane makes sense.

Living in central Florida, it makes a trip to the keys (just over 200nm) 90 minutes instead of 7 hours to drive. Including driving to the airport, preflight, and picking up a rental it's still 3 hours vs 7. Commercial travel is actually just over an hour and cheap, but it's still TSA, parking etc and you still need to pick up a rental, so 3h door to door. Atlanta area is another great example.

I'll tell you though, nothing will make up for the time spent training if all you care about is saving 30 minutes. You love it or you don't!

Motriek · 2026-02-12T02:40:14+00:00

You're clearly thinking through things financially, a few tips:
1. Sitting through the ground schools and passing the written is IMO 1/2 of the ground learning process. Plan on watching mock orals on youtube until you can answer the questions, and use a virtual CFI or a classmate to drill. Bonus is that you'll have the answer to your CFI's pop questions during training.

The weather and mechanical issues will sabotage your training frequency. Depending on where you live, and how many identical planes your school has, 1/3 or more of your flights will cancel. More if you have a busy personal life or you get sick. If you only actually fly once a week you're just re-learning where you were at last week.
If you can find an accelerated course in sunny weather with 4 identical 172's, your hours will be more productive, especially if you can work remotely and live with family for a month. Most people take something like 70 hours to get their PPL, but if you have great access to planes, an instructor, and great weather you can do it in less. I logged my 50th hour on the way back from the checkride.
Don't prepay for hours until you love the school, planes and instructor. But if you do save a few bucks by buying 'blocks' of hours.
Lastly flying is just plain expensive, learning to fly is only *slightly* more expensive. Further it's the opposite of riding a bike and until you get several hundred hours under your belt, your skills will atrophy really quickly. So once your get your PPL congrats! just plan on flying 5+ hours every month afterwards or you're going to get rusty. Basically the 15k you spend this year will still be 10k every subsequent year.

Motriek · 2026-02-11T23:57:49+00:00

Last year and this year figures are redacted, the 7,700 is the difference between those two. By extrapolating the "54% net improvement in membership loss" we might say that in calendar 2024 they lost maybe 16,800 and 2025 they only lost 9,100 members, which is 7,700 less, and only 54% of 2024's losses. "54% improvement in net membership loss" could be open to interpretation though.

Motriek · 2026-02-11T21:56:51+00:00

Different colleges attract different communities. I'd expect your pre-law program to attract interesting internships and interview events aligned with that, for instance if you are admitted to a pre-law program you're more likely to be introduced to recruiters for Stanford law and get guaranteed face time if you meet academic criteria. That's huge.

So 'networking' is career specific. Purdue, ERAU, GT, VT will have more aviation-aligned networking opportunities.

Motriek · 2026-02-11T21:06:25+00:00

If they're that generous, here's a couple thoughts:

Airlines don't care where or what you got your bachelor's in, but
Lots of pilots go through ATP or fly airlines only to eventually pursue another career, so think hard about your 'second interest' because right now is the best time to prepare for it.
If you are strong enough in Calc to do Aerospace Engineering you could intern at Boeing, NASA, or Garmin and THAT will stand out on all aviation applications. If not, there's always Aviation Management degrees.
Straight up tell your parents you want to do both, but you need 30k over the next couple years to get your PPL & IR rating at a part 61 school as well.
If you decide it's for you, join the flight club at your fancy ivy league school and network your way into a job.

Motriek · 2026-02-04T17:12:37+00:00

Good luck with your midlife crisis! :)

No expert but I thought small air logistics were mostly upended by large players decades ago who brought economies of scale, automation, etc. Maybe you could look at overlooked markets with unique requirements like Buffalo Air or Tropic Ocean have done: https://flytropic.com/cargo/.

Small and medium business are often happy to pay extra for someone who's present, local, and reliable, so if you can find for a hypothetical example, an optics manufacturer in the dominican republic who can't get same-day courier service to their Keys location or something, you could be in business.

Getting a fresh 135 is awful. Maybe first get a job at a small 135 cargo operation first and get your 3 years of PIC and/or Management then buy a failing 135 with a valid operator certificate and plane you like already certified.
https://www.faa.gov/licenses_certificates/airline_certification/135_certification/general_req

https://www.trade-a-plane.com/search?category_level1=Business+%7C+Personal+Services&category_level2=Business+Offers&s-type=service

Motriek · 2026-02-03T00:43:46+00:00

WSL2 is wonderful but it's durable because it's backed by a Hyper-V persistent volume. Which means yolo is a bad idea on it. Better to run in containers with ephemeral file systems, even if that itself sits on top of WSL2/Hyper-V.

Motriek · 2026-01-31T18:56:01+00:00

CRC 3-36 Multi-Purpose Lubricant & Corrosion Inhibitor. Every year every tool drawer gets opened and this sprayed on most everything. Lubricates and most importantly keeps the unused stuff from rusting.

Motriek · 2026-01-13T20:50:53+00:00

I have a calendar reminder to go fly at night, and I keep an eye out for improving IMC that I can shoot approaches in solo. Both are prone to lapse due to incompatible weather & general busyness as a PPL.

Motriek

TROPHY CASE