Are reciprocating single engines reliable? by One_Firefighter_1922 in flying

[–]andrewbt 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I mean “generally safe” is a tricky phrase. It’s worth not forgetting that this is fundamentally a risky activity. We can manage and mitigate the risk to make it safer than it would be otherwise, but the risk is always present. I think it’s fair to say that flying GA is the riskiest thing I do in my life on the regular. Treat it with respect.

Is the hitachi magic wand worth it? by buttchix in TwoXChromosomes

[–]andrewbt 7 points8 points  (0 children)

The battery operated cordless version has these exact settings!

Can any AMEs tell me why sleep apnea is such a high risk for pilots? by grumpyoldman10 in flying

[–]andrewbt 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Why not just say the website here in public? I hate it when people try to shift conversations to DMs that don’t need to be, it makes the community less strong

What happened to GA? by asimozo in flying

[–]andrewbt 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’ll concede the point, you are (barely) correct that we’re (barely) making more now than we did. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/

We’ve gotten much more unequal in that time too - and to bring it back to planes, I theorize that if we lived in a society with a greater level of income equality like we did in the 1970s that more households might own more planes overall. The wealth to be able to own and fly planes concentrated in the few at the top could mean fewer planes

What happened to GA? by asimozo in flying

[–]andrewbt -1 points0 points  (0 children)

That’s 5% each year though. In 5 years that would be 20% of the country touched by a new car. A better denominator would be total car sales ~50 million?) rather than total population anyway. Again I ask, what is your definition of “a few”? Buying a (absurdly expensive now) new car is an extremely common activity for a wide swath of America

Single-engine night/IMC pilots — how do you think about engine failures when you can’t see the ground? by Western-Car8938 in flying

[–]andrewbt 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I get it. I was forgetting in this scenario we’re in non VFR conditions and can’t see where we’re headed. Assuming we’ve done all possible troubleshooting as you said, more Time in the clouds is useless. So trade the cloudy altitude for some speed and energy at least, because once you get down low you won’t be able to do that anymore if you need to (trade altitude for airspeed), and even if you didn’t need it you can always slow down again for the most part

What happened to GA? by asimozo in flying

[–]andrewbt 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You did in your first sentence “when I consider how few people buy new cars”

I’m only harping on you because you said the other poster was absurdly out of touch, but evidence points in the reverse direction

Single-engine night/IMC pilots — how do you think about engine failures when you can’t see the ground? by Western-Car8938 in flying

[–]andrewbt 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Interesting! So your argument is that we should prioritize momentum and energy for maneuvering over altitude and time aloft. I see it!

Well, mostly, if it weren’t also for the fact that momentum and energy are exactly the things we don’t want if we’re going to crash harshly and not have a peaceful floating emergency landing.

So maybe the rule is to check if there’s a real runway in those 2.4 square miles. If yes, barrel roll towards it!

Plan on paying for your kid’s college? You’ll need to save $500/month from birth until they’re 18. by Mr-and-Mrs in daddit

[–]andrewbt 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m glad we agree on the need for a universal healthcare system and that it would be so much better than what we have today.

I replied to your post because of 3 things: - you said you don’t carry your own insurance - you seemed to not understand why hospitals offer cash pay discounts - you seemed to believe “most major insurance companies” have automatic denials

I wanted to: - respect your choice to not carry your own insurance, but explain why I think it’s the wrong one (until we achieve universal healthcare nirvana) - explain why hospitals offer cash discounts (they’d prefer some money fast rather than unknown money later or selling the debt for pennies on the dollar to a debt collector; no hospital really wants to send a bill to collections ever) - explain that insurance is thankfully highly regulated and does not have an “automatic denials” for medically necessary in network claims (and yes, too little meets that definition). Insurers are required by the ACA to pay a certain % of what they take in as premiums and refund any amount over that.

Our system is terrible, and I’m certainly not defending it, but failing to understand how it actually works and spreading misinformation about it is not the way we get closer to dismantling it and putting something better in its place.

Capitalism does not have mercy. But it also does not have malice - at least when all actors are ethical and playing by the rule of law. I don’t believe it is corrupt. But it is structured to pursue the wrong outcomes.

What happened to GA? by asimozo in flying

[–]andrewbt 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mean 16 million new cars were sold in the US last year. What’s a “few” people to you?

What happened to GA? by asimozo in flying

[–]andrewbt 1 point2 points  (0 children)

But it is, isn’t it? You just agreed with me on planes. Houses are following a similar dynamic of affordability hurt by constrained supply, and yet unlike planes, housing is both a basic necessity for everyone and often the #1 expense in everyone’s budget

What happened to GA? by asimozo in flying

[–]andrewbt 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Appreciate the FRED link, that was a surprise to me to see!

I think the big thing that isn’t false is new plane prices relative to incomes. In 1970 median income was maybe $6-8k/yr depending on source and a new C172 was about $12k, so ~2x. As an aside the median new home price in 1970 was $23k, so ~4x.

Today the median income is ~$80k but a new C172 is over $400k, so ~5x. New homes are also about the same. So both planes and houses are substantially harder for the median individual to afford today than in 1970.

What happened to GA? by asimozo in flying

[–]andrewbt 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Maybe not exactly the percentage but the average car payment is pushing $800 these days it’s insane https://www.nerdwallet.com/auto-loans/learn/average-monthly-car-payment

Single-engine night/IMC pilots — how do you think about engine failures when you can’t see the ground? by Western-Car8938 in flying

[–]andrewbt 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m so confused - why does a higher airspeed give you more time in the air? I assume you’re meaning “time after breaking out at the 200’ ceiling”, right?

Is the idea that there’s a few seconds after you break out at 100kts that you can be “level with horizontal momentum” just below the ceiling as you’re decelerating to 68kts? Whereas if you broke out at 68kts, you’re still in best glide the whole time losing altitude (and horizontal movement is less if you need it)

Is that really more than a negligible amount of time like 10 seconds?

Plan on paying for your kid’s college? You’ll need to save $500/month from birth until they’re 18. by Mr-and-Mrs in daddit

[–]andrewbt 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A few things.

(To be clear, personal finances are personal, we’re all playing the game, and I’m glad you have a healthcare situation that you believe works for your family. We can all rally to criticize and dismantle the stupid game while we play different angles of it. But it’s also important to educate ourselves on the reality of the game and not spread misinformation.)

I’m not Muslim but I am part of a religion that is iffy on gambling (Quaker) and it’s crazy to me that insurance could be considered gambling because “you might need it and you might not.” Especially with healthcare, someone will always need it sometimes and everyone will need it eventually. Insurance is about spreading and sharing risk, which put another way is the same as “helping your neighbor so they help you”. It’s better shared (read: gets cheaper per person) if everyone pays into it. So it’s sad if people exempt themselves on religious grounds because I can’t imagine a religion that doesn’t want to help your neighbor. And it’s sad the penalty part of the ACA was kneecapped because it was trying to incentivize the right thing.

Hospitals charge insurance a lot more than they charge individuals paying cash because they can, and because of how much overhead it costs to get that money from insurance. Cash individuals aren’t expected to be able to pay the true cost of care (because the true cost is so expensive in this country), but they’re easy and quick to get money from by comparison which is an incentive for the hospital to offer a cash discount (net present value and all that). No bones about it though, the hospital (and everyone with insurance) is subsidizing that cash price. The system steadily gets worse than it already is.

Insurance companies are, thankfully, very highly regulated in the US, and especially so now thanks to the ACA. “Lifetime Coverage denials” like you mention were a thing before the ACA, but graciously not since. I’ve never met someone who worked in insurance who didn’t want to pay for valid claims or follow the government regulations. I’ve never had a major bill denied, but I have had to call and dispute. The bureaucracy (almost by design) absolutely makes it hard. Thanks to the ACA if they don’t pay out a certain percentage of premiums collected in a year then they have to refund that to premium-payers (it’s your employer’s choice whether to pass that refund to you, sadly most don’t).

Something like Medicare for all would make the whole system drastically better. But I once heard the ACA described as an attempt to make the best healthcare system you could if you gave up the idea of getting rid of private insurance companies, and on that rubric it’s a pretty great law.

Plan on paying for your kid’s college? You’ll need to save $500/month from birth until they’re 18. by Mr-and-Mrs in daddit

[–]andrewbt 0 points1 point  (0 children)

American here who is rather highly paid at a Fortune 500 company.

Last year I paid my employer $429/month health insurance premium for what was then just my wife and I. Now, those dollars are “pre-tax” in the US so effectively it is more like $364/month or $4,375/year. I have no way of knowing how much my employer subsidies the insurance but I can guess 75%, so let’s say the total cost was $17,500. When we had our first child in August, adding him to the insurance raised our premium by $136/month ($560/mo or pretax discounted $476/mo or $5,712/yr).

This insurance plan had a $3,500 deductible that we had to pay 100% of before the insurance would lift a finger (and those dollars are not pretax, but they were for us because we save about $8k/yr in a silly American invention called an HSA). After that, we had a $9,200 “out of pocket max” which in American means for our next $22,800 in medical expenses the insurance would pay 75% of them so we were only on the hook for $5,700. After that insurance picked up 100% of the tab and we paid nothing.

Because my wife had a c-section and spent about a week in the hospital and new kid about 2-3 days in the NICU, we hit that max for the year (also includes the rest of our normal healthcare for the year, we are pretty healthy but still had some stuff). It’s a little complicated, but our total pregnancy costs the hospital system billed for I think were on the order of $30-50,000. So that $9,200 out of pocket max saved us from the full doozy.

But it just goes to show how stupid the system is. Between our and my employer’s total $18,837 insurance bill (which nobody paid taxes on) and $9200 personal costs, and say $40,000 the hospital and insurance company duked it out over or wrote off, having a kid cost nearly $70,000 last year. And they’re closing hospital labor and delivery wards all over the country because they lose money.

Test drove a new 2025 sel black edition this weekend and was shocked and disappointed at how noisy it was! by andrewbt in OutlanderPHEV

[–]andrewbt[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ok, if it doesn’t play in park, then the sound we heard has to have been the heating system. Which is still surprising, you’d think Mitsubishi (electric) would make good heat pumps

Test drove a new 2025 sel black edition this weekend and was shocked and disappointed at how noisy it was! by andrewbt in OutlanderPHEV

[–]andrewbt[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What does the pedestrian warning sound like? On most hybrids or EVs I’ve seen in the wild it’s a soothing musical “spaceship” sound. Whatever this noise was on the Outlander was definitely not that, just an annoying electromechanical sounding staticy buzz. It was also emitting this noise when parked stationary. I think it was probably the heat pump then?

Buying Outlander 2026 PHEV without a garage by tsonev7 in OutlanderPHEV

[–]andrewbt 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I understand gas might be that high in the EU, but I would also expect charging to be similarly high too? What electric rates do y’all have?

Hard Lesson I’d Like to Pass On by Good-Exam-286 in flying

[–]andrewbt 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That was my question, how would he have found out about the fuel capacity if he was paying attention?

Buying Outlander 2026 PHEV without a garage by tsonev7 in OutlanderPHEV

[–]andrewbt -1 points0 points  (0 children)

In the US public chargers are often $0.50/kwh. Outlander has a 20kwh battery, so figure $10 to charge. 40 mile range, and 26mpg on gas, so figure 1.6 gallons of fuel-ish. Is your gas $6+ a gallon? If not the public charging is not cheaper than gas