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Electric Airplanes Are the Future of Pilot Training
Walk into a flight school today and you’ll probably take your first training flight in an aging airplane that’s noisy, expensive, and burns leaded fuel. But the race is on to change that, with electric trainers that are clean, vibration-free, and cheap to operate. (www.wired.com) More...
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I've been a commercial pilot for 14 years--medicals every 6 months. The medical checks are a joke. They don't test nearly as much as a family doctor would.
FAA medics are pretty forgiving. My first consisted of two questions, of course I was 17 or 18 years old. The first was How do you feel? the second was what color is that trash can over there? :-)
How do you know what your engine is doing if you can't hear it?
There would be some sound if nothing more than just a whine...There would also probably be a low voltage disconnect built in..Kinda like whenever your alternator goes out in your car all non essential stuff would start to shut down; radio first, then the lights finally the engine.
I'd fly an electric for short hops or just around the pattern for kicks any day.......if there are any boomers left standing by the time these get here it will be the way to go for some cheap flight. The feds need to get off their rears and pass the driver license medical for 3rd class and we can have some fun.
No thanks. I found out recently that DMV passed me for a license with vision that took surgery to correct. We don't need that kind of bureaucracy to allow people wit 2 dimensional thinking into the 3 dimensional world of aviation. Further, I can't imagine some of the people I've driven in an automobile with in the cockpit of an airplane.
Light Sport has had the drivers license medical for the last 12 years. No accidents reported due to medical problems......fully support medical checks for commercial pilots.....but several of them have passed those checks and died shortly after in the cockpit........
I've known pilots and non pilots alike who died of a heart attack, within 12 hours of having their heart checked. I don't abide with the idea that just anyone can or should pilot an aeroplane and a physical seemed to cull out some of the would be incidents if only for interest and the extra steps to get a biannual check up. I have never thought of medics as magicians or sooth sayers and can predict the future. It's more on the idea that, "if you really wanna fly you gotta'...". I've been a professional pilot, i've been a professional driver and I've been a professional Marine Captain. I'vr seen son people who shouldn't have a license to drive a car and I dare say so have you. Those types have to be culled from the practitioners. I made plenty of errors while learning how to fly, but knew I had to correct the errors and keep them out of my flying repertoire. the Physical requirement just adds one more thing to get over and through. A class physical for an ATR never kept them from drinking and flying, but the hoops and hurdles kept some from even trying.
