God, I love this community!

[Guest lawyerpilot]

First I want to thank those who helped me find files recently after I had to reinstall FS. I had a year without any problems, and then the dreaded happened. I have flown thousands of hours on MS, Fly, Pro Pilot, FUIII, etc. since about the 3rd grade. What does that say about me? I don't know...I guess I like flying. Anyway, I used to be ashamed of flying that much on the sim. Then I realized, along with the assesment of my flight instructors, that the sims saved me thousands in training. Plus, I realized that it is a hobby, and others spend that much or more time assembling flies for fishing. I will likely get my ASEL Commercial in Feb., and it has been a fun, challenging, and rewarding track. When I was about 23, I moved to Winston-Salem, NC where which had a Class D airport, a first for me. I used to watch the planes take off and land every day at lunch. Then one day, I finally took the plunge, walked into the flight school without a reservation, and asked for a discovery flight right then, otherwise I would likely left from fear. Sure enough, Piper warrior, 5:45 P.M., November 2000. My first 6 hours were at night! I was scared out of my mind, but excited. We did maneuvers, and did really well. Although, as my instructor commented, I had the death grip! My hand hurt so badly after we returned. The fear was solely from the anticipation of a big bump that would make my stomach drop. For some reason, I have always been confident in the planes' mechanical abilities.I could write for 20 hours about my experiences, but I just want to let those who are scared to take the leap to real world aviation know, I did not feel completely comfortable solo until my 90th hour, after 30 hours of dual IFR training. My instructor told me to go up and fly around solo, which I hadn't done in about 6 months due to my accelerated training. Sure enough, I finally found peace. And this was from an airport inside Boston Class B airspace. Flew my first solo in awhile down to Martha's Vienyard! So, moral of the story, don't expect to be perfectly comfortable the first time, and certainly don't quit because of a lack of comfort. It is true that safety is directly related to cool, calm, collected, but that comes with time for most. In fact, I was as calm as could be on my first solo for some reason, b/c I realized that it was a methodical flight around the pattern. Cross countries scared the bijesus out of me. Since then I have flown a 310 40 miles off the coast of Long Island from BED to Atlantic City, Martha's Vineyard 20-30 times, Burlington VT, Bangor, Albany, Teterboro, New Haven, Providence, Hyannis, you name it. Even flew right seat in a 421 RAM and left in a Malibu. Ok, gotta stop now, just do it--Nike had it right....Take the plunge. Christopher BraunP4 1.8768 ram 80 gig hardriveVisiontek Ti4 4600CH yoke/pedals19" inch monitor-Soundblaster PCI 512Win XPInstrument rated ASEL - 190 hoursC172, 182, 310, 421, Warrior, Archer, Arrow, Seminole, Seneca, Malibu, Baron, BonanzaAOPALawyerPilots Bar Association"Men without dreams are never free, twas thus this way and thus will ever be."