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What planes can you fly without a pilot’s license?
81–90 of 248 posts
Re: What planes can you fly without a pilot’s license?
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
and the answer came from a 60 year old pilot that has been flying without a license for 30 years. More precisely, someone who claims to be one online.
Think about people in the Midwest who flew with their parents and inherited a Cessna. They may have never gotten a pilots license but racked up thousands of hours. They take off and land on a grass strip or their own private paved runway. Why (in their eyes) would they need a license? How about a kid who loved planes but parents did not or could not afford lessons. They found simulators and cut their teeth on 20 year…
> How about a drug runner in Columbia who learned to fly on his or her own to make $10k per flight. Mastering extreme short field landings and abandoning the plane afterwards. Why (in their eyes) would they need a license?
> Please do not do this.
Seriously, you should never do this. Narco subs are much more effective than planes nowadays.
Re: What planes can you fly without a pilot’s license?
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not really a stupid question. In theory, you could do that, but it's not that easy in practice. First of all, the attitude indicator alone is not sufficient -- you need to pay attention to the entire instrument panel, including airspeed, vertical speed and turn coordinator, and mentally synthesize a complete picture of how the aircraft is moving. Moreover, anybody who can fly a plane should intellectually know h…
Quoting from the Wikipedia article: [Coriolis illusion] can produce an overpowering sensation that the aircraft is rolling, pitching, and yawing all at the same time, which can be compared with the sensation of rolling down a hillside. Oh, wow, ok, that sounds strong indeed... I'm starting to understand it would be super hard, while vividly feeling like I'm rolling down a hillside, to try and tell myself: "oh, I just…
Exactly! Precisely it.
It's hard to imagine just how strong the feelings are from our current position of at home and typing on phone or computer, but it really genuinely is your entire body completely convinced one thing is happening, while in fact something else is happening.
(Note this is part of the reason why even with full visibility so many people get nauseous - subconsciously what your body thinks is happening and what your eyes tell you is aftually happening, disagree - sometimes strongly)
Re: What planes can you fly without a pilot’s license?
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
If your kid discovered a crashed something and the people that operated the something didn't know it was missing gave your kid free time to fly/ride a thing just like it, would you let your kid go? But of course the kid was upset.
If your kid discovered a crashed rental car and the people that operated the rental car didn't know it was missing gave your kid free time to ride a rental car just like it, would you let your kid go? Amazing how people today let fear get in the way of enjoying life
If you want to compare an apple to a kumquat, then sure, your analogy makes sense, maybe, if you really try and want it to. Otherwise, I hope the rest of your day is less upsetting.
Re: What planes can you fly without a pilot’s license?
#85Unpopular opinion but technically correct answer: you can fly any plane without a pilots license. In fact I just saw a Quora question with this exact question and the answer came from a 60 year old pilot that has been flying without a license for 30 years. If you never fly out of a major airport where an FAA inspector can ramp check you, who will ever find out? Please don’t do this.
In the same vein, the only reason you need a license is because you use publicly owned space.
For a mundane example, consider your driver's license. You only need it because you drive on public roads and highways; a driver's license is a license stating you are competent enough to not ruin the shared public roads and highways.
Likewise, a pilot's license is a license stating you are competent enough to not ruin the skies shared by all.
Commercial equivalents for those licenses also detail how you are competent enough to be entrusted with other peoples' lives or things, but I digress.
So if you take your car on a drive on your own, private land, you don't need a driver's license. Hell, you probably don't even need to register that car. Likewise, if you own a chunk of airspace and fly strictly within it, you don't need a license and you probably don't need to register the plane either.
Of course, nobody's going to be owning chunks of airspace like that so this is all theoretical.
Also IANAL, please don't do shit based off what some random hooligan spews on the intertubez.
Re: What planes can you fly without a pilot’s license?
#86Police in the US do not have to have a license to operate anything, including aircraft. In this case, insurance requirements take over though. They may have a legal right to fly but no insurance company would approve operation by anyone but a commercial pilot. I got a few hours in a local police Bell 206 because they needed a commercial pilot to fly while their official pilot only had a private license. Fun!
I’d like to hear more about this, because I’m a pilot and I’ve never heard anywhere that the FAA waives their license requirements for local police? That doesn’t make any sense to me.
Police also aren't legally allowed to straight-up murder people, but...
Re: What planes can you fly without a pilot’s license?
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
and the answer came from a 60 year old pilot that has been flying without a license for 30 years. More precisely, someone who claims to be one online.
Think about people in the Midwest who flew with their parents and inherited a Cessna. They may have never gotten a pilots license but racked up thousands of hours. They take off and land on a grass strip or their own private paved runway. Why (in their eyes) would they need a license? How about a kid who loved planes but parents did not or could not afford lessons. They found simulators and cut their teeth on 20 year…
> How about a kid who loved planes but parents did not or could not afford lessons. They found simulators and cut their teeth on 20 years of Microsoft flight simulator and x-plane.
That reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colton_Harris_Moore, but he stole the plane so it doesn't really count.
Re: What planes can you fly without a pilot’s license?
#88There are a few more complete aircraft than what that list has, if interested: Badlands F1 thru F5 models are based on the old Kitfox Lite: https://www.badlandaircraft.com/ Merlin Lite is based on the Merlin LSA: https://www.aeromarine-lsa.com/merlin-lite/ Both of those are pretty interesting aircraft more in line with what most people might think of as a full aircraft.
Wow, that Badland Aircraft site is annoying! Too many cute animations and images running around.
Re: What planes can you fly without a pilot’s license?
#89After your solo signoff you can fly alone without a license. Many people do this and never go all the way, they'll l fly for years.
Re: What planes can you fly without a pilot’s license?
#90Unpopular opinion but technically correct answer: you can fly any plane without a pilots license. In fact I just saw a Quora question with this exact question and the answer came from a 60 year old pilot that has been flying without a license for 30 years. If you never fly out of a major airport where an FAA inspector can ramp check you, who will ever find out? Please don’t do this.
In the same vein, the only reason you need a license is because you use publicly owned space. For a mundane example, consider your driver's license. You only need it because you drive on public roads and highways; a driver's license is a license stating you are competent enough to not ruin the shared public roads and highways. Likewise, a pilot's license is a license stating you are competent enough to not ruin the s…
It's kinda silly though, compared to driving, there's very little public space that somebody else would be using