So I’m Pete Warnes, halfbreed (English/Danish), geek and aviation enthusiast.
I have always wanted to fly, my first (GA) flying experience was in the form of a helicopter lesson, my wife had bought it for me as a gift. Despite being a little afraid of heights, I loved it.
I was bouncing off the walls when we came back down, and I was determined to learn to fly, until I saw how much it costs to learn to fly a helicopter… That was the end of that dream.
A few years later…
A few years later I again had the opportunity to fly, this time with my uncle, in San Fransisco. We flew from San Jose, up to Half Moon Bay for a Burrito before flying over the Golden Gate Bridge and back down through the bay. It was truly inspiring to get those views. When we landed I got some information from the club, though that was in the US, and I lived in England at the time. After returning home I just didn’t follow up on it.
A few more years go by (about 6), now we live in Denmark. Again my family bought a “Pilot for a day” gift for my birthday, which is basically a quick ground school, briefing and flight. I loved every minute of it, even just nosing around the plane, being allowed to touch it and press buttons while it was on the ground.
Right this was it! I signed up to start the theory the following week, and the next course started a month later which I signed up for. Great! Finally I did it… but no, it was not meant to be. The school I’d signed up to had decided they only wanted commercial pilots and cancelled their part time ground school courses, which meant that the course I was on was no longer going ahead.
This was the closest school to where I lived, and the prospect of driving 3 hours 4 times a week to take the next furthest school wasn’t appealing, so once again, time slipped by.
Finally
Then, just by chance, I found a ground school in Aarhus town, just 30 minutes from where I live, this was it, why had I not heard about this before?! I called them up, unfortunately I then found that the school had been moved up to Randers, but that wasn’t so bad, just an hour drive away. I was invited to come along to the theory lessons, a new course had just started and I’d missed the first two, but the instructor seemed to think I would be able to catch up. So I figured, why not.
That was February 10th 2017, I got my licence on August 27th 2017. It was intense, I had decided that this was my one and only opportunity, I’d put it off long enough. I made getting my license the highest priority, higher than my job, and for a short period, even higher than my family and friends – Whatever it took.
I’m so pleased I finally did it. Others on my course had spent much of their working life saving up, and where now in their 50s and finally learning to fly… It felt like I had waited a long time, and wasted those years, but meeting these people who had been dreaming about it for even longer than me, and waited until they where much older than I was, I realised how lucky I was to have done it while I still have (hopefully) many years to enjoy it.
I guess if I had some advice for those out there that dream about flying, but don’t have the time, or don’t have the money… I say this – Every year you wait, is a year you could be a pilot and living your dreams. You will never have enough time, you will never have enough money. You just need to make it happen, and worry about the rest later. After all, flying is a great stress reliever 🙂
/Pete