Hey all,
Other than my first thread to say "Hi", this is my maiden voyage in this forum. I want too throw my hat into the ring by telling you my story.
Spent four years in the Marine Corp in the 80's. While in, picked up my Private and Instrument. Upon getting out, I continued my march to being a professional pilot by attaining my Commercial, SE and ME, with the instrument rating. My total time to date is right at 400 hours, with about 60 ME and 35 of that being good turbine PIC time. This time in a King Air strongly reinforced my desire to fly for a living. This was in the early 90's. I reflect back on those days, in my early and mid 20's and realized that I was my own worst enemy in my pursuit of an aviation career. I was immature and arrogant, and believed that I would never make it because I was and would always be a victim of reverse discrimination. I was also slightly more interested in the fairer sex, enough so to accidentally procreate. That being said, I knew that in starting a family my flying career had come to a screeching halt. Shortly there after, my wife who worked for SW Airlines and I decided to put in for a transfer to the Portland OR area. By this time I was 30 years old and did not know what I was going to do. I fortunately fell into the building trades and ultimately bought a small construction company. I begrudgingly made it work for over 10 years. The last two years however, I have seen the writing on the wall and stood somewhat idly by and watched my company crumble.
Now I am a man of Faith, and I believe that I have been Divinely led back to what I was meant to do. FLY Baby FLY. This is how it happend. I finally accepted that fact that my construction company was done and I needed to find somthing to support my family. My thoughts have been that I am not qualified to do anything beside swing a hammer, and to a lesser degree, fly. Flying was out of the question, I was sure.
I got a call from a retired Horizon pilot who we built a riding arena for. She is now an FAA flight examiner. We were discussing the dire straights that my company was in, and she asked what I was going to do. I told her that I didn't have the slightest idea. She then suggested that I get back into aviation. My initial thought is that she had fallen and hit her head, because there just couldn't be any merit to this suggestion. Upon getting home and doing a little research however I realized how wrong I was. The next day, we started a big roofing job for a younger couple. We got to talking and low and behold, both he and his wife are Horizon pilots. He told me that with my experience, it would take little time and money to find myself in the right seat of something soon. This has all come to be in the last 5 days. I am still reeling from all this exciting information. You can now see why I believe that this was meant to be.
My question to those of you who are still with me is this. Based on the above experience level, the fact that I am 43 years old and have not seen a cockpit for nearly 15 years, what are your opinions of how I should pursue this revisited career choice. My wife and I are fully prepared for the financial hit we will be taking, and have agreed that for the opportunity to fulfill this longtime dream, far outweighs finding my way into a job that I hated, and be miserable doing. I swore that I would never be able to work for anyone else unless I was doing what I love. Now, the opportunity has come and I am anxious to hear some feed back as to how you would do it.
God Speed
Todd
