u/fgflyer

The general consensus is, of course, go 121 even if you take a QOL hit at first with commuting to reserve and all that.

But for those of you that chose to eschew the 121 world and the money to be made there in favor of flying corporate or for a 91K fractional as a career gig (NetJets, EJM, FlexJet, Wheels Up, etc), or another private job, what has that been like for you and why did you choose that route?

Okay, I’m legitimately curious about this one… I have noticed that a VERY large majority of the furry community tends to like hyperpop, breakcore, and almost all varieties of EDM (especially digital hardcore, trance, and hardstyle). Artists like Femtanyl, 621gecs, Russelbuck, things like them… That, and of course, furries *LOVE* to rave.

Going to cons, I’ve always felt put off by this. Raves are way too overstimulating and loud for me, and genres like breakcore/hyperpop/hardstyle are some of my least favorite kinds of music. It’s hard to find furries who share my musical taste (mostly 60s/70s/80s pop and rock).

So, why is it that a vast majority of furries like those kinds of music genres and they’re basically ubiquitous at every con? To me, most of it is just incoherent noise.

So I’m turning 25 in August, have my multi engine rating and just over 600TT. I’m flying a Cessna 340A right now. I work full-time, and I’m now realizing more and more that I’m basically shooting myself in the foot by not having a college degree with the way hiring is. I never even applied to any colleges when I graduated high school. And at this point, I don’t know if I can keep dragging out my career aspirations (and finances) for another 4+ years. I’d rather not be working on this stuff until I’m basically 30. Sure, I’ve been networking, and I have some connections, but that only gets you so far.

The only problem is, there isn’t really any other degree that interests me that I can think of. Nor do I have any idea about how to even get into college. I’m also downright horrible in math so I know I’m going to have to take remedial courses which will delay things even further. I graduated high school in 2020 with a 3.42 GPA.

Any recommendations on what I should do? Where I should go?

So I have a lot of friends (mostly furries) who are big into VRC, and I’ve wanted to get into it, but I literally have ZERO idea where to begin, nor do I have any prior knowledge of VR or creating an avatar whatsoever. I also see so many people do these really cool face tracking and body tracking things and I wanna do that too. I don’t wanna walk around and not have any moving eyes or mouth or body, lol.

Unfortunately, it seems that most VRC “tutorials” out there basically assume you already have some prior knowledge of the game, or VR hardware. I do not. That being said, I have a PC that is *more* than capable of running VR (Ryzen 7 9800X3D, 64GB RAM, RTX 5090).

So my question is, where should I start to learn how to play or what to do? And what hardware do you recommend? The only VR headset I have ever tried was my girlfriend’s Oculus Quest 2. I hated it. The screens were blurry and fairly low resolution, it was like looking at the picture through a screen door/bug screen (I hope I’m describing this right), and I just had absolutely no idea how to use it or interact with the interface.

Thank you!!

This might be a long one, so bear with me here, but I’m seeking to hear some other answers and get some advice.

So I’m a 600ish-hour commercial pilot building time flying a Cessna 340A. Ultimately, my goal is to work for a fractional operator like NetJets. The problem is, when I have other more experienced pilots, DPEs, CFIs or what have you, asking me things, especially in scenario-based questions.

All 4 DPE’s that I’ve taken checkrides with, as well as my CFIs I’ve flown with, as well as my mentor/instructor pilot for the Cessna 340, have all said (in various ways) that I have a massive lack of confidence and a notable degree of indecision in my book knowledge and flying abilities, as well as anxiety in that regard. I wouldn’t say I succumb to outright resignation, though.

For example, a CRM-based scenario question was recently posed to me. It went along the lines of “you’re halfway from PHX to PSC and a flight attendant severely burns herself by accidentally spilling coffee all over her legs. What do you do?” And my first response was something along the lines of “I would have the copilot take controls and go back there to help with first aid, and then coordinate having medical meet us at the gate.” I felt only somewhat confident in that answer but I just couldn’t think of anything better. And then a CFI kind of prompted me to think, what reason would I have to go back there and leave the copilot in the cockpit? There must be someone better qualified to assist.

And then finally, after much prompting, I came to the conclusion that it would be best to call one of the other FAs to ask if there was a doctor on board and then proceed from there. I felt (and feel) so enormously stupid, it seems like such an obvious answer in hindsight. And I felt the same way with other non-CRM scenario based questions where, once I finally bring out the answer, I felt so stupid for making so many guesses or other ways of addressing it before finding the best solution.

People have told me that I tend to massively overthink things like this, and I also still have a LOT of anxiety with regards to checkrides or having these kinds of questions posed to me. I just feel like I should be better at this by now and that someone with my time, flying a complex twin aircraft, who has plans to fly for a career, should be really good at this by now. But I’m not. And it really makes me feel like a horrible pilot, especially since it seems that I’m still lacking in the decision-making department.

Has anyone else experienced this? And does anyone know what I’m talking about, or am I just ranting about nonsense and I’m just overthinking things again?

To the guy running Kansas City Center yesterday evening, I salute you for your patience and professionalism.

There was a JetBlue who had filed an invalid STAR into Chicago, and ZKC was giving him a reroute. Unfortunately, Mr. JetBlue was struggling to understand why he couldn’t fly his filed (invalid) STAR, and had absolutely no idea how to re-program his MCDU for the reroute, wasn’t reading back the reclearance, nor did he even know how to do a direct-to. Another pilot on frequency had to chime in and help him step-by-step on how to do it. Fortunately, the frequency wasn’t too busy, but I can tell towards the end of it all that ZKC was beginning to have his patience run thin before he got handed off to Chicago Center. Absolutely incredible job.

One of the core rules of VATSIM is to be familiar with your aircraft and systems before you do a flight to prevent this exact kind of thing from happening… And I’ve been noticing occurrences like this more and more, including during busy events.