Hi Mrudul

Thanks for the note. By the way, as you would have read from my 'Frist Solo' it was on the glider. I've never solo'ed on Powered aircrafts.

When we start at NCC during college, we effectively have 12 months of real flying. Until then it is theory, aeromodelling, ground activities etc. These aircrafts loaned out to the NCC by the Airforce are spread / shared across multiple colleges and this reduces the chances of going solo on powered planes, after you graduate on gliders ..

Once out of college, pursuing this privately, is not a viable option for the common middle class person in the country (If you are born with a silver spoon - it is a different story). So you get to work and save up for some of your hobbies and this lets one fly a few hours every month. Maybe one weekend day every month and to solo, you will have to blow a fortune.

Today, when you are in a position where you can afford to pursue this, a completely different set of challenges now confront us. Air traffic is so high, permission from ATC (Air traffic control) for training and hobby flying is a challenge. The aircorridors in the mornig and evening are filled by commercial and international jet liners and hence permission for low flights (for the Cessna, Piper types) are impossible over the cities. Even the small slots are in the mid afternoon's for a short window. Hence this has now been pushed out to the suburbs like Pondy for real flights. Even RC flying frequencies are banned in the city and we will need to drive out to Sholavarm to fly those models. The challenge here is to drive all the way to pondy, fly for a few hours, drive back, on precious weekends when we will need to balance tiime for the family, other hobbies like RC Flying, Golf, Photograpy ....... Time can really be a sparse commodity.

Lastly, as we near the forties, the choice is a nice cold beer over a 18 hole golf during the weekends, rather than drive around to Sholavaram or to Pondy!!!!

Maybe this is life's way of balancing out priorities . . . . .

Rajan