Gao Xi once saw an article on the website of the "Huffington Post", introducing a small town called Spruce Creek in Florida, USA, with more than 5,000 residents and 1,500 households, each of which has a private jet, and is the community with the highest concentration of private jets in the United States. The Delaware Tower also owns a house here. Before the media exposed, the densest private jet community in the United States was virtually unknown, and even the residents of the neighborhood may not know the details of the town.

He looked it up through Google Maps, and the town of Spruce Creek is near Orlando, which was once a U.S. Navy airfield during World War II, abandoned in 1946, and gradually built into a private jet community that people can live in and enjoy.

It is said that there are many such aircraft communities in the United States, but they are all low-key and outsiders do not know about them.

It can be seen that there are really not a few people in the United States who own private jets.

Gao Xi thinks that he may not necessarily have to buy a helicopter, there are still a lot of small propeller aircraft, under normal circumstances, a brand new aircraft may be a little more expensive, hundreds of thousands of dollars, if you buy a second-hand one, it is the same as buying a second-hand car, it is relatively simple.

Xi Haijuan said that the situation is also realistic, if you want to often use the mixture of life spring water and magic spring water to spray the pasture grass on the pasture, driving a car is really like death, so having an airplane that can spray pesticides is much simpler, even if it is tens of thousands of acres of land, it will not take long to spray by airplane.

And I've had enough of running on the ground, so if you're young, play with those who are born to fly, it will definitely feel great.

What's more, there are relatively few cattle and sheep on the pastures in Gaoxi now, so a few cowboys are enough, but if it continues to increase in the future, it is necessary to keep increasing cowboys. With such a high labor cost in the United States, it is estimated that he will not last long before he collapses directly.

So mechanization is the best choice. It should be a great feeling to drive a helicopter away from cattle and sheep and attack a beast that destroys the farmer's livestock.

"Uncle Liu, is it easy to fly a plane?" Gao Xi had never flown a plane, so he wasn't sure about it, but if you think about it, it would be much more difficult than a car to fly in the air.

"Hahaha, that's a good question, I thought I couldn't learn it before I flew the plane. But after learning it, I realized that flying an airplane is probably much easier than driving a car. Liu Laohan laughed.

"Really, huh?"

"If you don't believe it, then you'd better experience it, anyway, when I first went to aviation school for full-time training, I felt this way. Nearly 50 people participated in the test flight that day, most of them Chinese students and residents from Montana State University and the Chinese community in San Francisco. ”

"After a morning of training, lectures and ground flight simulations, at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, I walked with my friend Xiao Zhang to a small plane that had just returned."

"When I stepped into the cabin, the instructor first told me to put on my headphones. We talk wirelessly to the roar of the engine, and we talk to the tower. The instructor told me how to look in the direction and indicated the switches and steering sticks I needed to use. ”

"When I was ready, the instructor told me to use my left and right foot controls to drive on the ground. Drive the aircraft to the starting runway and wait for the tower notification before the take-off line. ”

Hearing the take-off notice from the tower, Instructor Alda said: Pull the steering stick back! Keep pulling again! ”

As a result, the plane kept accelerating forward. Soon it took off, and I felt our little plane climb forward at an angle of more than 30 degrees. ”

"When the plane was flying smoothly, Alda instructed me to turn to the left. I had no experience, so I pulled my head all at once, and he immediately adjusted the angle back with the controller. ”

"After a few minutes, the little plane was flying smoothly and I began to relax gradually, and Alda took several pictures of me with my mobile phone."

"The cockpit of the plane has a very wide view, and during the half-hour flight, I enjoyed the scenery in front of me and below the plane, and I saw the endless autumn leaves stretching into the distance, and the city and suburbs were at my feet. The fields and low hills slowly receded, and the houses and trees beneath the plane were clearly visible. ”

"I didn't know how to look at the instruments yet, but then I asked Ms. Tong Yue, the founder of the North American Flight Association's Love Fly Club, who organized the event, and she said that the flight altitude was about 3,000 feet, which is low-altitude flight."

"Half an hour passed quickly, and when I returned, I already saw the airport in front of me, but I needed to queue up for a while. It was too difficult for me, a newbie, and Alda turned the plane to the left, pulled it up, made a big bend, and then came back to land. The landing in the last 5 minutes or so was basically controlled by Alda. ”

"Alda gave me the experience of flying the plane by myself, except for the landing and the contact with the tower, I did the basic operations."

"After the flight, I talked to a few friends who were traveling with me, and everyone had the same feeling: flying a private jet seemed easier than driving a car! Of course, there is an instructor next to him, and if he flies alone, it is estimated that it will be very different. As several experts in the lecture said: flying an airplane is not as difficult as you think, nor is it as easy as you think. ”

After listening to Liu Laohan's narration, Gao Xi felt that he might really be able to try it, and the feeling of soaring in the blue sky might be really good.

So he asked: "Is this aircraft license the same as a car driver's license, will it be difficult, to be honest, listening to Uncle Liu, I really want to try to see if I can fly." ”

Liu Laohan said with a smile: "In the United States, it is not difficult to get a private aviation driver's license, and it can even be said that everyone can do it. And with your economic level, then don't think about the financial problem, as long as you are over 17 years old, through the US government background check, this is mainly to check the criminal record and other aspects, after the 2001 '9.11' incident in this area tends to be stricter, but as long as your background is okay, there is no need to worry, and then there is 40 hours of instructor-accompanied flight, 10 hours of solo flight, in addition to written test, oral test, etc. It feels a bit like getting a driver's license. ”

"How much does it cost?"

Liu Laohan thought for a while and said: "This can't be generalized, but most people spend more than $10,000 on average to get a private pilot license." I once went to visit a friend at a museum in Manhattan, and I stopped by to talk to my friend's supervisor, who somehow talked about his driver's license, and the supervisor said that his son was still in graduate school, but at the same time he had obtained a private jet pilot's license. ”

Liu Laohan also told Gao Xi that the member of the North American Flying Association Aifei Club called Tongyue Lane has experienced several experience activities, and several of the students have signed up to learn private jet piloting, and if everything goes well, they can get a private pilot license after a few months of training.

"Of course, the cost of flying after obtaining a license, the purchase of an airplane, various travel expenses and the maintenance of the aircraft may be the bigger expenses. Ms. Tongyue, who has a commercial license for private jets and has purchased five private jets, told me that after buying an airplane, she has worked more diligently, because it is not cheap to have an airplane, hahaha, it feels like buying a car and paying a down payment. "Liu Laohan is the one who owns the plane, and I feel that he understands this knowledge very thoroughly.

"Listening to you say this, it seems that the maintenance fee of the aircraft is still quite expensive?" Gao Xi really wanted to buy an airplane, so he wanted to know more about it.

"As for the issue of aircraft maintenance costs, let me tell you, it depends on the specific model, mainly according to the maintenance level, such as emergency maintenance, overhaul, pre-flight maintenance, post-flight maintenance, daily inspection, two-day inspection, weekly inspection, A inspection, C inspection, D inspection, etc., so the cost is different. A single-engine Cessna 177 private jet costs about $85 per month to dock at New York's Long Island Airport, about $3,000 for regular annual maintenance, and $50 per hour for fuel; For an aircraft valued at less than $60,000, the cost of insurance is about $1,000 plus per year. ”

"And how much does it cost for us to rent a parking space for a private car in Flushing, New York, where there is a Chinese population? It costs around $250 per month! Do you know how big the gap is? Although I have told Ms. Yue all this information, she is more professional than me. ”

Liu Laohan estimated that in order to figure out the consumption of this plane, he also studied it very carefully.

"According to what you say, it seems that you don't want to drive a car in the future, just fly to work, hahaha." Gao Xi couldn't help but laugh.

"But it's not, of course, you don't have this problem, you have your own ranch, and the car can be parked casually, as for the plane, such a small plane, there is no problem at all to park on your big ranch, and the cost of parking is exempted, which saves money." Liu Laohan said with a smile.

Hearing these words, Gao Xi lowered his head and pondered for a while, feeling that this really had to be able to be bought, he had planned to buy an airplane before, so he also inquired, it is relatively easy to buy a private jet in the United States, even if it is a brand new aircraft, you can buy a good one for about 400,000 US dollars. And if it's second-hand, it's much cheaper, he didn't know it before, and then he searched for the price of a single-engine aircraft through the magical Internet, and he didn't know it if he didn't check it, and he was shocked when he checked it. Single-engine private jets in the United States, the price of a used aircraft starts from more than $10,000! Many are around $100,000, and of course, expensive single-engine planes are $800,000-$900,000 each.

For Gao Xi, of course, if he wants to buy it, he has to buy a better one, and he also wants to buy a fighter jet to drive it, so that is the real wind.

But I'm afraid that can only exist in fantasy, in fact, it would be very good to be able to fly a small plane or helicopter, in China, most people have never been on a plane in their lives, let alone fly a plane. (To be continued......)