And now let me tell you something about a good friend of mine that perhaps can add something to this interesting discussion...
He obtained his PPL 14 years ago and flew 3 or 4 hours after that. Then he stop flying. Four years ago, he decided to renew his PPL after a gap of 10 years without flying at all (yes, 10 years). To add some difficulty, he decided to use a completely different aircraft for his renewal.
On his first flight, he managed comms fluently on a busy airport, he took off, made some manouvers, some stalls and all this stuff, and managed to land the aircraft almost on it's own, with very little intervention from the instructor. Only two flight hours later he was passing the verification flight and regaining his PPL.
He, with 43/44 FH total time, was able, after 10 years of no flying at all, to complete a flight on a new aircraft type with very little help, and was flying solo 4 flight hours later.
Perhaps he is especially gifted for flying, and surely he wouldn't have been able to cope with an in-flight emergency in his 'first' or 'second' flight, but.... what do you think about this?
(I don't know if this can be relevant at all, but to be honest I have to say that he kept 'flying' with MS Flight Simulator during these 10 years)
Last edited by _Coolhand_; 11th January 2007 at 21:25.