Thoughts
Guntop,
You have a very long PM from me!
For what it's worth I left a good middle management position to join a well known Dash 8 operator with a base 400 miles from my family. Happily I am now based near home and have no regrets. In short I do (after 2 and a half years) still enjoy the job - flying is far far better than any office job I have ever had.
However the pay is crap and the rosters in my company can be gruelling - as an example I got up at 4.30am today, reported at 6.15, ran late due to some late transfer pax and was out of the airport around 15.30. I suffered traffic delays on the way home (rare) and got home about 5.30pm after picking my Daughter up from the childminder. It's a long day and certainly isn't an easy way to earn £32k a year!!
However tomorrow is a 4.30-10.30 home standby so if the fog doesn't cause too much chaos tonight I will hopefully drop the litle un off at school and spend the day at home watching a movie, having the house to myself while everyone else is at work, playing music and trying to put off finishing painting the landing!
As someone else said why not fly for a few months and see how much you enjoy it. The simulator is very different to real world flying (the latter is shedloads more fun) It would be a shame to come this far and not try it now. You don't want to be left wondering 'what if?'
To the poster who is a wannabe wondering about lifestyles and rosters I usually fly 4 sectors a day either 5 on 2 off or 6 on 3 off. Of the working days around 5-6 days a month will be standby and so as I'm only called out about 20-30% of those I probably end up doing 4 days a week on average each shift averaging about 7-9 hours a day.
I think this is pretty typical of the loco/turboprop arena and there are much better deals out there for sure...
Desk-pilot