BFH, I like you am a young pilot (19, and completed my ppl in the beginning of September this year. Although with my training I did not have much the same problem as you (mostly I think because I was doing it with a lot of potential cadets from the RAF... as was I. so there were lots of young piolts around.....). However we would always get the odd older person who would come past and say something in a mocking way as if we knew nothing and shouldn't be there at all because we were just "boys" and not to mention the females that were on the courses....(they sometimes got worse stuff because "women shouldn’t be flying planes...").
The honest truth is that you have to take it with a pinch of salt, some may be p****d off because they actually know that some of us have the potential to do so much more than they were able to when they were young.... possibly due to the fact that its easier and cheaper and more available to younger people like us now.
However, there were a few nice old chaps that did come over to us and chat about how we got there and how great it was that we had the chance etc, to pursue this opportunity, because lets face it without people like us, the aviation industry might eventually find itself with too many pilots to retire and not enough new people to join etc.
If I were you, from the sounds of things there I would move to another flying school if you could, thing is if you don’t enjoy it, then you should move, it must be enjoyable! I loved every minute of doing mine, which makes a big difference when it comes to the motivation etc for exams and stuff like that.
It happens everywhere though to certain degrees, I’ve been to a gliding club before and not been very welcome because I was 18 and they were mostly 60+yrs old..... until I met with one of the younger members who was...probably 35ish. The one thing he said to me is to just ignore them, the main reason they were cranky is because many of them had taken hours and hours of flight to get the hang of gliding and I hadn't. They had soloed at lets say their 50 or 60th launch, where the average for a normal pilot was say 40, and I had done it in 23 (don't get me wrong, I'm not here to brag, just illustrating a point). Because I happened to be good at it, that made me "the one who shouldn't really be there coz I was too young!" One other fact is that the younger you are to a certain extent the more likely you are to grab the hang of flying...as with so many other things in life, which can p**s a few older people off, because they wish they could do it to. Not to say that all older people are going to take longer to get the hang of it.... because that’s not strictly true either, lets just say that we sometimes have the advantage.
So don't bother with the ones that get you down, ignore them, maybe change school. Also as ShyTorque mentioned speak to your instructor and see what he has to say about it and if there is anything he can do. Especially at these times, schools should be encouraging people not discouraging them, it's unprofessional and bad for business.
Good luck though and let us know how u get on...
Best regards,
RAF TopGun
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[ 05 January 2002: Message edited by: RAF TopGun ]</p>