Note to Prospective Student Members
This is my personal perspective, not an official position of the club.
There are a few basic "tests" you should give yourself when considering
whether to join the Rochester Flying Club as a student member:
-
Are you going to be staying with the club after you get your license?
- Remember it costs money to join the club and it
costs money to remain in the club (see this link
for current rates).
If you're not going to fly "enough" to justify the
monthly fee after you get your license, you might end up quitting the
club, and then you'll feel like you've "wasted" your initiation fee.
- Are you relatively self sufficient?
- The club doesn't arrange instructors or schedule lessons. We give you a
list of club-approved instructors, and leave it up to you to contact them and
choose an instructor. And once you've chosen an instructor, it's between you
and him/her to schedule lessons, etc.
- How would you feel if you find yourself unable to fly for a few weeks
due to a mechanical problem?
- We've only got one "trainer", a PA28-161 Piper Warrior. If it
gets grounded due to a problem while you're a student, then you
will be allowed to fly one of our two Archers, but only with an
instructor. If it happens after you've solo'ed, you might find
it a bit frustrating to not be able to fly solo until it's fixed.
This happened to me when I was a student, and it seems like I'd only
just got rid of that noisy guy in the right seat when I had to take
him back! :-) If I'd been at an FBO like Bill Law, I could have
switched to a different plane and kept going.
If you think you are ok with these three conditions, you should know there
are several advantages to joining the club as a student. It's cheaper
than the flying schools on the field, our planes are in better shape, our
insurance covers you, not just the owner, and the Warrior is so similar to
the other planes in our fleet that transitioning to them after you get
your license is a piece of cake.
Anyway, if after reading all this you want to join the club, see the "Contact Us" section for information about how to
contact our V.P. of Membership.
