"On a final note, I've been fascinated by flying (and going fast) all my life but have never had the money to learn to fly. On balance I prefer fast things and I've got an expensive Ducati habit to feed, so I won't be taking up any sort of fixed wing or rotary wing training.

But, here's the weird thing....I am fascinated by flying but absolutely terrified of heights and I mean to the point where on the first level of the Eiffel Tower I was absolutely frozen with fear. Gut wrenching, cold sweat, dry mouthed fear and gripping on to the nearest bench seat with white knuckles just because I could see through the trellis work down to the ground. Now, the damn thing has a pedestrian walkway around it as wide as a street, it has wire fencing to stop anyone tumbling over the parapet, it's impossible to fall or jump off it and it wasn't likely to have stood for 100 years then collapse just because I was on it that day. So you can be entirely rational about it but I was still terrified. The same is true for any tall building and you wouldn't get me within half a mile of a cliff top.

And yet...put me in a flying machine be it a commercial airliner (in which I've spent countless hours) or a light aircraft, or a glider or a helicopter and I'm absolutely fine. Yesterday, bobbing about on the breeze in a flimsy perspex bubble 1500 feet above my house (I only live 5 minutes from Cranfield as the chopper flies) was in a different order of risk to standing on a concourse up the Eiffel Tower, which frightens the crap out of me, and yet I was loving it."

Try a hang glider Jools-that should fix you.
I've done the glider thing, great fun, best though was an unscedualled trip on 002 Concorde-I used to work for Singer Link-Miles who made flight sims-they did the Concorde one. I had a meeting at Filton one day to look at the pilots seat and was asked if I fancied a trip................did I ever. Pilot was Trubshaw-chief test pilot, we went down the runway on full burner and when it rotated it went up literally like a rocket. They didn't used to bother about noise at Filton-everyone locally used to work either for BAC on one side of the road or Rolls Royce, who made the engines, on the other-magic!

John

Jools, all that stuff about heights and flying? Me too!
I love flying but I'm not good with heights at all. I am getting better though. I regularly have to be suspended in a cherry picker at 40 odd feet up, and daily take a stroll along a wing 20 feet up so I am slowly coming to terms with it.
I try to stay well away from helicopters though, hate the things!
Funny thing is, everyone I know who has had any dealings with them will always say what deathtraps they are too! :o

Regularly fly my helicopter with my littel lad...and its a damned sight twitchier than an R22 - dont know what all the fuss is about .. ??:lol:

Nat