Thermite you know too much you must have read many things to be as wide a opining which you do.
Dont take me wrong I find your posts interesting, yet I do suggest you go fishing some to just have fun.
LOL!
Not as hard as it seems, nor as time-consuming. I'd guess it takes me about the same item to read ten thousand books as it takes the average guy to read but one thousand, so I've had LOTS of time to hunt, fish, fly, cook, eat well, sightsee, fix barns, cars, or houses, earn a crust, f . .'er "shag" in between turning pages!
Cheating in any case. Coupla hundred hours. 400 or so landings in PA28-180D and PA28-150, fewer than 8 hrs in a 172-RG, not a great deal more AA5B, and that's ALL of it for
left-seat. Mind - it includes "Big Island" Hawaii circling, and a legally cleared low-level route up Hong Kong harbour, so.., always glad I rented, never owned.
Biplanes? Aerobatic rides as a passenger to decide whether I even WANTED to go for a license.
Scariest one was when I paid the fee and the barker at Flying Circus shouts out load clear down the flight line to a greying War Two bomber pilot who'd rebuilt himself a Boeing Stearman:
"Hey TEX! You got a paying customer! Put your parachute on and take one of your HEART PILLS!"
They ain't no Joyce stick in the front hole for flights with newbs who might mistake it for the grab rail on a roller-coaster.. Just an empty socket, down at deck level...so... sure hoped that heart pill was the right dosage!
Highly recomend that as "starter", BTW.
If.. by the third flight, you are not well-past shutting OFF yer gut and too-damned-slow human sense of balance in the ears (we ain't birds) in favor of eyeballs on controls, wings, horizon and a primitive panel so as to grok what the guy in the back seat is doing to make those acrobatics HAPPEN? You WILL have trouble on "unusual attitude recovery". I simply annoyed some rather good instructors, instead by how rapidly I "got it", zero drama.
Earl: "Bill! You fly better under the hood on partial panel than most guys do full panel heads-up! How TF do you DO that?"
"Well, Earl, since all the hell you left me this go was the tachometer, VSI, and whiskey compass, I guess it must just be fewer damned DISTRACTIONS?"