I can only highly praise Angel City Flyers in Long Beach near LA. Highly busy airport, lots of other airports around, all year around nice weather (in the morning often fog but that clears up at around 10am), modern Diamond Fleet, …
Use the time, do all the self learning stuff for the theory exams from home (also definitely read the official FAA books – highly recommended), arrive, do the theory first, also prepare beforehand the FAA PPL license validation, do an appointment at the FSDO – and then go flying with ACF everyday. IR 30 days should definitely be doable if you’re prepared well.
One caveat to all of the above. At least here in SoCal there is a severe shortage of DPEs. You may well be able to do your IR in 10, 20, 30 days – but getting the checkride scheduled is the real issue. No matter which school you end up going to, make sure to ask them (and get a satisfactory answer) about the arrangements for the checkride. Some (e.g. Sling at KTOA) fly someone in once a month, others have a DPE on staff (that tends to be the big ‘sausage factory’ schools), still others just try to get you on a DPEs schedule. YMMV but it’s become pretty normal to schedule the checkride before you even start training.
I fly N reg in UK and have a IR(R) + 61.75. PLanning to do accelerated IR later this year in the US, then do check ride on return to UK.
re the theory, the school i spoke to highly recommended Sheppard Air.
Any views on whether to learn this parrot fashion, ie just learn the answers, or whether it is worthwhile doing a UK ground school before signing up for Sheppard Air?
You cannot do an FAA checkride (or writtens) outside the US anymore – well not officially. The one “famous operator in the UK” got finally terminated although he may still do training.
A better way is to train in Europe and then finish in the US – like I did in 2006 using the IMCR training logbook entries towards the FAA IR training hour requirement.
For theory, everybody (US and Europe) uses the computer question banks. But there are some good books for the FAA IR which are quite practical.
