Is that freelance or via an FTO?
In 2011 I was paying c. £50/hr just for the FI and that was a small FTO (now gone, though I believe some remnants of it are still at Redhill) not one of the ATPL processing factories. I was doing it all in my own plane, and no sim work.
The “cheap” fixed sims are IMHO a waste of time unless you are a complete novice to instrument flight. Plus the DOC of your own plane is likely to be less than an approved FTO sim (well, unless your plane is a TBM 
) and you are gaining currency on type.
I disagree on the sim, anything “cheap” (including an empty chair if you have enough imagination) and allow you some sort of IF and Nav by ref to instruments, route and chart breif as well as remebering frequencies is good and will help to pass in minimum time
Of course a sim is not realistic but if you are current to pass test tolerances on the sim with a “junky yoke” I guarantee you have what it take to pass on a “proper airplane” but I am probably too biased toward flight simulators (I do 20h/month between FSX/RANT but only 2h/month of real IF, but I do find the latter much easier, except on managing the RT side)
I’m paying €50/hr in the Mooney which I think is pretty good value. I dial it back to 7 gph fuel flow meaning I get a marginal cost of about half that of the ATO’s 172 I was training in when the Mooney was in for its long annual.
I agree Ibra, and have often said that a cheap PC sim with a cheap yoke is a great way to save paid training time. What I meant was that using the approved sim, sitting at the FTO, is hardly cheaper and a lot less value to the client who has a plane, than just flying the plane. It doesn’t matter how good you are; you still need to log the required hours with an FI, and it is worth getting the best value out of those hours.
If one could do an IR just by getting informal training as required and then going for the checkride, that would obviously be a very different debate.
Peter wrote:
What I meant was that using the approved sim, sitting at the FTO, is hardly cheaper and a lot less value to the client who has a plane, than just flying the plane
Yes the approved sim at the price of a fancy DA42 for private PPL IR training are clearly a joke, I never managed to find the aircraft type or the flying element they try to mimic (they may have good value for simulator pause & chat & play )
Freelance IRI/IRR/IRE charges 45 pounds per hour brakes on to brakes off. Breifings are free.
In the no longer approved FNTP2 the charge is 55 pounds an hour which includes the price of the simm and again breifings are free.
Unfortunately my local ATO refuses to do CBIR and has said they won’t do the BIR either basically due to the time, effort and cost of gaining all their approvals means they have to make the students do 55 hours to make a profit.
For me the result is a 104 mile trip to the closest ATO that offers CBIR training and they may of course not bother with offering the BIR.
The outcome of this is I would have to take
a large amount of time off work and spend a not insignificant sum on hotel accommodation.
Why they didn’t just cut and paste the well proven FAA set up I don’t know.
Bathman wrote:
Unfortunately my local ATO refuses to do CBIR and has said they won’t do the BIR either basically due to the time, effort and cost of gaining all their approvals means they have to make the students do 55 hours to make a profit.
That is what they say now, the question is what they will say when people come knocking at their door and they can see they can sell real airplane and instructor hours. ATO’s who have this attitude should be avoided… or rather approval to do it should be automatic for schools who instruct the regular IR. Then schools would hop on fast enough.
My sim is halfway between. I have force feedback yoke and rudders, separate views for panel and outside world, and a touch sensitive GTN (or GNS with proper controls.)
The teaching value is huge. Just getting the basic principles of which instruments to look at and what inputs should be monitored make a great difference in the aircraft. Once people have mastered the sim, at £20ph, they can generally fly all the procedures in the aircraft, to tolerances, at the first attempt, at £250 ph or whatever.
Bathman wrote:
Unfortunately my local ATO refuses to do CBIR and has said they won’t do the BIR either basically due to the time, effort and cost of gaining all their approvals means they have to make the students do 55 hours to make a profit.
I have sent students to ATOs all over the UK and have never experienced this attitude. Let me know if you need a recommendation.
I think this is a good example for the difficulties the local European circumstances can produce.
In some countries, the infrastructure is ideal for the BIR, while in others, it will not offer any value either due to topography or administration.
In Germany, for example, we have a rather strange organisation of the Aviation Administrations.
Note the plural, since we do not have only one CAA, but numerous ones. The aviation offices in the different states are not branches of the LBA, but separate authorities.
In Germany, they do all the administration for all SPL, LAPL and plain PPL licenses.
This includes the conduct of theory exams at a location of their choice, usually the ATO with the most candidates, and the approval and oversight of ATOs that train for the licenses mentioned earlier. In practice, the vast majority of these are not-for-profit-clubs which like the personal, direct contact with the local officials with whom they often are on a first-name-basis. In my experience, the local authority is generally flexible and humane.
On the other hand, as soon as an IR (including PPL/IR) or a higher license is involved, all your files move to the LBA at Braunschweig. This is true for the individual pilot as well as the ATO as a whole.
When the CB-IR went live, my club’s ATO originally wanted to extend it’s approval to IR training, to make use of the available aircraft and instructors.
This idea was quickly dropped as we realized we would have to exchange our personal connection to the official with the anonymity of the distant LBA and some faceless clerk.
So we decided to stick with the non-of-ATO-part of the CB-IR and “assisted distance learning”. It’s a shame, but I can’t see an easy fix for that.
Maybe if we adopted the American system and relabelled the State Aviation Administrations as some kind of FAA-like FSDO…
