New UK PPL student

Malibuflyer wrote:

Initial PPL training on turboprops is, however, kind of rare – although I don’t see a legal reason why it should be impossible ;-)

Yes nothing in the rules that prevents that, especially if you are Saudi prince or celebrity paying 50k for PPL, the NAA will not reject your application as long as they “approve your tailored training before you start” (another way of getting a share in the pie !), but if you are just sending few forms like any vanilla PPL with 100Euros fee you are guaranteed an automatic reject for zillions of reasons

Amateurish wrote:

with some raised eyebrows when I explained my aim of European flying

That disturbs me a little bit. Half the point of private flying is to explore new places by air. Perhaps the flight school staff have been in the flight training silo for too long, and see anything more than 50nm away as “here be dragons”? I’d have thought an “old school” flight school would be encouraging people to do this!

Amateurish wrote:

My school seems very “old school” in its approach to training with some raised eyebrows when I explained my aim of European flying. I get the impression that most students are more interested in local flying.

Well, this will be because the average Flying school doesnt have a business model that allows for someone to go on holiday to Europe !!

For this you need sole ownership of an aeroplane or part ownership or to be in a flying group/syndicate that allows the aeroplane to be booked for extended periods of time with less actual flying – ie 3-4hrs to the South of France, stay a week, then 3-4 hrs back. Think about it, thats only an hour a day of flight time over the week, which is not how flying schools work.

Regards, SD..

That’s of course true with the existing business model, but how about this (and I have posted it before, possibly here):

• the school trains PPLs (as currently)
• the school offers one of their planes to a syndicate, to be run by a group of their former students
• the school then replaces that plane
• goto line 1

The school then ends up with a constant stream of non-shagged planes. As they say here, what is not to like?

Obviously only a small % of new PPLs will be interested (most people do a PPL without any great desire to do anything earth shattering with it; often it is to tick a bucket list box) but you don’t need a large %.

Then you have nicely revitalised the airfield’s GA community.

The CFI of one school I trained at, c. 2002 for the IMCR, was going to do exactly this, but never took it further. I recall the main reason is that he realised that having experienced pilots hanging around the school was not a good idea, because they made the FIs look, ahem, inexperienced

Welcome Amateruish. You found the best pilot forum in Europe.

My only advice is to get through the PPL training and test as fast as humanly possible. Whenever I have faced a new licensing hurdle – FAA PPL to add to the Swiss one I already had, FAA Instrument Rating, EASA Instrument Rating, my approach has been to set aside at least two to three days at a time and cram in as much instruction as possible. 4 plus hours a day. This way you will not be falling backwards again between each session.

If you could afford to buy your own plane now that would help speed things up.

Lastly, the barriers to long distance flying are mostly mental. The important thing is simply to take the first step. Fly over to Le Touquet for example (dealing with the border crossing issues, and then look at the map and pick another airport a 100 nm away and set off. Step by step and you will be amazed how much ground you cover, how much you see and how quickly you learn. I used to do this is a brand new pilot in my Swiss days. Fly to France and improvise once I got there. Had a blast.

Welcome Amateurish !
You already received plenty of good advice. One could write books about finding the right flying outfit.

If you want to look into aircraft ownership, we have thousands of posts in this direction too

Glag to know EuroGA is on Youtube cookies’ radar !

Welcome,

I think everyone has pretty much covered it. Get your PPL and treat that more as the start. It teaches you how to fly the machine and get about in a fashion. However, it is after when you start spreading your wings that you really start learning what you want to do and need to know.

Don’t worry too much about motion sickness, it is something you build tolerance even though it can be unpleasant.

Just try to enjoy it, flying is absolutely glorious, it is just many of the hassles that can be a bit of a drag.

I did my PPL residential – 27/7 to 21/8 1964.
There are advantages to not buying your own plane until after you get your PPL. Rent and find out what you enjoy most before buying – and learn to read airframe and engine logbooks. You’ll learn a lot by examining planes before getting YOUR engineer to check it, which is essential before buying.