The title says it all, I’m interested in getting the CBIR and wanted to know people’s thoughts and opinions of the different schools now running this course?
I don’t know if they run this course but I renew my SP SEP IR every year with Airways Flight Training at Exeter.
I’m about to sign up for the TK distance learning.
Caledonian Advanced Pilot Training
ProPilot
Ground Training Services Ltd,
Is offering the Theory distance learning.
I have no idea how to compare the 3.
I’m leaning towards CAPT.
For the practical flying I’ve been in contact with Rate One aviation
Great thank you, very useful.
Yeah I’m trying myself to work out the differences in TK providers!
Rateone I see have an information day coming up on December 6th. I’m thinking it might be worth going along and speaking personally.
I can recommend rate one – I was their first CB IR candidate, in August.
They will dedicate an instructor to you for the whole day. This is by far the most time efficient way to learn. They are also set up to let you use your own aircraft without too much hassle, this can save a lot of time if you are current on that aeroplane. Finally, Gloucester is a great place to train: no transits elsewhere to practice approaches, the NDB isn’t as weird as some coastal airports, and the airport fees are OK-ish.
I don’t know anything about CAPT or Ground Training Services, but I just finished the TK distance learning at ProPilot (http://propilot.eu) and I can highly recommend them. I finished my last exam yesterday and just got my results: I got first time passes and an average of 93. I also really enjoyed the course. The books are excellent. I opted for the iPad iBooks version (which also work on a Mac), and found them to be very well written.
The instructors were top notch. The emphasis is very much on learning the material and not on just learning the answers to the exam questions. Of course, they tell you about trick questions and give you hints on how to do well on the exams, but what they really want is that you learn what is important and useful for flying. They also run full time courses (including some for integrated providers I believe), and this means that many of their instructors are full time. This is all they do, and that really shows in the high quality of instruction. The part time instructors are mostly full time airline pilots, so you also get access to people flying the line. The final part that I really appreciated was that they have bought systems trainers for both the B737 and A320. Distance learning students don’t get to use them much, although even the short time I had really helped my understanding of how the autopilot works. You can do (i.e. buy) an extra course on the trainers if you want. The one area that I felt could be improved were the progress questions that you need to do online as you are reading the material. They are mostly questions from the CAA exams, but often are very obscure, and while useful training for the exams, they were not very helpful in solidifying your learning of the material. I would have preferred good progress questions, and then have practiced exam questions later.
I have spoken with Rate One, and it looks promising. I also have a friend who has suggested Jerez in Spain, I Fly Spain. Gloucester would suit me better I think. I also would be interested in the Open day in December. May well pop down.
Always difficult……
Historically there were two FTOs at Jerez: FIS (Fly in Spain) and FTE (don’t recall the full name). FIS was the one to go for because it was run in a pragmatic way from (IIRC) Austria. For example, they used to do the 15hr IR conversion in one week – obviously that’s possible only by pretty well avoiding NDB work (unless you are a sky god). However I have more recently heard that they are run from the UK so that status is probably gone now. FTE was run from the UK and did all the NDB holds etc fully.
A pleasant foreign option was Egnatia in Greece (at Kavala LGKV). I visited them twice and write about them here. They have some drawbacks but hanging out in Greece is probably going to be quite nice (beats anywhere in the UK, for sure).
However most people doing the IR to actually use it for GA are going to be older people, with “fixed” lives, and they will be looking for a local facility. That’s what I eventually did, though I had a problem with the owner of the school (unfortunately at the very end of the training i.e. the worst place to get a problem) and it took a bit of complicated sorting out which – had it not been possible – would have got close to me abandoning the whole IR thing. Most people who choose to do it locally and especially in their own plane will end up compromising heavily somewhere, but they usually judge it worthwhile for the convenience.
