My long journey to the IR (hopefully not too long) has also started today. I have signed up with Pro Pilot for the CBM IR Ground School. I flew down to Gloucester at the weekend to have a chat with Jim Thorpe at Rate One with regards to the Instrument Flight training. They seem very nice and knowledgeable people down there, with some very good kit. I’m hoping I can combine the two and get it done in about 3 months. To those that have done this, is that optimistic or achievable ?
Rob
I would say it’s very optimistic, unless you’re planning to do it full-time. I did my IR flight training with Jim over 4 months (including a month of downtime for the annual), mainly at weekends but with a full week leading up to the IR test. However, that’s not counting the theory which I think you need to complete beforehand.
Happy to share my experiences with you if you want a chat. Send me an email and we can arrange a call. I also did a write-up in the PPL/IR Instrument Pilot magazine (editions 97 and 98). Another of Jim’s students has written up his experiences more recently in the magazine too.
The answer depends on how much you are into IFR already.
If you know nothing at all about how IFR works and have never really flown in cloud, 3 months is doable if you really get into it, flying weekdays as well as weekends, and are lucky with the weather.
I did my 1st (FAA) IR in 2 weeks of flying twice a day in Arizona but at the time I already had the UK IMC Rating and about 500hrs, and AZ gets about 363 CAVOK days a year.
You should not go for the IR unless you are already an accurate VFR pilot, because you will just find a lot of it confusing.
I did my IR in one month in CA while working full time, although I believe I did take some days off to fly. I had studied the TK in advance and followed a three day intensive TK course.
Of course in CA, like AZ, you can pretty much fly every day most of the year, without worrying about thunderstorms or icing.
As the above have stated, it depends how much you can focus on it. I did my IR in Canada in 10 days (during the winter 
) by committing to it all day, every day until I was ready for the flight test. That being said, I already had my CPL, the written passed, and about 450 hours before I started.
If you fly/sim as often as possible, you will see the back side of it pretty quick!
Good luck!
I’m cracking on quite well with the studying. Just thinking a little further down the line, which question bank to use? it seems there are a couple of choices. APTL online, which Pro Pilot have recommended or Aviation Exam which another member has used in the past. Both of these offer the CBM IR questions. Any thoughts / recommendation for either of these.?
I use Aviation Exam and like it. Key points for me:
A few years ago I wrote what is now a long-winded and partly out of date account of my JAA IR exams and flight training, where I describe what I found to be a useful strategy:
These tips may or may not work nowadays but it’s worth a look at the pattern of the answers because the writers are only human
As you can see from the images above, I used the flyingexam.com QB and it was “ok” but I can’t say anythying particularly positive about it because it did contain a lot of garbage questions from the original JAA ATPL QB which were subsequently removed by the UK CAA. AFAIK all the online QBs had this issue, which is why people who sat the UK CAA exams usually found them a lot easier than the QBs. The company which ran this QB was GTS in Bournemouth and I too can’t say that was a good route because their homework was very different from the real IR syllabus (but still had to be done, which wasted a lot of time).
I thought I would give you all a little update of my progress so far………
As mentioned earlier I signed up with Pro Pilot for the TK towards the end of January. The first requirement was to take an on line Maths and Physics test to ensure they were up to standard, otherwise some foundation studying would be needed. They were and I started the self study. All of the books are in electronic form with iBooks. These are really good and makes the studying easier with videos and high quality pictures embedded, together with search facilities and easy flashcard creation. The course also comes with a study plan in iTunes U. This splits the course into two modules and each module is split into 4 blocks, with each block consisting of about 15 hours study on several subjects. After each block an online test is taken on the subject matter studied. a 65% pass mark must be achieved to progress to the next block. I completed the self study portion by the end of Feb and then spent 2 days in the classroom at Pro Pilot at the start of this month which is really brush up on the subjects. They have some very good and knowledgeable instructors there.
I have booked in for MET and IFR comms exams at Gatwick next Tuesday. I thought I would do the toughest and the easiest ones at the same time and use these as a bench mark for revising the others, giving myself a couple of weeks to question bank bash. I signed up with 2 question banks…..ATPL Online and Aviation Exam. Both are very similar. ATPL online needs an internet connection while Aviation Exam can be run off line. I would say the questions in ATPL online have been marginally tougher, maybe there are still some ATPL questions hanging around in there. I’ve been using both and now achieving in the 90’s in tests. I’ll let you know how I get on with these 2.
My plan is then to take INST, R/NAV and HP&L at the start of next month at Leicester and the last 2, FP and LAW back at Gatwick in the middle of the month. I now realise that 3 months for TK and FT was optimistic, It will about 3 months for the TK alone. One needs a ‘life’ as well and has other duties. I had not factored in the amount of time needed for revising and question bank bashing.
back to the studying…….
you’re doing good, I’m personally closing in on…. 4 years for my IR. I certainly have to hurry up now as i MUST be finished by April 2016
