Charlie
I didn’t use the sim at all. It was there but I didn’t ask to use it and at the time I didn’t have access to a sim at home. Having moved with work away from the uk I have bought a redbird TD2 sim for home use that I find very useful. No question it would have been valuable experience (even if not a fully certified sim to log the hours) just to get familiar with the key strokes for each instrument approach procedure.
The skills test is a very predescribed format that lends itself to someone who sets up a very structured methodical approach. You can learn quickly the test routes (Cardiff, Coventry) etc. where you know by heart the headings, frequencies, nav aids, plates etc etc so you are not fiddling around while under pressure. Take Cardiff – learning the BADIM. L9. ERNOK. CDF set up on the ground will save time. Having BCN tuned in and set up in standby in advance and then knowing the distance from Gloucester to BADIM that you must have a clearance to enter class a before hitting the boundary of L9 (and a plan what to do if you don’t get one in time etc) all helps. Equally learning the plates, holds and gates.
And then learning the schools checks by heart before you go will save you time. Simple things like the after take off list that at my school was BUFFPEARL (Brakes, Undercarriage, Flaps, Fuel, Power, Engine, Altimeter, Radios, Lights) and then the en route check FAT RED (Fuel, Altimeter, Threats, Radios, Engine, Direction) and then the approach list as FAT RED WASP to include (Weather – ATIS, Altitude, Slow, Plates brief). Different schools I am sure will have their own procedures. Maybe obvious to you already but if I knew the checks by heart prior to my arrival it would have saved time.
And then the RT. For myself from a radio operated field I would have benefited from learning the standard RT or at the very least writing it down for each phase etc.
Regards
Nick
I was thinking of going to Jerez for the 10 hours. €2750 including skills test as compared with £4785 if you do it at Rate One is a big difference.
zuutroy wrote:
I was thinking of going to Jerez for the 10 hours. €2750 including skills test as compared with £4785 if you do it at Rate One is a big difference
From what I hear is that from Rate 1 you would come away with a rating that would be useable, whereas from Jerez maybe all you would come away with is a rating.
I would imagine that thats the ‘big difference’.
Yes; this is the old debate… pilots who can already fly and who just want the papers tend to go for the cheapest or most convenient route. There used to be two outfits at Jerez; one was “pragmatic” and the other was UK-run and made everybody spend a week banging holds around the local NDB. I heard they are both UK-run now… But a few pilots I knew back then did their FAA to JAA conversion with the first one, inside 1 week.
Rate 1 is probably a fair choice if you are not experienced in European IFR. Do they do “real” flights in the European IFR system? ATPL FTOs generally don’t since their customers don’t need it at the CPL/IR point.
Peter wrote:
Do they do “real” flights in the European IFR system?
I didn’t do them. The navigation was focused on test routes. They did tell me that after the rating if I wanted we could do some trips to France, but that the main focus was getting me to pass the test in the least amount of time (it worked, as I believe I did 18 hours to test (needing 15))
I ended up not taking the offer to do trips abroad, but ended up quickly learning from posting and reading some comments and threads both here and in PPL/IR, and most of it trying to do lots of trips myself.
Same thing with the Excellent http://kilodelta.aero/ (who I used for my MEP / MEIR upgrade) who would come to the airfield I picked, at the times I picked, in the plane I picked.
Since we were 2 doing the instruction on most of the days, I wondered if we could use a day to go to Paris and back, but he advised against, as he said focus should be on passing the test. I found him a very pragmatic instructor and can’t complain on the judgement as I was fairly relaxed by the time the test came.
Peter wrote:
Do they do “real” flights in the European IFR system? ATPL FTOs generally don’t since their customers don’t need it at the CPL/IR point.
How do you mean that? Where I instruct, an IFR training flight is a “real” IFR flight. Always. With training slot and airport slot and flight plan and clearance and everything. I would not know another way of doing it. No matter if the student trains for an ATPL or a CB-IR. And I would do nothing different with a CB-IR student than with an ATPL student. They must pass the same skill test in the end.
If you’re doing the first 30 hours ab-initio at another school or with a freelance IRI then I think that choice is more important than where you do the last 10 hours of test prep, no?
what_next wrote:
How do you mean that? Where I instruct, an IFR training flight is a “real” IFR flight. Always. With training slot and airport slot and flight plan and clearance and everything. I would not know another way of doing it. No matter if the student trains for an ATPL or a CB-IR. And I would do nothing different with a CB-IR student than with an ATPL student. They must pass the same skill test in the end.
In the UK, the filed route is a very short one, basically the minimum “just to get into airways”. There are no longer trips, where you get SID / STARS and where you might need to negotiate routings etc.
But it’s not THAT different, I agree.
zuutroy wrote:
If you’re doing the first 30 hours ab-initio at another school or with a freelance IRI then I think that choice is more important than where you do the last 10 hours of test prep, no?
I guess so! If a student would come to me badly prepared to do those final ten hours (I will know that after five minutes) then the ten hours can easily become twenty or thirty. We do not release students for the test unless they have a very high (…90 percent…) chance of passing it.
