Looking for a nice club (southern UK)

Coda wrote:

Although I do wish they’d kept the name “Staverton” instead of changing it to “Gloucestershire”. I guess it was good decision for business though.

I would bet if there was a direct train to London it would be called “Staverton-London airport”

Personally, I can’t think of a better airfield that has everything for business/touring/recreational GA on that price/convenience tag, including first class ATC, nice food and car rentals, hopefully you will enjoy it

I landed there in gliders, tmgs and seps always a warm welcome !

Coda wrote:

As I don’t like topics without endings, and threads without answers, I can finally say, today I signed up at Cotswold Aero Club. I met some nice people there today, all seem very knowledgeable but not in an intimidating manner. Thanks for all of your comments but especially to @SteveN, @Norman, @stevelup (and @Peter for his food humour ).

Gloucester is a great airfield. Good decision.

Bosco wrote:

And go to Cornwall, the Channel Islands and Scotland.

I can’t speak of the Isles Anglo-normandes or Cornwall, but for God’s sake avoid Scotland at all costs. We have appalling weather all year round (see photo) and dreadfully congested airspace. In large tracts of the country, the Class G ceiling is as low as 19,500 ft. The midges are merciless and the Scotch natives (when not drinking their eponymous sort of brown turpentine) catch millions of the blood-gorged critters to make a kind of sausage – then they will try to tempt you to eat it by claiming that it’s made out of sheeps’ entrails. As if….

Yes you need to get away from the burger runs to awful airfield “restaurants”. This type of flying dominates the UK school “club” rental scene and on the UK flying chat sites there is much debate as to where the cheapest “all day breakfast” can be found and which one is offering a free landing fee (£5-£10 discount)

This stuff is even worse than traditional Czech food (which I know; I was born near LKPR and lived near LKPM). The main difference is that with the UK airfield food you eventually need a stent or two (£10k if done off the NHS) whereas with Czech food you just need an annual colonoscopy (£1k)

There are many great flying destinations in the UK. The key is to fly to destinations, not to airfields like most do. Places like Alderney, Scilly Isles, Scotland, are wonderful, and there are many great city destinations with a lot of history (e.g. Cambridge, Norwich…). Except for Scotland from the south, most can be done as a day trip so rental is fine.

Here is a fun thread

Is that one of those R3000s, or one of the aerobatic ones? The R3000 is a somewhat quirky and a little uncomfortable bird, but performs quite well.

But yes, your flying will be more expensive than in CZ, I‘m sure.

And yes, you will need some preparation for the various UK „rules“ of GA flying. You might want to google translate this.

It‘s worth it. Just get away from burger runs quickly. Particularly depressing in the UK. But strips are good fun. And go to Cornwall, the Channel Islands and Scotland.

You just need a check out for a Robin, very nice, harmonised club aircraft which in its 180/200HP version is close to an Arrow in speed with fixed gear.