What if you where a young PPL pilot (say 25-35years) and had 5-10k to spend on your free time passion: flying
What would you choose:
- Make some great (inter)national trips and spend everything
- Obtain additional ratings (NVFR, EIR, tailwheel, aerobatics)
- Learn to fly a greater variety of aircraft
- Keep on saving money till you have more to spend (on a aircraft?, on a full IR or MEP)..
- Keep the money, invest it in something useful and postpone flying dreams till you are richer and older..
I think I will/would choose option 1 or 2 ;-)
I would go for the full IR
Get your hour building done, preferably in a tailwheel and on a nice long distance international jaunt.
International trips & spend everything. That about sums up my flying… 
That after all is the purpose of it all! The ratings are a means to the end!
Anything left over can go into senseless avionics upgrades….
I’m thinking right now, what my next goal should be, too. Funds are limited as well.
Would love to go for the full IR, but a) too much money and b) no suitable plane at hand afterwards.
So I will postpone that, till i can also use it after the training.
So for me it is (hopefully) great trips and i will give aerobatics and maybe tail-wheel flying a try.
Spend it flying however you can. EIR or Night sounds a good plan in any case if you can not spend the time travelling, otherwise I’d fly around Europe a bit and get experience.
Medres07 wrote:
What if you where a young PPL pilot (say 25-35years) and had 5-10k to spend on your free time passion: flying
That’s basically my situation (I am very lucky to be able to spend so much in flying, soon it won’t be the case 
).
My plan is to
)8k with an IFR plane gives you about 40h/year which is great.
I don’t expect to have the budget to own a plane, maybe a share would be best for me. Quite uncommon in France though.
If I was a young pilot in that situation, and no more obvious money coming later, I would spend the 5-10k on some trips around the more scenic parts of Europe. There is a huge amount to see, in the right places, and e.g. flying over or around the Alps is an amazing experience. Come to one or two EuroGA fly-ins
Otherwise, if I had the funds available in the future for a reasonable amount of flying, I would spend the 10k (you won’t do it for 5k) on the full IR. That will totally transform your flying… not so much where you “can” get to (in Europe, every IFR trip can be done VFR) but the ease with which you can do it. But this is worth doing only if you will have access to a decent plane, and the money to fly it seriously.
A few years ago I did my first 7 day big tour around Europe. Cost around 5k. Unforgettable!
In 2001 I was in that age band and got my IR (in the US) for about that price.
