Renting and doing long trips is not mutually exclusive, as I’m happy to report. I regularly do long(ish) trips and rent. Admittedly, I have found (both in the past and present) some good setups, but in my experience it really comes down to the a/c you rent. In all the setups I’ve rented from, the basic trainers (i.e. 172/PA28) were the most difficult to rent for the simple reason that they fly all the time in training. Step up to a 172RG or my current steed, a 182RG, and things start to look very, very different. Not only from an availability POV, but also from the willingness of the owner / manager to come to an agreement WRT minimum hours over several days. While of course owning would be much better, I cannot really justify the capital investment. I may well do it one day, but for the time being, renting a capable a/c works for me.
Jan_Olieslagers wrote:
Perhaps it is not a coincidence that both of you are somewhat at the outer edge of Europe…
I don’t really see the connection…
Neither do I – but the fact is there.
That’s a hilarious link, A/A. And a lesson on how to be damn careful with research methods! 
(OTOH I can see a lot of them are not unconnected, if you think more deeply about some underlying factors… the big trap in all social research).
But I can see a valid geographical correlation here: the value of GA should increase if one can get somewhere where alternative transport is hard.
A great example is southern UK to northern France. How would you go from Shoreham (or anywhere on the s. coast) to Le Touquet? It would take you all day just to get there… So I would expect at least some UK schools clubs to provide suitable facilities, including the mentoring for the less confident members. Shoreham doesn’t but then it is a funny place, dog eat dog, and guess who buys the soap for the toilet next to the hangar? (me!)… The “London” clubs (W Waltham and Gloucester e.g.) have loads of very well funded members. A plain PPL gets you loads of value.
A really bad example is say Germany to … anywhere. They have good roads, no speed limits on the motorways (a powerful love affair with the car ) and consequently very little utility value in GA. Down there you need a good plane and an IR and loads of €€€ on avgas to get somewhere different. Most of the pilots doing serious international flying there are in the €20k+ annual budget range.
Peter wrote:
Otherwise, it’s a bit like saying “I have just been to a fantastic airport, avgas €1/litre”
It would be useful to know where these great clubs are, so others can join in.
I did share this on other threads and indeed it is part of the Balkan trip report from 2014, where I first joined the club (which was recommended to me by a forum member btw).
For any serious distance, I rent from the LSVR Luftsportverein Rietberg in Paderborn EDLP. 7 x Piper Archer III (all IFR with dual GNS 430) for 122 EUR wet + tax, 3 x C172 for 112 EUR wet + tax and 3 x C182RG (2 of which are Turbo for 204 EUR wet + tax, 1 is NA for 184 EUR wet + tax). All of my European tours so far have been with those planes. For local “bimbles” i rent from places nearer to my home at a higher cost per hour, but for longer trips I don’t mind the 1 1/4 hour drive to Paderborn. Several Dutch members as well who come over “all the way” from Holland because there doesn’t seem to be any comparable offer on that side of the Netherlands.
(Writing this from the Festos Palace Ferry in the middle of the Aegean Sea, enroute to Crete, wondering why i have 3G …)
Our Club near Munich has a newish 172 with G1000 for € 140 / hour incl. the fuel (if you pay the annual fee of € 250 for renting club members) among other planes.
These days, they create microcells on ships which then pass the traffic through a satellite link. It shows things like “Cellular@Sea” as network name and is billed in the most expensive zone of every mobile phone subscription.
A few years ago I had a roaming option for worldwide data which didn’t discriminate by zone, and it turned out to be very good deal for these ship networks (Swisscom must have lost money on it). But eventually they figured this out and the option no longer exists in this form.
