Where to start?

[Rob P]

.... it would take 90 weeks to get my PPL....can't do it I'm afraid, want to qualify sooner than that!

Just a little word of caution here.

Every second of your training is part of your flying life.

Don't be eager to 'get it out of the way' and get on to 'real flying'. The part you are doing now, those forty or fifty or sixty hours of the PPL course will live with you through the rest of your flying life as some of the best hours of flying and learning you will ever experience.

You'll be flying solo from 15-20 hours, the ONLY real difference getting your licence confers is the opportunity to terrify/impress friends and loved ones.

Enjoy every moment - don't rush it.

Rob P

[ROG]

Pity you didn"t try Andrewsfield to compare--however...
Good advice from Robp----unless there"s some urgent reason to qualify, take your time--spend some time at the club chatting to other studes/PPLs. Absorb tips/general knowledge.
There"s no substitute for experience--if you get offers to "have a ride" in the back, you"ll learn a lot.
Any way--best of luck-we"ve all been there.

[charlie crocodile]

I think I should qualify my comment about wanting to qualify quickly.

My original plan was to take a lesson every two weeks at best, so assuming no cancellations due to weather or personal commitments it would take an minimum of 20.6 months to fly the 45 hours, and that's with the huge assumption that I pass with 45 hours.

I simply want to bring the lessons closer together so I keep skills/information learned in the last lesson reasonably fresh. Knowing myself as I do, I'll only find an excuse to not read the books if there's a two week gap

[ROG]

Charlie--from my experience suggest book every week-cos there will be a fair number of no-gos--weather, drunk instructor from night out before,, plane u/s. plane not come back from trip etc. Again many aircraft at club ??
Took me around a year--which i beleive is about average.
In winter with current weather you"ll probably get a few cancellations so use time to do some reading.Expect you"ll do more hours near to qualifying.

[Rob P]

My plan was two lessons in a single weekend, then a two weekend 'break' then book another two.

I found having the two consecutive lessons in a weekend very beneficial when they happened - Fly, make mistakes, go home and think it through, fly again, try not to repeat mistakes. And when one didn't happen because of the weather the other generally did.

Took me about 16-17 months overall to qualify.

Rob P

[Pete S]

You'll find that once you get onto navigating cross country flights you will need to book 'double' slots and your flight/PuT time will be well over one hour per flight.

While I take Rob P's point of not being in a rush, a long drawn out training programme inevitably, because of inevitable weather/tech cancellations, leads to a spot of 'three steps forward -one step back' in your training.

This can lead , through the need to repeat/brush up stuff before going on to the next step, to additional expense.

Of course expense may be no problem to you, in which case feel free to disregard my post.

I had planned to do my PPL over two years, but when I got the bit between my teeth, a combination of a fantastic instructor (with whom I did over 95% of my training) and an incredibly mild winter fired me up so much that I polished it off in six months.

Yes, I enjoyed the training very much, especially as we sought out edge-of-the syllabus stuff like spins, flying in IMC cloud and snow showers-(not in the syllabus way back then) and going off to hunt for icing as a demo.

But it's been much more pleasurable since the PPL and I've never regretted deviating from my 2 year plan.

Peter

[charlie crocodile]

Lesson 3

Just completed lesson 3 this morning, weather was bit messy this time round. Couldbase at around 1000' and rather cold, just hovering around freezing.

Today it was my turn to complete the pre-flight checks and it was also the first flight of the day so spent 20mins doing the walk round checking everything was in good order. The engine understandably took a few attempts to get going but once it did all was well.
My taxying seems to have improved this time round which is great news, slowly getting the hang of it. I completed the power checks before turning onto the runway.....again slowly getting the hang of it! So off we go takeoff is uneventful and we head into and above the cloud. I get control and it's time to trim and turn to various point on the DI which I manage with success, go through the FREDA checks myself a few times...all good.
Starting to notice landmarks a lot easier too, even through the odd break in the cloud here and there, completed another pass of my house! One thing I seem to have overcome is the apprehension of encountering other aircraft whilst in the air as this seemed to be quite stressful in the trial flight.

Approaching the circuit was good, I managed to remember the various parts - crosswind, downwind, approach & final.

In summary, a very good lesson and seem to be making progress. Managed to get a cheap headset from Ebay but wasn't delivered in time for today's lesson.

Oh, and manage to leave my logbook at home

[Paul_Sengupta]

Approaching the circuit was good, I managed to remember the various parts - crosswind, downwind, approach & final.

Crosswind, downwind, base, final...

[charlie crocodile]

Approaching the circuit was good, I managed to remember the various parts - crosswind, downwind, approach & final.

Crosswind, downwind, base, final...

I got it correct at the time.....I think!

[leiafee]

While I take Rob P's point of not being in a rush, a long drawn out training programme inevitably, because of inevitable weather/tech cancellations, leads to a spot of 'three steps forward -one step back' in your training.

Moe likely maybe - but I'd strongly argue against inevitable. I did my test after in 47 hours 50 minutes so my "long drawn out training" (2.5 years!) only "cost" me just under an extra 3 hours, (plus one resat theory exam which had gone outside the time limit!) and arguably since I'm no ace it'd have taken me that anyway.

There are things you can do between lessons to keep too much of that "fade" from happening. From learning procedural stuff like checklist and radio calls by heart, to sitting with your eyes shut visualling your way around the exercises, to making notes on the bit you didn't do so well and working out what you should be doing instead.

The only bit I did find it critical to fly more frequently was approaching first solo - looking for that consistency in the landings. And I overcame that by having a nice flexible school that let me do half hour slots more frequently than hour slots spaced out more.

[charlie crocodile]

4th lesson was cancelled today due to poor weather, I was really looking forward to it too, got a new headset, new bag for my stuff....not quite 'all the gear, no idea' but not far off

[weirdfish]

Yeh sorry I booked this weeks bad weather cancellation on a national level

[Pete S]

Welcome to the world of inevitable weather cancellations...........

[charlie crocodile]

Managed to get a cheeky lesson in today, woke up to a beautiful morning so made the call to my FI.

This was my first lesson with my new headset which was surprisingly good, it's not noise cancelling but for £89 what do you expect?! I also managed to set my phone to record the track with Motion X (see the link) http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d38/buttino/Capture-1_zpsb1108904.jpg

The lesson was mainly a recap on the effects and secondary effects of controls & straight level flight. New stuff today was the spiral dive/descent and its subsequent recovery which I thought was great fun, along with effects of flaps. Taxying was vastly improved this time, just needs polishing up a bit mainly to keep centre rather than left.

So seem to be progressing well, next lesson will be starting on the radio so I've been given a script to practice from.

If anyone wants a copy of the track it's here - https://www.dropbox.com/s/o0ze610edbgiuya/Track%20001.gpx import into Google Earth, set the elevation to absolute otherwise it won't display correctly.

All in all, a great lesson. Felt quite mentally tired after this lesson!

[charlie crocodile]

Lesson 5

Bit of classroom work this time, learning about climbing, level flight and then descending.

Went out to do the usual checks to find out the aircraft was a slightly different variant 120T instead of the HR200. This has additional radios, digital readouts for temps & pressures, and strobes in different places! Was a bit confused at first but got there in the end.

It was my turn today to try the radio which went quite well, the only bad bit I can say is that after writing down the details for pressure and circuit I had a mental block and couldn't recall what the controller said, one of things that comes with time I imagine, I was concentrating so hard on getting the terminology correct.

Taxying today was a huge improvement with the aircraft doing down the yellow line most of the time. Next came the surprise of the day - my first take off!

So after asking my FI to repeat himself as I thought he said "you can take off" (turns out he did) we went down the runway with a huge grin on my face, I had a few hairy moments when I drifted off the centreline and forgot to put on a bit of back pressure, mainly because I wasn't expecting to do a take off, managed to recover and up we went. Although in those couple of minutes I became quite stressed mainly because I simply wasn't fully prepared mentally of what to expect being in control during takeoff, but in for a penny in for a pound I'm here to learn so might as well get on with it!

The rest of the lesson was climbing, descending & straight level flight and using rudder during the manoeuvres with PAT & APT, things are starting to click now with getting the trim right, correct attitude, also starting to 'feel' the engine revs too. Landmarks are also becoming familiar.

Headed back and I did the circuit turns all the way into final, FI took over for the landing and I completed the taxing down the runway and onto parking and then most peculiar thing happened.....a 747 showed up at 3000' above the circuit heading into Stansted, nice of him to let us know he was there! I assume it was a rare event as everyone was talking about it.

Booked my medical today for the 13th which pleased my FI, assume that a solo is coming up in the next month or so

GPS track is here - https://www.dropbox.com/s/4ue6dwnbjou66 ... %20002.gpx

Today was a good day!