JAFO wrote:@flyingearly - if you wanted to fly Part 21 light aircraft at night/in cloud/overseas, why did you get a microlight NPPL?
Not a dig, just a question.
Perfectly legitimate question - and a few answers in response.
At the time, I didn't really appreciate the difference between NPPL and PPL fully, if I'm completely honest. It sounds so amateurish in hindsight. When I started lessons (2016) I naively thought I would be done by April 2018 and so - at that time - my thinking was 'do the NPPL, see how you get on then you can always 'upgrade' over time, with the advantage that you should have a licence sooner'.
In fact, I think
there's a post from me on these forums back then - under an older username - where I said that I've screwed up and didn't realise the difference. Ominously, I now realised in my 2016 post that I specifically call out worries about not being able to do an IR if I make the wrong choice!
At the time, I didn't really know what sort of flying I wanted to do. It's only now, post-licence, with a share in a microlight, that I realise the limitations of my licence and the potential that additional ratings would offer me.
Also, at the time, cost was a huge factor. I learnt on a C42 at £159 an hour (still relatively expensive, saying that) vs £220+ for a C152 locally and got my licence in 40 hours, vs what would have been many more had I gone down the PPL route.
Also, the key bit here, is that once I realised that I wasn't going to get my licence before 2018, never in a million years did I envisage what a bureaucratic mess this would all turn into and that 4 years later the pathway from NPPL >> PPL would not have been resolved.
I'm in the midst of clearing diaries to try and do my SSEA upgrade in the next couple of months; I think I can at least do that and a Night Rating and then see where things are by the end of the year.