My kids are still young and I have a wife that doesn’t like to fly with me, so I cannot leave home base for extended periods. Buying is also in my plans, in the very near future, but it will be a TMG which can only be flown VFR. My plan for the next few years (until retirement) is to glide with the TMG on Sunday during the soaring season. Off gliding season I will focus on the PPL ratings and now and then use the TMG as a plane.
etn wrote:
2) buying a small aircraft, fly to my heart’s content as a PPL
This is what I would do too 😀
Sidestepping the question, why not collect licences instead? Get a foreign-based FAA 61.75, or CASA PPL, and go fly around the USA or Australia. Both are admin plus flight with instructor (i.e. no exams) and non-expiring. It won’t build a career, but will be an experience and a lot of fun.
The main goal is to have fun and continue having objectives. If I set a goal of collecting ratings I will always have a reason to fly more :D
Career 2.0 is just a back up plan. The main plan is to retire and just focus on my many hobbies. But if I get bored of not working, I thought that I could make some money out of one of my hobbies, and this is the “easiest” to monetize.
Is it practically possible to sit the CPL exams without doing the mandatory assignments etc?
I could not do that here for the IR. The FTO wanted 1k+ for classroom time and mandatory purchase of ring binders before allowing me to sit the exams.
maxbc wrote:
I went through this question myself, and deemed the best way to go about things is to 1) become an excellent private pilot, bring friends and family along in trips and 2) own a good plane and decrease costs by increasing expertise – learn maintenance, search for good to own aircraft models, know insurance markets etc… instead of searching for people who would pay you to fly.
This was my approach also. Due to a fortunate turn of events (related to an M&A of my former company) I found myself, aged 45, having sufficient cash for either:
1) paying for professional pilot training, then try my luck as co-pilot “somewhere” for certainly low money. Not really an option to sustain a family (my son was born the same year), and I was still far out of the 1500(?) hours required for an ATPL.
or 2) buying a small aircraft, fly to my heart’s content as a PPL, and stay in my current career path – which I enjoy and pays sufficiently well to entertain a small, not complex aircraft such as the 253. Anything “larger” would probably be out of my budget but the 253 does everything I want an aircraft to do.
As @JFonseca I am sometimes toying with the idea of collecting further ratings, but just for the purpose of “upping my game”, not really considering career 2.0 at this time. But there is really no right or wrong here. There are so many variables in play that each situation is unique. @JFonseca I wish you luck and fun in your endeavours, and if a new career in aviation turns out to be a possibility, you will surely enjoy it.
Peter wrote:
You need just the CPL exams, not the CPL itself, to teach the PPL.
As Peter says, just the exams. Not even a CPL TK course is required.
You need just the CPL exams, not the CPL itself, to teach the PPL.
The UK grandfathered all the old PPL-FIs many years ago into what became the “BCPL”. Also the UK had some scheme whereby a CPL came automatically with the IMC Rating; one old FI I used to fly with said to me he could teach the IMCR without ever having any instrument flying instruction, even though his “CPL” was grandfathered via the BCPL route. There have been many open doors like this in GA; they nearly always got shut down, by JAA and later by EASA.
Under EASA (and I think UK hasn’t changed) a new FI now needs at least the CPL exams done at the respective CAA to instruct PPL. Without that, one can only instruct LAPL. At least in Germany there are many older FIs without CPL whose privileges to teach PPL have been grandfathered.
I haven’t been part of the gliding/sailplane (USA parlance) community, but some airlines value the experience. Team building, energy management, airmanship, and at a certain level the hours count towards CPL.
I understood that an FI without a CPL can teach PPL these days?
If you want to become FI, you will need CPL first or you will be limited to teaching for LAPL. And for what you would like to do in the future, IR and MEP will be required, as Peter said.
This is the sequence I followed (which doesn’t mean it’s the best one, but it worked well for me):
1. PPL
2. Start ATPL Theory. It is a big one, but you do only one theory cycle that covers every flight training you will go through, instead of IR theory and CPL theory. Also, you can do it while you are training for IR, which is a long one.
3. Night qualification (really liked that one!)
4. MEP
5. IR-SE
6. IR-ME. That is a quick add-on to the IR-SE, and it’s cheaper than training only IR-ME (that would cover also IR-SE) from the beginning. You will have to do 2 exams though, but for me it was no big deal and also used that exam to revalidate my MEP)
7. CPL. As you can read on many other threads on this forum, the EASA CPL flight training is a sort of “more accurate PPL”, and a lot of focus goes on emergencies and captainship. After the IR your handling should already be within the tolerances of a CPL.
8. A-UPRT
I did all of that with a full time job, so it took the time it took (I could do flight training mainly in the weekends). The nice part is that you keep learning new stuff!
On the ATPL theory, it took about 1 year of self study and tests every evening, and after that I needed a bit of time to adapt to the new reality of having free time before going to sleep :) In other words, you have to like it or to be quite motivated.
You can also add some fun with the various SEP differences trainings (Tailwheel, Retractable gear, Variable Pitch propeller, etc).
Happy training and enjoy the journey!
