Look guys, I’m planning to join PPL/IR, don’t have a problem with the fee. I was just about to press the pay button for CATS and it occurred to me I should ask before doing so! In other words, reverse the payment order!
I looked at CATS and CAPT for my CBIR theory course.
In the end I chose CAPT because:
i) it’s half the price of the CATS course (£495 vs £900)
ii) ground school was held for 8 hours on a Saturday – no time off work required
iii) the materials are CBIR-specific. I understand that CATS provides you with the full IR theory and tells you which bits to leave out.
I supplemented the CAPT materials with testing on AviationExam and I have achieved high scores in the 5 exams I have already sat. Last two on Monday…
A little bit of IT humour for the new year. I got an email from PPLIR.org telling me that they couldn’t renew my subscription because my card details were wrong. Fair enough, I think all the cards I use regularly have had to be replaced during 2020. So…
Oh well. I’ve not seen a lot of value to PPLIR anyway – unlike EuroGA. So I guess I’ll just spend my £95 on flying instead. I hope their flying skills are better than their IT skills…
I’ve had exactly the same problem with them. Eventually gave up and walked away, metaphorically speaking.
Still get emails from them every so often telling me about the latest magazine…
I’m a member and have been for some years.
I think they do good things mainly for the GA IFR in Europe.
Some people there put a lot of time in for the benefit of the members.
I see good value in my membership.
If I were to face problems with my membership I would contact them.
pmh wrote:
would
If I were to face problems with my membership I would contact them.
I tried. No response so far.
I see good value in my membership.
Of the many forum pages and organisations out there, I find PPL/IR very beneficial and effective.
Like many organisations involved in GA it is run “by amateurs for amateurs”.
It therefore is not perfect; but it is the only organisation I know that fights specifically for IR (or aspiring IR’s) in Europe.
Although it’s membership is small, it punches well above its weight in EASA and elsewhere.
I appreciate its work and efforts and am grateful for what it does on my behalf.
If anyone recognises its deficiencies they should join it and work to improve it; not weaken it by walking away.
Peter_G wrote:
that fights specifically for IR (or aspiring IR’s) in Europe
Can you briefly explain how they do this?
Emir wrote:
Can you briefly explain how they do this?
It has – and still continues to have – access to EASA.
It has a representative who is frequently in Cologne at EASA expressing the views/concerns of GA IR and training.
It is highly respected and involved in many committee/discussions/legislation with the (UK) CAA who transmit their views on to Europe and will continue to do so.
They were higly influential in the creation of the CBIR and have been involved in the improvement/pruning of the Question Bank for IR (as against its over-Commercial emphasis in the past).
It has a representative who is frequently in Cologne at EASA
He’s a great guy but he actually has a full time paid job at EASA nowadays.
I was a member 2005-2015 and left due to some treatment which we would never allow somebody to get here. Much discussed elsewhere here – example. My view is that PPL/IR was great when it was great (I supported it with a lot of time, not to mention a £1000 donation in place of my membership fee) but it got left behind in relevance. It suffered from heavy internal politics (to be fair, involving only a small number of people, but there you go; most volunteer organisations have the same problems… get involved in your local [insert your favourite animal] protection society and you get exactly the same 
) which spilt over to EuroGA at times, with one recent “culmination” being here. Because it is behind a paywall almost nobody participates, compared to what EuroGA achieves with its vast daily audience.
The CBIR was a good one but no one organisation can claim the credit, and ultimately the CBIR suffers from most of the issues which cripple European private IFR compared to the US scene.
By all means give PPL/IR your 100 quid or whatever it is now, but if you want to help European GA go forward then quality participation on EuroGA reaches an audience which is probably 100x bigger, and includes every European CAA, all of EASA and Eurocontrol, etc.
Private forums don’t work; they are private until “some person” pays up and joins and reads all past messages, and then you get huge trouble, and everybody stops posting “interesting stuff” after that, like e.g. their experiences with icing
I don’t enjoy writing this but 2015 left a particularly foul taste in my mouth, and while I was more than happy to forget all about it, we continued to get hassle as detailed above, with one of their most prominent Exec members sitting on the CAA infringements committee! I guess, EuroGA being free to all doesn’t help with collecting the subscriptions…
