This week’s post tackles something a little bit different and is aimed towards everybody from budding pilots to those already qualified. In the recent autumn edition of Rotor Torque (a quarterly publication produced by The Helicopter Club of Great Britain), an article called ‘Back to School’ was published - discussing the CAA’s plans to tackle…

For most student pilots the choice of training helicopter is limited to a few common ones - namely Robinson. Occasionally an Enstrom or a S300 may be offered but in general the R22 and R44 have the training market covered. Until it would seem, the Cabri G2 came along. The Guimbal Cabri G2 is a…

So far we have discussed a lot of the opportunities available after gaining your PPL, including career vs hobby, type conversions and Self Fly Hire. In this post I will be taking a look at the pathway to many of these options – hour building. Building your hours is a great way to increase your…

Having most likely completed your training for PPL in just one aircraft, you may be looking for your next challenge or to add to your repertoire. If this is the case then you might want to think about doing a type conversion. Under European Rules, there is a requirement to be rated on an aircraft…

In my one of my previous posts I talked about life after PPL and looked at flying for fun after you have your licence. A great way to do this is through Self Fly Hire (or SFH for short) – Renting an aircraft and flying either on your own or with friends and family. This…

At this time of the year when everyone is going back to school or university, we thought it would be a good time to tackle the question of PPL(H) Vs University. If you’re about to finish Sixth Form this year then you could be reaching a defining moment - apply for a degree course with…

Whether you have always known what you want from your license or whether it takes you until you are a fully qualified pilot and holding that well deserved piece of paper in your hands, life after your PPL can take you down different paths. The two big choices I want to focus on in this…

Once you have all the required experience, have passed the theoretical exams, (as well as the radiotelephony test) and your flying is up to a good proficiency, the final hurdle is passing a Skills Test with an Examiner. The aim of test is for you to demonstrate that you can act competently as Pilot in…

As I talked about last week in my post about QXC, it is important to have a good knowledge of emergency procedures. As pilots we spend lots of our time practicing these, so I wanted therefore to dedicate a whole post to them and review some of the key points - starting with where they…

In my previous post – ‘A to B and back again – Learning how to Navigate’ – I talked about working your way up from your first solo to your first nav flight. By this point if you’re following along with the progress we’re making, you will have done a couple of these types of…