Looking for advice. experienced pilots please help

[wnt2fly]

Hey,

Im a 23 yr old aviation enthusiast with a strong passsion for flying. When I was 19 and just finished school I went to the USA and got my PPL in 3 weeks. It was my greatest achievement.

When I came back to ireland I was eager to keep flying, build hours and keep focused until i was ready to do my atpl. Unfortuantely trying to fly at my local flying club was very difficult as everytime i wanted to fly or was booked for a flight it was cancelled due to bad weather or unavailable instructors or aircraft.

As i wasn't flying and didn't have money to go anyware for hourbulding I ended up not flying at all....

The PPL I was so proud of is now not valid and i havent really flown in almost 4 years. I let it go for so long that now although flying is my ultimate aim I feel pretty let down and annoyed that after 4 years my goal is still so far away.

The problem is I dont have funding for an integrated course and now im trying to figure out what i want to fly.. Helicopters or aeroplanes..

Now after ALOT of research dispite which I still dont have all the answers, i do know that im going to go down the modular route. For me flying is flying weather is planes of Helicopters. I need to find out what the demand is for pilots of both H & A and how difficult it is to get work and get through training for each to help me decide.

Also I want to find out if there is anyway to fund pilot training if you dont have any capital to back you up..

Please Help.

[Whirlygig]

Sorry to rain on your parade but if you can't afford an integrated course, you'll struggle to afford a CPL/IR(H) or even CPL/FI(H) unless you plan on taking several years to do it. And the helicopter job market is more dead (if that's possible) than fixed wing unless you have 2,000 hours or more with twin-engine time etc.

Just to give you an idea, an hour in an R22 in the UK is around £270-280 for training and you're looking at £50k just to get a CPL which, in rotary terms is pretty worthless.

However, it shouldn't take you long to renew your PPL(A) and you could go from there.

Cheers

Whirls

[flywithfun]

If you don't have the funds to even fly an occasional hour - sorry - but maybe you have to forget about flying at all!

Since you are still thinking about it, I take it that you do have some kind of regular income from which you can put something aside. Why don't you just do what you did before? Safe some money, go to the US and keep building your license.
After all, a US license never expires! You just have to do a flight review and you are good again.

[Halfwayback]

A little research will show that it is almost impossible for a low hour pilot to get a renumerative job at present - be it helicopters or airplanes.

A similar amount of research through previous posts will show that there is precious little funding from airlines at the moment.

The best advice is to save up and keep hour building until the future looks brighter - and this will be the website where you will find the information first.

I am now locking this thread as most of the questions you pose have been answered time and time again!

HWB