PPL what now?

[arr]

i passed my ppl a few weeks ago.about to start atpl theory once my paperwork is home! just wondering what tips people have that i can do when hiring a/c to build up hours?what should i do to make my flying time most useful?

[Keygrip]

Standards Document 3

http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/33/SRG_FCL_03_A.PDF

With some additional good stuff in Standards Document 6

http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/33/SRG_FCL_06_A.PDF

[Whopity]

Do an instrument rating rather than waste money burning holes in the sky! Structured training and it will give you 10 hours off the CPL course. A PPL with an IR is more use than a CPL without one!

[Stephen Furner]

What about some recreational aviation? Put some fun into your flying. Explore some of the beautiful British countryside, enjoy some of the nation’s cultural heritage, and experience new places and meet new people. Amuse yourself playing games like collecting unusual place names in your log book – have you flown from Little Snoring to Sleap?
Have you been aerocamping yet; many airfields have campsites nearby or will let you camp under the wing of your aircraft. Pack a tent and just go and explore for a few days. Peranporth’s a great destination for this since there is a campsite just off the end of the runway with showers and other facilities; as well as some very spectacular countryside around it.
Got a decent camera? What about taking some blurry photos of country homes, bridges, crop circles, wind turbines, rivers, and other interesting things you can see from the air to post on facebook.. You might even like to include a few museums that you can fly into such as Duxford. Here you might get some less blurry photos of interesting vintage aircraft and to speak to a few people with similar interests.
This time of year lots of airfields hold open days and fly-ins. Join in and get a cup tea and wedge of cake or a beef burger and see what’s going on. If you had been a Rochester last week you could have see the only surviving example of a Bolton Paul Defiant and spent time chatting to bunch of people with an intimate knowledge of the machine who are enthusiastically trying to preserve it. You could also have found out quite a lot about vintage motor bikes and seen how police sniffer dogs do their stuff.
Whatever you do please but please remember you got your licence so you could get out there and use it to go flying. Please remember that you were not doing it to just build up a folder of licence certificates that you might dust off now and again when you have given up exam chasing and bought a garage extension or decided on a new bathroom suit instead of taking the next rating flight test or revalidation.
There is a lot more to flying and being part of the aviation community than simply chasing the next licence exam. Get out there and find out about it before you become just another brick in the wall with an old expired licence gathering dust in the attic.

[Sky Scratcher]

I know a guy who rented a PA28 in Florida which also came with an instructor who flew around the east coast of America, up as far as New York for his hour building. Really recommended it and really recommended hour building in America! May be worth considering.

[colette]

Sky Scratcher ~ do you know what the name of the school was where your mate hired his a/c?

Cheers