ATC IssuesA place where pilots may enter the 'lions den' that is Air Traffic Control in complete safety and find out the answers to all those obscure topics which you always wanted to know the answer to but were afraid to ask.
I don't know too many half decent areas - most areas are extremely decent (or indecent depending on your standards)!
Seriously - like everywhere else there are all degrees of area. Depends on your lifestyle I suppose. Do you want good education facilities (private and state) from primary to university level, quiet living, city living, sports facilities, parks, stately homes, shopping, sailing, night life, easy access to the road south , flying clubs?
Its all available within comfortable driving distance of NSC.
Ah yes, Prestwick 1968. Mrs Devine's boarding house, pubs closed at 10 o'clock, eating chips on a park bench in March with the fat congealing on one's lips, the Oceanic Centre (a wartime hut) which lived up to its name by leaking when it rained - one of the watch supervisor's jobs was to place a number of buckets in strategic places. I could go on, things must have got better ...
I would disagree about Ayr. I am Prestwick based with Ryanair and was intent on living in Troon or Prestwick initially. We then found our perfect house at a price we could afford in Ayr and are very happy here despite initial skepticism. The town centre is improving all the time, the beach is nice. There are lots of excellent restaurants, a cinema and beautiful walks along the river or the front. There is also a lot of excellent housing stock for all budgets. I won't be moving from here unless I really have to. Feel free to PM me for any further info.
I am an ATCO and have been living in Troon for 19 years.
There are plenty of decent places to live within a 30 minute drive from Prestwick, both established properties and some new developments.
Kilmarnock has some very nice new homes being built on the western outskirts, have a look at the Robertson Homes (also in Ayr), Charles Church and Persimmon websites.
For ATCOs and Pilots, there should be something to suit your budget and currently house prices are pretty much stable up here.
Places that are nice: 1. Prestwick 2. Alloway 3. Doonfoot 4. Troon 5. Symington(some parts) 6. Basically most of South Ayrshire apart from a few ahem 'rural areas' 7. Newton Mearns(25 mins away) 8. Eaglesham(25 mins away)
Places not so nice 1. East Ayrshire 2. North Ayrshire 3. Paisley
Also if anybody suggests to you the towns of Irvine, Kilwinning, Saltcoats, Addrossan, Cumnock, Drongan and last but certainly not least the hell hole that is Kilmarnock, decline and then kill the person who suggested it to you.
I do have a strong bias for South Ayrshire having lived in Prestwick for nearly all of my 26 years, although living in deepest darkest Surrey this last year has probably given me rose tinted spectacles of the place
It might sound strange, but anyone knows any gliding clubs in the vicinity. I went through the BGA site and the closest are north of edinburgh or in Dalbeattie. I'm an italian ATCO, and I applied for vacancies at NATS and I'll undergo the interview this weekend. The gliding facilities is obviously not a factor, but I sure would hate myself wasting my GPL and PPL. Thanks
Alloway is nice as is Troon. Avoid the rural towns, look on the map, but anything like Cumnock, Auckinleck, New Cumnock, Dalrymple, Catrine, Mauchline Patna, Kilmarnock etc, the houses there are cheap for a reason, they eat their babies in these places. Most of these towns are twinned with places like the Gaza Strip, Beirut, Baghdad, Chechnya etc. Avoid them like the plague, pay more for alloway or Troon, it is much better and safer.
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