Originally Posted by
rudestuff
Yup, you couldn't be more wrong I'm afraid. Sure your plan works but you'll spend £10k more than you need to. If you hour build first then do a CPL & IR course you'll be doing a lot of Sim flying - none of which counts towards your CPL. You'll typically fly 30 hours FNPT2 and a minimum of 15 hours multi for your MEIR. If you get your IRR and SEIR it all counts as hour building too, which means your IR costs what the instructor costs (and the airplane is effectively free since you have to fly those hours anyway). Plus the SEIR to MEIR conversion is only 5 hours rather than 15.
First off, thanks for your help across this forum, advice is short to come by especially that which is aimed at reducing the cost of training!
I've heard from a couple of friends that the issue they had with the IR(R) to CBIR route was that the were unable to do it in the minimum amount of hours - ending up costing same / more than a standard MEIR / SEIR. Now of course this is of their own doing and should have invested more time in IFR hour building. My question being did you find with adequate preparation you were able to do the CBIR in min hours and how many hours had you built up under IFR at that point?
Second question, unrelated to the thread and slightly hijacking, any suggestions for places for hour building? One issue I'm having with the IR(R) CBIR route is I can't exercise the IR privileges outside of the UK meaning I'm stuck at £137/hr wet (blackbushe 50hr package), I know there's aircraft shares etc but they're pretty hard to come by in the south and not always a fan of hour builders. I've heard of going out to the States to log IFR time there, if you could elaborate on this I would be super grateful. Appreciate this is probably sounding like a broken record now so any help would be amazing. Thanks.