Unfazed,
I take my hat off to you. Really, I do .... and I'm seriously looking at doing similar. I'm just rather stuck at the moment. My work really does take up over 90 hours a week at the moment and has done for the last two years. It should ease soon ... (I bloody hope so as I can't go on like this). However, I'm hoping the NPPL will change things for the better, but we'll see. One thing that being in the position I am in though, is that I appreciate both the sacrifice made by those like yourself, and the difficulties faced by others in similar positions to myself. What gets my hackles up, are the few .... actually, far from few, who are handed their lives on a silver platter but look down on those who struggle. If they take their good fortune with grace then good for them, but when they snub folk with less privaledged upbringings then they are not only bigots, but fools also. I'm rabbling because \I'm one bottle of wine down, but the sentimate i9s true. I'm a firm believer in the idea that someone, anyone with a passion is far far better an example toothers than someone who simply does because they can! My PPL instructors were brilliant. One was a WW2 Lancaster and hurricane pilot, who after leaving the RAF went straight into teaching PPL's to fly Tigermoths with a PPL and instructor rating. Instructors like him and many others I've met, know far more than a 200 hour frozen ATPL could ever dream of knowing .... but they are still just PPL's! If all is well with the way things are now, then how can we have PPL holders who have never heard of the PFA? PPL's who have to ask if landing on grass needs a specific checkout? or PPL's who have never been shown how to side slip! Any fool can churn out idiots who can fly by numbers ... they even got monkeys to fly spacecraft FFS! To really teach people to fly, to impart the LOVE of flight and to get simple pleasures from that perfect landing, that perfectly kicked off drift just as your into wind wheel touches down in a stiff crosswind or the sound of the exhausts ticking as they cool after a rewarding flight .... that takes more than just a bit of paper. That takes passion!
I really do appreciate that by taking the CPL you are proving yourself in an acedemic way, and that's fine. The PPL howver, is not just the stepping stone to a professional career and doesn't need acedemic tutors. What it needs is enthusiasts. Get them enthused about aviation in general and they will stay. That will benefit the professional instructors (with CPL's) as more may decide to go on to try and gain ratings and aspire to professional status themselves ... a bad thing? For goodness sake, we all love to fly don't we?
****1 ... I've had too much to drink, ||I'll regret this post in the morning so don't be surprised to see the edit brush. Night night all.
SS