Not much, but I had over four months to prepare myself. A few things that I could have done better, or would have done differently, or had not expected beforehand:
- I should have brought a book or something else to read on my visit to the US consulate. This whole visit took three hours, of which two hours and 55 minutes were spent waiting.
- I only got the five-book series of Jeremy Pratt. I should have gotten the PPL confuser too. Helps a lot to prepare for the exams.
- I only budgeted for a C-152. But the C-152 went out of production around 1985 or so, so you can calculate what the minimum age of the fleet is right now. So I upgraded to the PA-28, which flew much better, but costs a little more.
- I went end of september, which coincided with the end of a very busy hurricane season (remember Katrina?) in Florida. We have felt the effects of Rita, Stan, Tammy and two unnamed tropical storms, which make the flying interesting in any case, and downright impossible in others. Fortunately I only had one day on which I did not fly at all, and only two or three on which we could not fly the program, but were able to scrape in some hours towards the 45.
- I never realised that I needed an R/T practical exam too, and waited too long to confirm this. Should have done it in the first week. By the time this was sorted out, I found out that the regular R/T examiner had gone on vacation, and the resident R/T examiner-to-be had not gotten his paperwork back from the CAA. In this case I blame the school for bad planning, but in any case I should have started asking about this exam way earlier.
- I left the school (after passing the PPL) on a Saturday afternoon, when the admin staff and the CFI were not there. Because of that, I could not settle my account and there was some other paperwork which could not be finished right there and then. This eventually took over a month to settle via e-mail.
- I had booked a flight with a fixed return date, which could not be changed. Fortunately for me this was partly a business trip and by going through the business travel agent I managed to extend my flight with a day, without additional cost, to make up for the lost day due to the weather.