Ewe Turn, hopping on a plane to fly to NZ is no small thing, and there's no way I'll do that until I have some sense of the lay of the land, and have at least narrowed down my options. I take your point though, and it's not a bad idea to visit more than one potential training outfit before making a commitment. The flipside to turning up on spec is illustrated by a response I've had from one Australian outfit who told me they were up to their eyeballs in work until May, so I'd be afraid to 'just turn up' at some of these places with no idea. As for the BHH thing - hindsight proves you dead right on the upfront payment. But I was given a very good rate on the 500, and decided to deposit it to secure the deal. They looked like a big, successful outfit with a lot of machines and collective (no pun intended) experience. Whoops. I'm focused on getting as much time in the 500 as possible purely because it's what I want to fly. No point getting proficient in a 300 or a 22 if I'll never sit in one again, beyond the benefits of learning to handle different machines and getting used to varied handling characteristics. It's a point I'll take my future instructor's advice on. If he/she feels there's a clear-cut benefit to coming out of a training programme with 50 hours on a 300 and 20 on a 500 instead of just doing 70 in a 500, then I'm all ears. If you're going single-seater racing, there's only so much to be learned behind the wheel of a saloon - or vice versa. I'm sure there's a balance to be struck somewhere. On the holiday front - buddy, spending 3 months doing nothing other than flying and studying sounds like a holiday to me right now. A day at the beach or in the mountains would just be the cherry on the cake.
Scissorlink - I've read good things about Harvey here. Have you an up to date email address/number/contact details?