Hello Guys
The modular route is completely valid. However, all to often wannabees set off down this route, do a PPL (sometimes of dubious quality) and then without guidance go off at a tangent. It is not that they lack ability, or intelligence, it is that they lack the experience to know what is good and what is bad practice, and unwittingly develop poor habits that can be difficult and expensive to irradiate when they get involved in formal training later on.
Prophead, I'm sorry, my comments in my last post were 'tongue in cheek'; I'll try and be a bit less ironical as sarcasm too often gets lost or misinterpreted on a forum like this. You are right in saying that, other than the PPL, the 150 hours required before commencing a modular CPL course are not training. However, those who do not do any training with the hours at their disposal are severely disadvantaged compared to those who do.
As for the value of this time in developing command skills, for those who plan to or by default end up operating professionally in a single-pilot GA role the experience of coping in at the deep-end without help may be of benefit. It is arguable whether it is of more benefit than supervised training (much of which has to be done as PIC as well to log the required PIC time).
You are right in that we are unlikely to agree on this one; my opinion, for what it is worth, is based on training and examining probably literally hundreds of student pilots who have gone down this route and then struggle when they are required to come up to speed for the CPL or IR, whichever they choose to do first. I am not alone in this; I'd say the majority of instructors working in commercial FTOs teaching modular students would agree that the majority of students arrive poorly prepared as a result of their 'experience'.
In your post yesterday you said "i am giving advice to someone who has yet to start hour building so they can avoid making the same mistakes as others."
So am I. I'm not suggesting avoiding the modular route, what I am suggesting is that if anyone does go down that route, avoid the mistake made by the majority by inadvertently squandering their hours building.
But I've banged on about this enough; anyone would think I'm an old man by the way I keep repeating myself. Oh, I am
