Hi Gents and Ladies,
If it helps at all I learned to fly curtosy of the Queen in exchange for a few years of my life. I now help new people to learn the trade on the NS and it never fails to impress me the amount of dedication and hard work self improvers put into their chosen career.
I have posted a few jokes on this forum about civvies versus mil but the truth is the modern civvy helio pilot generally brings a wealth of life experience to the job and just reading your tales of woe you all seem to be good graduates from the university of hard knocks.
Its very dissapointing that in our industry, apart from Bond, nobody seems willing to offer sponsered training any more.
I often sit next to a new start who on paper earns a damn good starting salary, but when you listent of extent of finance they have taken to get started out they all seem to just about survive month to month paying their loans and the usually massive accomodation rents just to live and work near to the oil industry.
For Miss Whirlygig, my hat is off to you. Sorry to here about your dad, that's a tough break.
Keep pressing on as the good news up here is that age never seems to be a barrier (young or mature) to breaking through to that first steady job on the NS.
Good luck to you all!!!!