Thanks for that smith, very charming indeed. Right lads, you gotta be in it to win it and if your gonna sit at home and eat baked beans with mummy and daddy then you might as well stop posting on pprune!
I have recenlty done a cost analysis of my hour building and I have looked into a number of different options including leasing an aircraft, buying a share, continuing to fly in my non equity group, buying the hours in block from my local FTO, hour building in spain and hour building in the USA.
Its a difficult choice and I have considered all the factors including travel (fuel costs to drive to the airfield or flight to another country, accommodation, landing fees, membership costs and even the cost of that all elusive cup of coffee during the turn around! total values came surprisingly close all within +-1300. All in all even with an exchange rate of 1.36 USD to the pound America is still cheaper if only just, this is even when you include £500 spending money over a two week period. Hence my tickets are booked and I'm off to build 50 hours in sunny Florida to get to my 100 PIC, I have done all my flying in the UK to date and plan to do the CPL and IR in the UK too!
p.s I'm doing this on annual leave smith so I'm effectively getting paid for the pleasure!