i did my CPL in minimums however went a few over my IR. another friend of mine went well over hours in his CPL but did his IR in minimums
That wasn't his fault he went over on the CPL though
The landing fees at SFC are free, providing you're a member of the club. Those prices are all the landing fees I accounted for which were AWAY from the club itself, but again they were taken straight from SFC's brochure. That's why I asked others if they could help me in my prices; just in case I was wrong! So far my calculations have showed me that I need to account more for landing fees, for licence issues and exams. Woop
Hour building is one of the best parts of training, getting out and about and seeing bits of the country you probably wouldn't normally visit. You can just go fly around and land back at Stapleford, but that takes away half the fun of it and alot of learning too - you will learn alot going to new places, with different procedures and landing at different strips of various shapes and sizes. It's also nice to have a varied collection in the log book so potential employers can see that you are comfortable with x-country flying. Technically you could do all your hour building in the circuit, but then you wouldn't learn anything doing that either.
A good tip is to buy Pilot magazine and Go Flying magazine, and use the free landing vouchers. It will cost you about £8/month for both (but you can look at them first to see where the vouchers are for before you buy) and even if you only use 1 voucher, that will have saved you a £10-15 landing fee and covered the cost of buying the magazines.
Another thing that caught me out was refuelling away from base. Fuel is included in the cost of the a/c hire but when you refuel away from base, you have to stump up the cost out of your own pocket, and then SFC deduct that cost from the cost of your a/c hire. It can be quite a substantial amount too. Towards the end of my hour building, I just used to plan trips so I could get out and back to EGSG so I could refuel there without having to pay out of my own pocket.
