PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Advice after finishing training - what do I do next (Merged)
Old 4th Jan 2010, 07:18
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Journey Man
 
Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: UK
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@dawsonj1

I would save money and just do the hours in an aircraft/sim before your renewal. I had two years waiting for my first flying job, so have been through this and here's my advice.

With 200 hours, I challenge anyone to say they could happily jump back into an aircraft and fly well after a long break. At 200 hours, we just don't have the depth of experience to draw from to feel comfortable after a long break. Keep practising your instrument skills on Flight Sim, practice holds, intercepts, etc. Get a decent twin model and put the display on just the instruments. Practice the instrument procedures so that they're second nature (use 8168 to check you're practicing good habits), then you only have to re-adjust to being in an aircraft, which is where most of your concentration will go after such a big lay off. You need to be comfortable to successfully complete an ME/IR especially at unfamiliar airports, and here's where FS can help again. I'm not sure a commercial flight sim will bring you many more benefit than FS - and FS is considerably cheaper. If you have a friend who's in the same boat, get together and one flies, one gives ATC. I know this sounds terrible geeky, but you get out what you put in and a professional attitude can achieve the same result as sitting in a commercial sim with a recently qualified FI. You've done the IR, you know the procedures.

If it's your first renewal you can do a renewal in the sim. I've never been to Bristol, but they seemed very switched on and helpful last time I spoke with them. If it's not an initial renewal, then you need to get up and budget to do one or two hours with an instructor before your test. I'd bunch the hours up into the pre-test period rather than doing an hour here and there. And getting in the air again can help you realise why you're hanging tough for that first job. Helps the sanity no end...!

Good luck with it
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