IMC - worth it ?
Do you mind if we get back to the original question for a while....
Having a PPL and realising that you can't go anywhere because of weather - or at least that you will be nervously flying below lowering clouds to stay VMC, some form of IR quickly come into mind
In my book, there is always gonig to be a trade-off, and I am not sure where to put my money and time down.
IMC: "Easy" to get, cost efficient and probably(?) learnes you 95% of what you will ever need in real life as a PPL. But you still can't go anywhere because it is UK only and I can't imaging myself going fo a leasure flight round the flagpole in IMC - I am like to need the IR when going cross country, and that is likely to be across the channel
FAA IR: Probably the next best in my book. Appears to be more targeted towards the PPL pilot than the JAA version. I will however need to (ideally) get a full stand alone FAA PPL, spend time in the states flying and get an N-reg plane (again, I need to be able to cross the channel). It seems counter-intuitive for me to be going for an FAA IR when I am likely to do 99% of my IR flying in Europe and as such need to know how things work here. I have also heard some talk about limiting the ability to operate foreign reg aircrafts permanently in Europe (I believe Denmark has imposed such a rule - probably mostly because they didn't want people to pay their fees to the FAA)
JAA IR: It will be interesting to see what they come up with to make it more FAA-like (not sure why they don't just copy). At the moment it seems to me a bit OTT in terms of what you need to go through to fly a small SEP through a cloud. Part of me feels however that the curriculum might be perceived to be worse than it is. I know piltos with JAA IR who I wouldn't consider to be overly strong academically.
Any advice?