Flying a JP
When I landed back yesterday, I met up with two guys returning in a JP - a group I've considered joining last year and whilst chatting to them, it made me think some more about joining again.
On the one hand, its great fun to fly, very manouverable, just had a new engine, very cheap to join the group, relatively cheap to fly (£300 / hr @ 250kts) and very, very different from the PA28 I fly now.
On the other hand, its old, its a jet, the systems are much more complex than a PA28, it doesn't have ejection seats, it weighs 3.5 tonnes so landing fees are a relative fortune, can't be flown in IMC (not that you'd particularly want to) and its not really a "going places" aircraft.
When I was chatting to these two, one of the guys I know does about 100hrs a year in it and I believe joined the group when he had sub-100 hours total. He's quite straight up and says that its down to what sort of flying you want to do - hour building and touring or going for a low level blast round the Mach loop every so often etc. The other guy was (not sure if he's on this forum) to be honest, a bit full of himself - more of a "I rather fly this once a month than mess about in a silly 152" kind of person.
I personally don't think that flying a 250kt jet low level once a month for an hour or so is safe - at all! But, interested to know if anyone else has, or has had, a share in anything similar and what their views are of safety, both of the aircraft, hours required and technical knowledge of the aircraft?
I was chatting to a mate (ex RAF multi engine pilot), who said he did a few hours on JP's before going on to complete training on Tucano's. He seems to remember that the RAF required circa 150 hours before letting anyone loose on the JPs / Tucanos but then again, the RAF training is much more intense and repetitive than anything in civvy street (albeit I accept, probably better in the long run).