Seeking cheaper GA flying - Where to go from here?
Firstly, please note that I say 'cheaper', not 'cheap' - I don't want to be branded as someone wanting to take risks with bad reputation flying schools and/or shoddy aircraft!
The situation is this: Having gained my PPL about a year ago, I had a CPL in mind and being young/blasé about the money involved, very quickly joined a local non-equity Cessna 172 group to begin building my hours. I'm now up to 120 hours, the C172 has been brilliant fun, and at £60 a month + £100 an hour (wet) it was affordable at the time. However, I've had a slight change of heart regarding the CPL, have got myself a new career on track and have instead started considering flying as more of a long term hobby as opposed to a career.
It's dawned on me recently that I very rarely carry more than 1 pax (leaving the rear seats redundant most of the time) and now that I'm not 'hour building' for the sake of it, the financial side of things is starting to become a much greater consideration. I'm saving for a house, and with this in mind I might only be able to afford 2 hours flying a month in the C172, which hardly seems worth it! I really don't want to allow my PPL to lapse because of feeling that it's no longer worth it, and especially don't want to get out-of-practice and rusty.
I'm therefore looking at potential ways to fly something cheaper and smaller, spending the same amount of money each month as I do now but getting more flying hours out of it in total. Despite working in the industry I'm afraid I have to admit that I'm fairly ignorant when it comes to the various categories of aircraft out there (ie. BMAA/LAA, permit/non-permit aircraft, etc). I guess I've never needed to know and have never asked the questions until now!
So here are the main questions:
- Can someone help me distinguish between all the various categories/options of flying and aircraft that are available to me? I don't mind reading through a few website links if someone else has already asked the same questions.
- Ideally I'd prefer to fly an aircraft that allows me to log the SEP hours, keeping my PPL current. I assume that this rules out any microlights? What are the smallest types of aircraft that would allow me to log SEP hours? From what I gather, non-permit aircraft will always be cheaper than a full CofA aircraft, but as of yet I don't really understand where the boundaries lie for all these various categories.
- Finally, how can I get the ball rolling, where do I start looking? I don't have huge amounts of cash saved and so doubt I could afford to buy an actual share in an aircraft. Ideally for me I'd join another non-equity group - do such groups exist for smaller aircraft than your average C172/PA28? I'm based in the Essex area, my 3 most local airfields are North Weald, Stapleford and Andrewsfield.
Any help/pointers will be greatly appreciated!