Additionally to requirement for 300 NM cross country flight as FFF said, JAR-FCL 1 requires 20 hours of VFR cross-country flight time (including the 300NM route) as PIC before you can apply for a CPL(A) licence.
Originally Posted by fabbe92
When timebuildning for the 150h you need to continue with atpl and cpl (jaa), are there any requirements like Cross Country etc, or can one just fly around and gain the 150 hours?
You could do 150 hours of burning holes in the sky, but is it worth the money? Many people do "hour-building" towards CPL on the cheapest aircraft for rent they can find, but I would disagree with this, since the cheaper the aircraft, lesser the posibility that it would be at least somewhat IFR equipped (or that IFR equipment is serviceable) and then find it difficult to do some attitude flying or intercepting radials on CPL course. I disagree with term hour-building, since you shouldn't be gaining hours, but
skill and
experience, which you can only get by doing all sorts of flying (circuits, zones, cross-country flights, etc.). For example, if you didn't get too comfortable with radio navigation during you PPL training - why don't use 100 hours or so before commencing CPL course to practice navigation using VORs and NDBs, flying simulated instrument approaches (under the hood), etc.? You haven't got much crosswind practice? No problem, get an instructor and go flying on the day everybody rather have a beer than go flying
You always flew for maximum 2 hours with fuel to spare? Plan a route where you will fly the aircraft to its published range (with reserves), but be careful to observe
actual fuel consumption on few previou flights. Have you always flown up to 6000ft and not above? Why wouldn't you take your aircraft to its published service ceiling or above, if situations permits?
I kind of have to disagree with the advice regarding GPS. I think it is important to know how to use GPS in every way you can - but by that I'm not suggesting you fly as some PPLs do: direct WPT1, arrive at WPT1, direct WPT2, arrive at WPT2, direct WPT3, ... All you will learn from this is how to enter characters into GPS, press direct-to button and visually follow the magenta line - basically, in 100 hours you will learn what an average 5 year-old can learn in 10 minutes. If you have a GPS in your aircraft, try creating a flight plan, saving it into memory, reversing the route, adding new waypoints in flight in the middle of existing flight plan, calculating current wind, etc.? If you have CDI connected to your GPS or a GPS has one displayed, you can enter a flightplan in the GPS and fly it as accurately as you can - and it's not as easy as it may seem at first. Besides, you can do some sort of "advanced DR" with GPS; even the most basic GPS gives you two parameters: track and GS (groundspeed). This can be used in the same way as dead reckoning, just that instead of calculated heading (which depends on the wind) on the DI, you fly the (true or magnetic, it depends on GPS settings) track displayed on the GPS. GPS also calculates your GS, so if you have measured distance between waypoints you can mentally calculate your current ETA to next two or three waypoints. Not as easy as flying magenta track, is it?
Lots of options, but in the end remember - flying and learning to fly should be fun!