I went through all of that guff and made neither head nor tale of it. I just went for the full fat milk JAR PPL. You get an hour knocked off your minimum hours required for every ten hours P1 gliding you have up to a max of ten hours knocked off (100 hours gliding). I've got about 33 hours now and am ready for my skills test (just got to find an examiner that can be off at the same time as me but that's another story.......). TBH I'm glad I did it that way around as I don't think that a ten hour conversion would have been enough.
The actual flying is easier than poling a glider around, landings are a lot easier, PFL's are a doddle as are glide circuits as you can imagine. It's the other stuff, nav for instance is done differently, you don't draw some lines on a map and then not look at it again, you actually have to know where you are going which I found a bit novel and just talking to ATC with some degree of confidence takes a while. It's not difficult to learn, it just takes practise and I don't think ten hours is enough. You want to do it in a reasonable time scale as well, it's taken me three months so far but I reckon I must have had around half my lessons scrubbed due to weather etc. So if you think 'Yeah I'll give myself three months' then double it to six. I thought I would have it all done and dusted in 8 weeks or so but it doesn't work like that.
You don't need a class 1 medical by the way, you need a class 2. Don't know what the eyesight difference is but I wear specs and didn't have a problem with it.
Last edited by thing; 10th June 2011 at 16:38.