The first five months of the course is full time ground school. This is run from Monday to Friday from 9am to 5pm. The day consists of 6 lessons with a fifteen minute break each hour. Lunch is from 12.30 to 1.30. Evening study is left up to yourself so it will be up to you to judge the amount of time you want to spend at it. You will find that for the first three months about 2 hours will do but as you get closer to exams you can expect to double that at least. In the final few weeks you will probably increase that even further.
It is important to take a day off each week to recharge the batteries. The phase 1 groundschool guys usually take either a Saturday or Sunday off and usually go out one of these nights in town. Remember the night out down here normally means falling in the gates at 7 or 8 the following morning!! You should make the most of going out in the early stages as the workload does increase the further into the course you go. In phase two when you start flying you will be flying a lot of weekends. The days you get off really will more or less be the days you're instructor has off. Even then, you may have a few solo flights to catch up on when he/she may not be in. It also depends on how many duty hours you have left. There are only a certain amount of hours you can do a day/week.
In terms of money, it depends really how much you want to spend. Everything is much cheaper here than at home so you'll probably find that you only really spend on the nights you are out.
You will get time to use the pool/gym/footie etc The temperatures in the summer are a minimum of 35 degrees plus. You will think you are on holidays the days you are off sitting by the pool roasting in the hot sunshine. You will be well used to the sun when you go home after the course. In saying that you will have work to keep up to date with.
Hope this is of some help. The weather is staring to warm up nicely again so it won't be long before some trips to the beach will be organised again
