PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Fly in Spain Jerez - personal review PPL training
Old 12th Jan 2017, 08:45
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BobD
 
Join Date: Dec 2010
Location: Sheffield
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Rachel, you may think that 2+ hours a day flight training is not much, but believe me, in a high stress situation such as aviation training, it is mentally very tiring. Put this together with the study time you would need for your exams, you will be amazed at how draining this can be. You are also assuming that you will have flying weather every day, and this certainly isn't guaranteed. The USA flight school I attended did claim to have one student complete the PPL in three weeks. I decided to do an extra week, and I'm glad I did, as I only just managed to complete my check flight the day before I left.


I speak from experience, as someone who went to Florida to do my PPL. However, I did 5 hours training in the UK before I left, and I also completed about 75% of the exams beforehand (something I would recommend as almost essential). You should also consider additional training back in the UK, once you get your PPL (as I did), as you should consider the piece of paper as a license to continue learning as I am sure you will. The thing you miss out on with an intensive course is the incidental experiences you collect along the way of a more traditional approach of learning over months/years. You have to collect these after your PPL, rather than during, but they should not be under estimated (hence the continuation training or hour building flying I recommend)


Having said that, it is great fun to do an intensive training course away from home, a real adventure. I loved every minute of it, and consider it one of the great experiences of my life. I would thoroughly recommend it, as long as you go into it with your eyes open, and accept it for what it is. I did it this way as I couldn't afford to give my weekends up over months/years, and did it abroad so I would have a better chance of favourable weather in the short time available, than I would have in the UK.


I did a blog of my training, mainly for my family at home, but you might find some of it interesting and relevant to what you should expect.


Florida Blog
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