Finishing PPL at Duxford

[vegancruiser]

Hi everyone

I will soon be moving from Cornwall to Cambridgeshire (Ely), where I hope to complete my PPL course. In Cornwall (Cornwall Flying Club, Bodmin) I was at the stage where I was about ready for the Qualifying Cross Country Flight, prior to taking the skills test.

My question is, can anyone with relevant knowledge recommend a flying club in the Cambridge area where I could complete my training? My training in Cornwall was on the Cessna 152 and I'm wondering if Duxford would be the best option available to me.

[piperarcher]

Someone can correct me if I am wrong, but I dont believe Duxford has a flying school. They do 'trial lessons' in a few historic aircraft, but not lessons. There is however Fowlmere airfiled which sits just on the outskirts of the Duxford zone, and they have some very nice machines there (Archer III's I recall, rather than Cessna's, but a quality outfit. Or there is Cambridge's own flying school, or Bourn airfield a bit further North. A bit further west you have Henlow flying school which is based on an RAF site but has a civillian flying school.

[Genghis the Engineer]

Cranfield (Billins, Azure or CFS) or Peterborough Connington are your best bet I think.

I wouldn't worry too much about the type - whilst some of those have C152s, go with the best school and get used to a different aeroplane.

G

[Raiz]

This is my local patch, so here are a few pointers:

Fowlmere ModernAir (http://home.btconnect.com/modair/) only does post PPL training these days but they do have some really nice rental aircraft.

Bourn http://www.rfcbourn.co.uk (http://www.rfcbourn.co.uk/) has 2 or 3 Cessna 152 aircraft in their training fleet but I've not flown them.

Cambridge Airport would be the closest to Ely. There you have Cambridge Aero Club (http://www.cambridgeaeroclub.com/) (the club run by the airport owners), who have a nice fleet of 172s and Mid-Anglia School of Flying (http://www.masfcambridge.com) but they use Piper Warriors and Archers.

I'd drop in an see each of them and see where you feel comfotable. Good luck with your choice.

Raiz

[VictorGolf]

It is possible to complete your PPL at Duxford and better still on Cessna 150/172s. Contact Classic Wings (who indeed do experience flights in the Harvard) on 01255-424671 and they will fill you in on the details. It's always good fun having to give way to the "Spitfire on short final". That doesn't happen everywhere.

[Ds3]

My stomping ground too so will share my views. Disclaimer is that I haven't looked at prices for a year or two so could be wrong, it has been known!

Duxford - great airfield to fly from, lots to see and do for sure. If price isn't an issue then it gets my vote, but probably a bit more expensive than some.

Cambridge - good to get experience at an airfield with full ATC but probably the most expensive of them all.

Bourn - proper grass roots airfield. Don't expect much from the facilities but you'll get a decent feel for real world GA!

Connington - decent little airfield with a good club atmosphere and nice café.

Fenland - don't know much about the place but a decent grass strip and nice café.

Sibson - this is where I did my PPL. Nice place and people and they use the Robin HR200s which (in my opinion) are a far nicer aircraft to fly than the Cessnas. Can get pretty boggy when wet though so you might have a few cancelled lessons in the rainy season.

Cranfield and Henlow are probably a bit too far from Ely unless there's a real desire to use them above the others.

As has already been said, the best thing you can do is visit them all and have a chat with the clubs. Different people will prefer different places and there's a world of difference between Bourn at one end of the spectrum and Cambridge at the other.

[ChickenHouse]

Just one thought. If you are ready for cross-country, you are ready to make a second plane type as well. I would go the route to do the first x-country at my old school, just to finish that part of training. After that, go for the best flight school in your close vicinity, no matter which planes they do training on. I would take the chance there to get a second, most probably low wing, type to learn. Transition later to a C172 is quite easy, if you had a C15x, but switching from high wing to low wing requires some more training.

I had a similar situation, did the first part until cross-country on a low wing Aquila, than moved to a C172 for the second half. It was a good experience to realize how similar planes and how different they are. A PPL is still only the license for life-long-learning ;).