RAA-Aus vs GA for training
 

I have been trying to do some research trying to decide a flight school weather I should be going the GA pathway or RA-Aus. It doesnt make a lot of sense paying for a 4 seater aircraft when initially when you are learning to fly its just you and your instructor. I understand that GA you have C152 type aircraft but even that is $50-$75 ph more expensive than Jabiru type.

Heard a bit about Soar Aviation out of Moorabbin and they seem to be doing more flying than any other mob excluding Swinburne Aviation School. What do you guys think?

Oh OK... I'll bite.

I have been a Chief Flying instructor for both types of school. I can only comment on costs, I won't comment on Melbourne schools because I have no idea about them.

The simple answer is that RAAus is cheaper in the short term. If you have serious cash restrictions at the moment and RAAus gets you into the air, go for it! :ok:

If you really want to fly bigger aircraft, in my observation a RAAus pilot will spend significantly longer learning the additional systems and complexity of a GA aircraft to the same level of competence they previously demonstrated in an RAAus aircraft.

Edited to note: most of my RAAus studes and RAAus -> GA conversions have been older blokes. Younger people can learn almost anything much more quickly and so the differences are less.

This means that the cost benefits of going RAAus early might be evened out by the time you qualify with a PPL.

There are all sorts of arguments that RAAus is a lower standard or lax with rules - if you pick a good professional school and apply yourself to your studies you will become a competent pilot within your chosen branch of study.

Apply the same principles and effort and you will match it in the other discipline when the time (or cash) comes for you.

Good luck and have fun :)

I'm at exactly the opposite end: a student transitioning from RAA to GA/PPL with a view to continuing through to CPL. I've gone from a Gazelle (RAA) to a Cherokee (GA, only a quick stint) to a C-172RG (GA).

Learning in the Cherokee would have been pointless, I think. The transition from the Gazelle to the Cherokee was fairly straightforward, and I saved plenty of money by starting on the Gazelle.

I'm not sure about learning in the C-172RG. It's certainly not a trivial transition from either of the other two. Would I have become confident in it faster if I'd started in it? Maybe, maybe not. It definitely would have cost a lot more (about twice as much per hour compared to the Gazelle).


Quite apart from that, starting with RAA gives you a good "low-cost" (to the extent that anything in aviation is low-cost) introduction. If you get to five hours in and you don't like it, you've only spent a thousand dollars or so. After twenty hours, if you're happy with your capabilities and don't really feel like going further, you can do the test to get your RAA certificate and stop there. Total cost: not much more than $4K. If you're still loving it and itching to fly more challenging planes, you can continue straight on towards a PPL.

On the other hand, if you'd gone straight to GA then all those initial hours cost a lot more - and in a complex aircraft it'll probably be a fair bit longer before you really start to enjoy it. More money, less reward.


For me, that made RAA a much better option. If I'd spent $2000 in the C-172RG and still felt that I was nowhere near being ready to fly it, I'd probably have given up. Instead I spent $2000 for twice as much time in the Gazelle, and at the end of that I'd been going solo for a few hours and was having a great time. Now that I'm in the C-172RG, I'm sure that this is a good idea, and therefore I'm not too concerned about putting lots of money towards it.

I always tell people who ask, if you walk away after spending $5-6k from RAA you probably have a certificate that enables you to fly with a passenger. If you walk away from GA after spending the same, you effectively have nothing... As stated it is mostly a budget related decision as both paths lead to the holy grail.

Can't imagine a172 being more complicated than a jabiru.

PPL Conversion
 

Unless you intend to get a CPL or you have a specific weight that you need to carry don't even bother with GA. I am in the process of the conversion from RAA to GA only because I need the payload.

The GA world thinks that ultralights are inferior, a number of schools wouldn't even recognise my hours, but the fact is that all the training is now happening in RAA. The aircraft are faster lighter more efficient and cheaper to run. If the RAA had got its act together and got the controlled airspace endorsement validated GA training for PPL's would be over in this country. CASA has its finger in the pie right now trying to stop owner maintenance despite the fact there is not an iota of evidence that owner maintenance has caused an accident. RAA has been ruined by a small percentage that you will find in any human group, but that doesn't reflect on the general membership. The idiots could have been weeded out and training improved if the leadership had been competent.

Be wary of what GA requirements the flying school sets if you convert, cross check them against the CASA requirements.

In part I do agree with Horatio though, I haven't had a problem with flying the aircraft but the procedures and rules are where you will come undone. GA standards in that regard are far more complex. Use the ultralight to master stick and rudder only. (I did have one school who was prepared to do some of my GA sequences (my aircraft) in the ultralight if it had a transponder and calibrated instruments.)


In conclusion remember that its your cash. I have a good friend of mine who flies jets in America and when I told him that we were paying upwards of 250 per hour for a 150 he laughed and said he could hire a 150 wet for $90 per hour. GA is hurting because it is very quickly becoming out of reach for the common man. If I get stuffed around I walk, I refuse to cop s**t when paying through the nose.

I currently fly in both the GA and RA worlds, although I'm a fairly recent convert to the latter. If I were in your position I'd be seeking out a school which did both types of training, ostensibly to the same standard (fewer hours in RA, of course). If you find the right school you can even use the same type of aircraft in both training streams, so any initial transition to GA is even more painless than it usually is. For example, here in WA one good school uses both RA and GA-registered Tecnams, as well as the usual line-up of C152s, C172s etc. Other places do the same thing around Jabs or similar.

Price is important and, as others have said, with a bit of intelligent planning and selection you can come out ahead by starting in RA, especially if your ultimate goal is a PPL rather than a CPL. For what it's worth, my own observation is that you need to take care in choosing an RA training organization; I observe greater variability in standards than in the GA world. If you have GA ambitions, I would certainly be looking for a school that offered both training streams.

Good luck!

I am tempted to go by the Ra-Aus way. Its come to my attention, that RA-aus flying schools are hiring more and there is more movement in the market. I live close to Moorabbin Airport and I see the jabiru's flying constantly. I think they are of Soar Aviation but a bit confused why its got Melbourne Aviation on its tail.I think they are one and the same company. I just cannot justify why I should be paying $330+ph for an aircraft with VH on it. I believe there are GA registered jabirus as well.

I can't really comment on that, since I've never flown a Jabiru. The big things I noticed (coming from the Gazelle) were the higher speed (around 120kts in the circuit compared to 70kts for the Gazelle), the CSU, and the retractable undercarriage. Combined with the need to constantly re-trim it (because it takes quite a while to go from the 80kt climb speed to the 120kt circuit speed and needs to be trimmed as that happens) it's a bit of a handful.

Doesnt matter how you do it, but I'd suggest if you wanna go the RA way that you go to a school that caters for both, then you won't have any of the games/issues being played i.e "we dont recognise your hours" when/you decide to transition to GA.

Melbourne Aviation / Soar would be a good one to be asking questions about purely because as I understand it they don't do GA training, thus it would be interesting to know how their training standard stacks up once you leave there and head to a GA school at Moorabbin.

somebody I know who is flying with them was telling me that they are going to be training GA soon. Dont know for sure if this is true?! Have you guys got any clue?

They have been saying that for over 2 years if I am not mistaken....

The OP didn't mention whether the end goal was a CPL. If it is, you need to also consider 150 hour integrated vs 200 hour courses. My understanding is if you start with RAA you'll need to do the 200 hour CPL course.

Been a while though, and please ignore if CPL isn't the intention.

Oracle:

1. There is no evidence because ATSB doesn't investigate ultralight accidents.

2. The recent groundings of sections of the RAA fleet over such things as non standard propellers and suchlike indicate that RAA members are not familiar with the term : "approved data" or the word "approval".

Perhaps the RAA needs to run maintenance procedure courses like SAAA.

3. As for access to controlled Airspace, tell 'em they'r dreamin'.

Still, there are some very nice light aircraft being produced these days, the only concern I have about some of them is ruggedness.

Anyone wanting to learn to fly whether in a general aviation or RAA flying school will save money by initially training on a synthetic trainer. Five or more hours on a synthetic trainer, FTD (Flight Training Device or whatever) will make you familiar with the terminology, the basic flying controls, the radio procedures, and no turbulence, no ATC delays.

Same for those intending to train for their Command Instrument Rating, single or multi-engine. Stay on the simulator until you could pass the instrument rating test on the simulator. Then and only then, start training for the CIR in the real aircraft. Start in a single engine type until you would be competent to pass the CIR in that, and then switch to a multi-type to finish off the asymmetric stuff. Careful planning as above will save you heaps. But as always, the secret is to have the right instructor who knows his job and won't rip you off. Word of mouth is the key - not the size of the flying school or the shiny uniforms of the staff.

I did flight simulators for years before I started, and all it did was cause me to look at instruments when I was supposed to be flying visual once I started for real. Mind you my instructor was astonished how quickly I was able to get a hang on setting trim and some other progress, so maybe it does help have a better understanding when setting out.

Useful for practising some procedures and getting a handle on what is to occur in a lesson, but just so far removed from actually having the aircraft in your hands its hard to bring more than that to it.

This is true. The outfit I'm doing my CPL with at the moment does the 150 hour course –*and so my 65-odd RAA hours I had before I started are worth nought.

"Anyone wanting to learn to fly whether in a general aviation or RAA flying school will save money by initially training on a synthetic trainer"

I couldn't think of anything worse for a new student unless you cover ALL the instruments, and even then it would probably involve hours of remedial flying with a folder in front of the instruments once you got in the real thing..

The longer I instruct, the more I see proof that the only important thing is the attitude (IFR or VFR).. even power is secondary to that, cos if you can't hold the aircrafts nose in a steady position in relationship to the horizon no matter what the configuration is, you're gonna battle all the way through your training.

You'd be surprised how many pilots I see who I start flying with well into their training who have this fundamental wrong.

My students saved heaps of money by learning on Microsoft flight simulators before going into the real thing. More importantly, they rapidly gained confidence which some students lose after bouts of air-sickness.

At no point during their flight training did they lock exclusively on to their flight instruments at the expense of looking outside, and there was no problem with their situational awareness. In fact quite the opposite. Their familiarity with flying the simulator allowed them to relax more in the air and keep their eyes swivelling for other traffic. Most went solo in under ten hours of dual. Nowadays it seems the average time to solo at the big well established flying schools is 15-20 hours or more. In my experience it is drawing a long bow to claim that synthetic trainer instruction prior to first flight is detrimental to student normal progress.

I read somewhere that learning to drive a car is available in a car simulator and that has measurable benefits in terms of road safety. Of course if the flying school instructor is there to make money for himself and his school, then forget simulation and get cracking on the VDO asap.