The most protracted PPL ever?........
Thread Starter
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 779
Likes: 1
From: Kent UK
Jumped the hurdle
Passed Air Law!! Some folks may wonder what the fuss is about, but it's had my brain in knots for ages.
Bonniejack - nice to meet you!
Glad I'm not the only one who's been burning this particular flame for ever and a day.....
Kev.
Bonniejack - nice to meet you!
Glad I'm not the only one who's been burning this particular flame for ever and a day.....Kev.
Joined: Dec 2006
Posts: 55
Likes: 0
From: Northumberland UK
congratulations Kev. Air Law is a bit mind boggling. I am doing a NPPL, why do I want to know about documents for International flights. I have given myself a target date at end of next week to be ready for Air Law exam. I past them all 30 yrs ago but much has changed since then it seems. Which subject are you going for next?
Joined: May 2006
Posts: 39
Likes: 0
From: Cheshire
hi all,
as a student who started a PPL in spring last year and is getting worried that Ive only done 16 hours since, your posts come as quite a reassurance
While we are on-topic is there a time limit on how long you can take to do a PPL?
GW
as a student who started a PPL in spring last year and is getting worried that Ive only done 16 hours since, your posts come as quite a reassurance
While we are on-topic is there a time limit on how long you can take to do a PPL?
GW
Thread Starter
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 779
Likes: 1
From: Kent UK
Hi GullWing!
As long as your love affair with flying lasts! Seriously, there is a time-frame from commencement of training before you have to re-sit the ground exams but I'm not sure of the exact figures (and I've just passed Air Law!
)
Good luck!
Kev.
As long as your love affair with flying lasts! Seriously, there is a time-frame from commencement of training before you have to re-sit the ground exams but I'm not sure of the exact figures (and I've just passed Air Law!
)Good luck!
Kev.
Joined: May 2006
Posts: 235
Likes: 3
From: Down South, preferably inverted
You get 18 months from the date of your first exam pass to complete the rest (without resits) and 24 months from then to complete the flying. i.e. 42 months in total.
Miss either of the dates and you're back to resitting the exams but I believe the flying hours still count.
Miss either of the dates and you're back to resitting the exams but I believe the flying hours still count.
Joined: Jan 2007
Posts: 1
Likes: 0
From: Leics
NPPL
Guys And Girls
What a boost reading this is, I started in 84 solo at Bagginton 86
Wife came along in 86
Started Glideing then at Bicester 87
Daughters arrived 88 and her sister in 92
Need I say more
After following this forum I recently had my intrest and resolve reborn by looking up old friends please check out skyblueaviation and hunterflyingclub
NOT a plug but these guys have been fantastic knowing that I have had some medical issues in the past and have pointed me down the NPPL route as a starting point. The quote being that if you "have a H.G.V. licence medical" you can have a medical for a NPPL.
I work as a H.G.V. driver
The reason I post is to find out if any one else has taken this route to get then into the air and what pit falls should I be looking for.
Ian
What a boost reading this is, I started in 84 solo at Bagginton 86
Wife came along in 86
Started Glideing then at Bicester 87
Daughters arrived 88 and her sister in 92
Need I say more
After following this forum I recently had my intrest and resolve reborn by looking up old friends please check out skyblueaviation and hunterflyingclub
NOT a plug but these guys have been fantastic knowing that I have had some medical issues in the past and have pointed me down the NPPL route as a starting point. The quote being that if you "have a H.G.V. licence medical" you can have a medical for a NPPL.
I work as a H.G.V. driver
The reason I post is to find out if any one else has taken this route to get then into the air and what pit falls should I be looking for.Ian
Joined: Jan 2007
Posts: 345
Likes: 0
From: London
I went down the NPPL route for medicial reasons and found out some of the NPPL medicial are less eyesight as I cant get a HGV medical and youre very unlikley to do it in the 35 hours min I took 50 and then found out I was OK for my class 2 my GP has misread an ECG a few years before and said I had a dicky heart turns out the CAA didnt agree now i have to upgrade th the PPL 
Thread Starter
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 779
Likes: 1
From: Kent UK
Musings
Well, my lessons are all booked for the summer, now. I'll be starting with 2-3 hrs. on July 30th. A few days ago, May 23rd, saw the 26th anniversary of my first flying lesson, the birth of the love of my life, in a Rheims Cessna 152 Aerobat at Sunderland. The lesson included a demo loop during which I used a 4-letter expletive with an instructor I'd just met for the first time!
All of which led me to think about the first airfield I knew. I suppose when something is gone for ever you miss it more than if you simply move away. I only knew Sunderland for a few months but it had more atmosphere for me than any of the other airfields I've spent time on: Perranporth, Manston or even lovely Headcorn. There was something about the hangar. To wander around such an interesting higgeldy-piggledy array of aircraft: some the mounts of millionaires, others more prosaic. A Kingair here, a Currie Wot there. Lots of Cessnas and Pipers. Is that a Taylor Monoplane? And at the back, dusty hangar queens whose days of cavorting in the sunlit clouds seemed long passed. It was always quiet in there. Nesting sparrows twittering, echoing in the roof, someone dropping a spanner somewhere; even the sound of an aircraft bursting into life on the apron hardly seemed to disturb the stillness. Is there something about one's first hangar that makes one go all misty-eyed?
I've just realised what a complete turnip I must now appear to anyone 'from the outside', for want of a better word!
All of which led me to think about the first airfield I knew. I suppose when something is gone for ever you miss it more than if you simply move away. I only knew Sunderland for a few months but it had more atmosphere for me than any of the other airfields I've spent time on: Perranporth, Manston or even lovely Headcorn. There was something about the hangar. To wander around such an interesting higgeldy-piggledy array of aircraft: some the mounts of millionaires, others more prosaic. A Kingair here, a Currie Wot there. Lots of Cessnas and Pipers. Is that a Taylor Monoplane? And at the back, dusty hangar queens whose days of cavorting in the sunlit clouds seemed long passed. It was always quiet in there. Nesting sparrows twittering, echoing in the roof, someone dropping a spanner somewhere; even the sound of an aircraft bursting into life on the apron hardly seemed to disturb the stillness. Is there something about one's first hangar that makes one go all misty-eyed?
I've just realised what a complete turnip I must now appear to anyone 'from the outside', for want of a better word!
Joined: Feb 2005
Posts: 28
Likes: 0
From: Windsor, UK
Hangars
I completely understand Kevmusic. My magical place was a hangar at Booker in the mid sixties, just like your hangar, birds in the rafters; even more than the sounds, the smell of dope and fuel and oil.
A dismantled Gander Dower Airways Rapide on one corner; a Mew Gull in pieces in another (G-AEXF). A variety of Miles, Beagle and Auster products plus the plane of my adolecent dreams, a V tailed Bonanza (G-ATII). Across the way would be Bert Goodchild grafting in the PPS Hangar on a Fokker Eindekker replica (ex-Blue Max film) or a Spit.........
A dismantled Gander Dower Airways Rapide on one corner; a Mew Gull in pieces in another (G-AEXF). A variety of Miles, Beagle and Auster products plus the plane of my adolecent dreams, a V tailed Bonanza (G-ATII). Across the way would be Bert Goodchild grafting in the PPS Hangar on a Fokker Eindekker replica (ex-Blue Max film) or a Spit.........
Joined: May 2007
Posts: 2
Likes: 0
From: kent
Happy days...
Kevmusic
Whatever happend to Bunty, Al Taps, Bubble, Baz and "the boss"? C1985/6 at Manston for me, my word, how time flys! One person I know made a living from his ventures, a Cadet you may recall at the time, called Richard Matthews. Flew with the Red arrows, then with the USAF on exchange flying the Stelth. Google should throw his name up!
For me, PPL after two or three years on and off, money, time, weather, family, guess you could say life... Finished however back in 1990 flew a bit, another long lay off ,again the above reasons. Fly mostly now in the USA, rude not to with the strength of the pound and all the other positive aspects. However, revalitdated my PPL at Headcorn ( and flying soon again from Headcorn ), a gem in the heart of the Kent countryside, little taxi time to strip, few in the way of restrictions in the local area and once clear of the circut straight into training area. The atmosphere professional but relaxed and the vast array of visiting craft during the Summer months.
Keep up the good work and message me when you start flying, a shared trip or two I suspect on completion.
Whizzy.
Whatever happend to Bunty, Al Taps, Bubble, Baz and "the boss"? C1985/6 at Manston for me, my word, how time flys! One person I know made a living from his ventures, a Cadet you may recall at the time, called Richard Matthews. Flew with the Red arrows, then with the USAF on exchange flying the Stelth. Google should throw his name up!
For me, PPL after two or three years on and off, money, time, weather, family, guess you could say life... Finished however back in 1990 flew a bit, another long lay off ,again the above reasons. Fly mostly now in the USA, rude not to with the strength of the pound and all the other positive aspects. However, revalitdated my PPL at Headcorn ( and flying soon again from Headcorn ), a gem in the heart of the Kent countryside, little taxi time to strip, few in the way of restrictions in the local area and once clear of the circut straight into training area. The atmosphere professional but relaxed and the vast array of visiting craft during the Summer months.
Keep up the good work and message me when you start flying, a shared trip or two I suspect on completion.
Whizzy.
Thread Starter
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 779
Likes: 1
From: Kent UK
Hi Whizzy,
Now you're talking - talk about blasts from the past! Al Tapsell is Boss of 616 VGS, Henley, I think. As for the rest, I just don't know. They were all a great crew. Great laughs and great flying. Funny, I seem to have better 'fun' memories of the old Mk3 days, before the Grobs came in.......
I think Chris Smith became Boss after the old Bill retired. now, I can't place you, Whizzy. You were obviously there & I must have known you. Help me out!
Now you're talking - talk about blasts from the past! Al Tapsell is Boss of 616 VGS, Henley, I think. As for the rest, I just don't know. They were all a great crew. Great laughs and great flying. Funny, I seem to have better 'fun' memories of the old Mk3 days, before the Grobs came in.......
I think Chris Smith became Boss after the old Bill retired. now, I can't place you, Whizzy. You were obviously there & I must have known you. Help me out!
.
Thread Starter
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 779
Likes: 1
From: Kent UK
Clouds on the Horizon
Ye gods! When I was 17 I took apart the bottom end of an 'A' series engine, replaced a big end and de-coked the top, all after school. I had O-level physics. I built model gliders to my own design. I lapped up Ps of F when I was gliding. Of all the ground subjects, I'd have thought 'The Aeroplane - Technical' to be a breeze. So I got stuck into Thom and...........well, hmm. It's hard. And there's a lot of it. In fact, I'm having almost as much of a problem with it as bl&&dy Air Law! Then I sat at the PC and took the OAT CD database of questions on the subject - all 276 of them - and got 74%!
(then I took the Airquiz exam and got 88%, but I'm still not happy.)
And to cap all that, the bl
din' jetstream is off course - got its vectors all wrong, or something - and all these storms and wind and rain look set to be with us for the rest of the summer. Oh woe! 
(then I took the Airquiz exam and got 88%, but I'm still not happy.)And to cap all that, the bl
din' jetstream is off course - got its vectors all wrong, or something - and all these storms and wind and rain look set to be with us for the rest of the summer. Oh woe!
