Suggestions for a PPL starter kit

[liam548]

i got my starter kit from pooleys for around £180 and think it included all what is in that kit plus a nice bag to hold it all in.

Liam

[Deeday]

NEVER PAY UP FRONT!!

That's exactly what I did, when I still had not found out about this forum. Yes, you take a chance, but you can get some fairly good deals too - see details below. I'm not exactly recommending it, just saying that paying upfront doesn't have to end up in a loss of money. In my case it's working out well: 25 h logged so far and counting, having used about 80% of my credit; and the included starter kit suits my needs perfectly.
Here is what I got for free, putting down in advance £ 6 grand of flight hours (an awful lot of money, I agree):

• 5% discount on the cost of the flight hour
• A decent headset (Avcomm AC-900 PNR)
• Reasonably sized flight bag
• The full series of the Air Pilot's Manuals (bar vol. 5 - Instrument Flight)
• The PPL Confuser
• Pooley's Flight Guide
• Pooleys CRP-1 Flight Computer
• Square protractor
• Long Ruler
• A5 kneeboard
• A5 flight log
• Pilot's flying logbook
• CAA aeronautical chart 1:500,000
• Set of four chart markers
• Aircraft's operating manual

If you know you are going to fly a lot or going commercial, then some items would probably need an upgrade (CRP-5, ANR headsets etc.) but I'm doing a NPPL, so the above is really all I need.

Soft landings.

Deeday

[AlexXeno]

No discount if I pay a lesson at a time though!

[skydriller]

Alex, its not just that you might lose your cash in a recession, which is when historically businesses go bust, especially those that rely on others spare cash (which they no longer have in a recession) for their survival........etc..

There is also this: What happens if, having paid for your entire couse, you find you dont get on with the instructor or with the CFI, or club attitude sucks or whatever? Believe me these things happen too, as told in many threads here on PPrune. Its not easy (or sometimes possible even) to walk away if you have invested (and thats what you are doing) your hard earned cash already.

If you must know, with regards to myself its a matter of do as I say, not what I did, as I got my PPL before I knew about PPrune, when the internet was just starting to be widely available and I actually paid for my PPL in 10 hour blocks to get a lower rate....... I would not have done this if I had seen all of the threads about flying schools going bust and students losing money. I was ignorant of the risk and I just didnt know what the UK flying scene was like.

Good luck, SD.

[Steve N]

Alex,

Some of the radio phraseology is about to change in March so suggest you don't buy a RT manual yet but download CAP413 when it changes and get a manual when they reflect the new "ATSOCAS" procedures

Steve

[AlexXeno]

I'll be paying on a per lesson basis as the general concensus suggests, first one being tomorrow at 8:30 Hopefully the weather is okay, will spend the evening reading Air Law 1.
Thanks for everyones advice!

[BackPacker]

Can't help you there, I live a couple of miles from the airfield. Downstairs a Sony Air 7 will pick up what the pilots are saying, upstairs on a good day it'll just about get the tower as well.

If your scanner has a removable aerial, it's probably connected with a BNC connector (round, requires about 1/4 turn anticlockwise to twist loose). If that's the case, it's fairly easy to make a really good antenna - technically called a dipole - yourselves.

Get hold of a sufficient length of "RG-58" wire. Usually black, this was used a decade ago as "thin ethernet" or plainly "ethernet" to network computers together. Any computer shop/techie with a sense of nostalgia will have miles of the stuff lying around doing nothing (I know I do). One end simply twists onto the scanner. From the other end, snip the connector off, and either splice out the core from the mantle, or use some fasteners to connect it to suitable lengths of household electricity wire. In any case, the core (or the wire fastened to it) should be vertical, pointing downwards, and the mantle (or the wire fastened to it) should be vertical, pointing upwards (or the other way around, it doesn't matter.

What does matter is the length of the vertical bits: 1/4 of the wavelength in the middle of the frequency band you're trying to monitor. For airband, that works out to about 59 cm.

Hang the antenna in the attic as high as you can, using only non-metallic components. Mine is attached with plastic tie-wraps to a piece of wooden floor trimming, then fastened with some velcro to a vertical roof support beam.

I can pick up all ground traffic, even the departure ATIS, from Schiphol airport which is about 10 miles away, and everything in the air for hundreds of miles around. Good sound quality too - much, much better than the tiny whip antenna my scanner came with.

Took me about 30 minutes to put together.

[Gertrude the Wombat]

it's fairly easy to make a really good antenna

Yes, I know, I've never quite got round to bothering. Main reason is that the conduit from the attic to the living room is a piece of half inch central heating pipe embedded in the concrete wall - it's already got a TV aerial downlead, a VHF radio downlead and a set of speaker cables in it, there's no room for another co-ax. (Although as we don't watch TV I suppose I could remove the TV co-ax to make room for it.)

Plus, I don't actually have the ethernet co-ax any more - someone who was obviously converting to CAT5 somewhat later than me took the whole lot off my hands!

[VCR]

Presumably a splitter on the VHF antenna would do? The bands are adjacent.

[Sallyann1234]

Presumably a splitter on the VHF antenna would do? The bands are adjacent.

Far from ideal. It will not be as efficient as a separate aerial. And for airband you need a vertically polarised aerial - the VHF one may well be horizontal.