Where do you fly?
 

Evening all,

Just wondering where everyone in Scotland does their flying? Is it mostly club on hire aircraft, from strip in privately owned or group sharing?

I ask as I'm currently flying club aircraft which are pretty expensive per hour wet. I know that flying isn't a particularly cheap hobby and have been looking recently for a cheaper alternative, either purchasing or finding a syndicate locally and I'm interested to see what some of you guys do.

Any suggestions would be great

All the best

I have my own little aircraft kept on a grass strip above 57N. I've had it 20 years but without it and reliant on club machines I'd probably have given up years, decades, ago. With my own machine it's available when I want it, and I can do what I like with it, but yes, it has limitations. But then so does any aircraft but the boundaries will be different to mine.

So, it depends what you want. I was fortunate in that having flown my family and non-flying friends in the early days it became clear that they weren't really that interested, not beyond the initial novelty, so a single seater would do me just fine and only once in the 20 years have I really wanted a second seat.

The aircraft cost me, at the time, less than I had paid for my rather basic hatchback car, so not expensive. My hangar cost more!

Before looking for a machine I put together a spreadsheet on club V private costs and IIRC the break-even point was around 12 hours annually, though back then I wasn't figuring in the hangar.

Deeside Gliding Club,

[Picture hoiked as it was annoyingly wide]

Flight Details

2 notable XC's from yesterday, one at 316km one at 516km, no fuel used.
the 516km was flown at 117kph (handicapped)

Why limit yourself with a donkey up front? 30 odd quid an hour to fly a superb sailplane ! in a superb place (one of the best wave sites in the world) not flying gliders and living here is a disgraceful waste of the outrageously pretty scenery and fantastic wave.

The lift can be pretty strong,
https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net...51&oe=57267407
This (also from yesterday) shows 1500+ fpm on the VSI.

You owe it to yourself to try it !

I fly a Group owned Jodel DR1050 from Inverness, mainly over the hills. £50 per month,£60 per hour. Landings extra. Good kitty. No shares likely to be for sale in forseeable future.
Lots of videos on YT under Uisgebeathamadadhrua. (The last dh would have made it too long. It's the callsign - translated.)

I fly a Maule out of a reclaimed sand and gravel quarry at Forfar, most weekends when the weather is good I get several fixed wing GA aircraft from around Scotland and a squadron of boiler suited trike jockeys visiting the cafe at the nature reserve next door, and if your lucky some of the local Wayne Handley wannabees show up to give an impromptu aeros display which is always nice whiles scoffing down your Lorne roll . Lots of good flying to be had in the NE of Scotland. apart from the obvious “big” hard surface GA fields like Dundee, Glenrothes and Perth there is a plethora of grass strips of varying degrees of challenge in the long flat valley that runs from Aberdeenshire down the Strathmore valley thru Perthshire all the way to Loch Lomond.

Starting at the top and running South here is a partial list of smaller fields, most require PPR:

Longside
Insch
Hatton
Whiterashes
Auchenblae (ski jump, always interesting)
Laurencekirk
Montrose
Forfar
Kingsmuir
Strathallen
Kinross

And a few others in Fife and Stirlingshire that I have heard about but haven't been to, and of course there is that big long bugger that runs from Arbroath to St Cyrus commonly known as "the beach"

Thanks for the replies guys. I think the kind of flying I would really like to do would be more x country, landing away either solo or with a passenger. As piperboy has mentioned there are lots of farm strips to explore as well as Tarmac, but at more than £160 an hour wet, I think I need to find a slightly cheaper way to fly if at all possible. Whether that's looking for a share of trying to fly often enough justify owning...

airwave45, your glider flight looks like it was a lot of fun and a huge distance covered which was quite a surprise to me really. I had always assumed (wrongly) that glider range would have been fairly limited which obviously isn't the case from looking at your flight log, and at £30 ish an hour!!!

Thanks again.

Hi Airwave, Your pictures are welcome and appreciated, but would be more appreciated if you would resize them to 600 x 800 or so, so they conform nicely to the page format.

Thanks, Pilot DAR

Huge picture, but worth it !
 

Hi airwave45,The pictures are that huge I can't see them!

That flight wasn't me, that was just a flight from Monday.

This was a very good pilot, and me :ok: last yearFlight Details

https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api...3783,-2.850016

Flight declaration was over 1000km, managed 880 (ish) claimed 775 as that was the nearest official turnpoint to where we had to give up due to weather.

Try Gliding at your nearest club, it's more than the "Up, round and down" than it used to be known for.

My glider has a Vne of 154kts and best glide of 60-1 (60 miles glide for every mile of Alt) at 65 kts, at 90 kts it is still doing better than 50-1.

If you look at the trace on the link above you'll see that some of it was done through controlled airspace (with clearance) with a ground speed over 300kph.

Going places was always my preferred type of flying. I rented for a few years mostly sharing the trips to keep costs down. Until recently I have still rented when on holiday, sometimes for up to two weeks at a time. Costs were split 3 or four ways. That worked really well.
Joining a group I think is ultimately the way to go. You will probably find the savings in a nice touring aircraft are not huge over hiring but it will be a known quality and usually available for longer trips.
Savings can be had with a permit aircraft but there may be compromises to be made in usability an you may be expected to get your hands dirty.
Don't under estimate how quickly you can outgrow an aircraft. You are living in a country with not the best of flying weather. To get better use from a shareoplane you may find you will soon want an IR/R. Not necessarily for hard IFR. Just to get on top.
So, first stage, get a flying buddy or two.

There might be Pa28 shares at Inverness.

Did she actually get it going up?

The answer to the original question is:

Look at the Plane Spotters books to see where all the aircraft are based in Scotland.

Answer is big clumps at Perth, East Fortune and Strathaven - plus local strips all over the country, perhaps such as Longside or Culbokie.

The type of aircraft is also revealing: microlights and LAA-types (not all of which are home built).

Quite simply, flying an EASA light aircraft - basically the only type (other than some microlights, like Perth's Eurostar) for hiring - is expensive if you are doing lots of hours.

Buying a simple LAA-type and finding somewhere local with a few fellow flyers around seems to be the favoured solution.

Where Do I Fly?
 

Me I've got my own mode of transport it's a Robinson 22 Helicopter!! which I take out the garage as and when required and fly into Lincoln to do the shopping when the weather like this!!!!!!

I live in Lincoln, and I know that Lidl's car park isn't big enough. :)

Crikey, I pay less than that for an Arrow :ooh:.

Ummm... a PM might be appreciated? As a tentative starter only !

Longside has been mentioned a couple of times and is worth a visit. The coastline between Fraserburgh and Banff is particularly scenic, with unusual geological features. Also the forest of Lenabo, 3 NM southwest of Longside airfield, still has visible from the air foundations of three large airship hangars dating back to WW1, from where sorties were launched against German submarines. Did you know that the Germans had many submarines sinking shipping in the North Sea over 100 years ago?


At £5 a landing and friendly tea and biscuits, what's not to like? They even have a private cash-only supply of Avgas by prior arrangement. Mogas might also be possible. It's an interesting destination or detour.

PA28 group Inverness
 

I think it's the Brackla flying group, they had a website at http://www.bracklaflying.co.uk but I can’t get it to work...

Also there’s a possible TB20 share at Aberdeen...

Edit: Standard G-INFO aerostalking shows potential change in ownership for the Brackla PA28, so the group may have disbanded. Owner is shown as trustee of G-BHJO group, down at Biggin Hill. Brackla trustees are previous registered owners...

Shares available in a Jodel at Perth...

The OP is trying to find a cheaper way of flying! Now tell him how much an ASH25M costs to buy!!
He could probably buy half a dozen PA 28’s for the same money!