My Cub-type aeroplane costs me about £51 per hour, all in, for 100 hours a year.

Insurance = £900
Hangarage = £1800
Petrol = £1520 (mogas)
Maintenance, permit, etc = £900
Total: £5120

Russ

Monocock's still being reticent I see. :hmm:

It would seem to me that much depends on whether the original poster wants to end up with legal logbook entries.

If so, he will have to hire/borrow/buy a plane or a part of and fly it.

If not i.e. if he just wants to stay current, there should be a fair number of pilots, some with very nice very expensive planes too, who fly regularly and who would happily take somebody up who, in return for being allowed to fly, will give them a little wad of cash at the end :O

I hadn't seen this before. It looks like a very good deal. What's the catch?

Well....

:rolleyes:

I lost it at the "£84" stage...anyone care to elucidate where that came from? And I do know the 1/20 rule.

I'm with Mono on this.

I used to own 1/10th a share of a Luton Minor based at Shoreham. The share cost £500 and the monthly was somewhere in the region of £25 (memory fails me a bit on that one but it was around that figure). The group has disbanded but the principal is sound. Get a few like minded souls together (if you can find them), decide on type and start a group. Better if you can buy into an established group I guess or even consider outright ownership. I have a Slingsby T31m that is very nearly ready to fly. It's purchase as a glider and conversion costs will amount to around £2000, and I will fly from my farm strip. Flying costs will be around 3 galls/hour of mogas plus a bit of oil. Fixed costs are likely to be fairly low as I'm luckily in a position to have my own strip/hangar and as it will be self maintained, costs there are just delt with on an as and when basis. Insurance is the biggest pain in the butt for me, but I'm hoping to insure through a French company which "may" only cost around £100/yr. This is just to illustrate that it can be done cheaply. OK you may not want to build, but Lutons, VP's, Taylor Mono's ect can be had from as little as £2500. Some, such as FRED's can be folded or dismantled and kept at home in a garage. They may not be sexy, but they get your bum off the ground, are fun, and can keep your licence current. Microlights are similar, and whilst I don't want to put you off them, you can't keep your licence up with one. Also, with the exeption of some older types like early Thrusters, MW7's ect, they also tend to be a lot more expensive than single seat PFA types.

If you want cheap flying ... it is out there, you just have to look beyond the club hangar.

SS

Well put.

In my view, there are too many out there who do positively turn their noses up at the really basic types who then go on to moan about not being able to reach the 12 hours minimum each year.

Is it because there is a general belief by some that unless it has 40 twiddly knobs, strobes and flashing lights that it isn't REAL flying.

I do know of certain sailing types who wouldn't be seen dead in a Mirror dinghy. Perhaps this is this the same type of aeronautical issue?

In the latest Today's Pilot in the feature on Old Sarum I noticed that they are syndicating Icarus C42s. A 1/20 share, 25 hours instruction and 25 hours flying for less than £5k. It is a microlight, but a pretty nice one.

Might be worth a look (especially if you can fly any aircraft in the C42 fleet, not just "your" one)!

Just done a little search and the Luton Major looks a nice little craft.
Anyone know of one in the UK?(apart from the one in Nth East Museum) it seems there is only one in Ozzieland built in the 70's but it has a good review.

Also found this which is a nice little monoplane for £6000.
Would make a nice little group aircraft between 3 0r so friends.

http://www.taylormonoplane.4t.com/shopping_page.html

Depends what licences you've got (and whether you care most about licences, or just flying), and by the way, the MW-7 is a single seat PFA type, and isn't a microlight.

Since most microlights are 2-seaters, it's unsurprising that they *might* be a little more expensive than an equivalent or lower performance single seater! Since most modern microlights are rather higher performance than a basic PFA single seater, probably newer, and almost certainly built by a factory that's still supplying spares, the same applies.

G

Whoops! Sorry about the MW7 .... silly me!

You're quite correct Gengis and I'm not suggesting for a minute that a microlight is either less value for money or any less "worthy". However, as the original poster obviously seems to be group A (for want of a better description :hmm: ) and was looking to other types of flying as a percieved cheaper way to fly, I was simply pointing out that that isn't always the case. If all you want to do is fly, then fine, but to let your licence lapse because you think microlighting, gliding ect are the only alternative is simply wrong.

I had an early weightshift a couple of years ago that cost me £700, I also used to fly gliders, so I'm not out to paint them in any bad light. I just think very cheap PFA types are a lot of fun and so often overlooked.

SS

Monocock - I'm not slagging off the more 'basic' aircraft/aviation in any way. Given the choice I would be driving my Aston Martin down to my Pilatus hanger, but life doesn't really work that way.

Strafer - I wasn't suggesting you were "slagging off" anything.

Please don't be so sensitive. I must confess to becoming a little tired of your apparent persistent desire to pounce on everything I post in this thread! If my comments come across as adversarial I apologise. They are not aimed at anyone in particular and I blame my genetics for the way I say things as I see them!

If I know what I need to apologise for doing or saying I will:)

Nice term that, I wonder if we should consider making wider use of it.

G

Now I'm missing something else, G, what else would group A mean?

Mono - If you're feeling tired dear, I suggest you go and lie down and then you can carry on practising your 'I say what I like and I like what I bloody well say' Yorkshireman impression. :)

Now then enough thread creep, back to what ever this thread's about...

Bahn-Jeaux, I think there is only one Luton Major airworthy in the UK. When I last saw it 6-7 years ago it had just been rebuilt and looked fantastic.

The PFAs position on the Luton Major is that it can only be flown without a passenger, unless the position has changed recently.

I had one as a rebuild project in the late 80's and got rid when I realised the problems with weight would probably mean single seat operation only.

Also, had a Minor and a VP1 for a few years and would certainly recommend these types as safe and cheap aircraft to operate.

Hello all again!

After the fairly fruitful discussion on this thread, it did leave me with some food for thought. There is indeed a good selection of groups at Elstree, in fact probably out of proportion to its size. I've also had a useful PM from one of you re a motorglider (very interesting but quite far to drive to get to it), and have done some digging re cheap local PFA types (don't seem to be that many close to me).

However, I was wondering how to do it EVEN more cheaply (humour me here, after all this is aviation...;) ) so I have been taking a look at microlights, 3-axis and flexwing. The conudrum seems to be that they're cheap as chips to fly...but where they are in groups, the groups tend to consist of only 2 or 3 bods, which for most MLs still works out at quite a few grand each. So, we've got some 'proper' plane groups, for low or zero capital but with larger running costs, and 'little' plane groups for more substantial capital but cheap running costs.

Anyone know why this is the case? And, more importantly, if there are any ML groups with quite a few members in S.Herts?

Cheers!

BB