Tell us about YOUR flight training...

[RickertsRed]

Didn't see any posts about this, and yes I searched it...

Lets start a thread on YOUR flight training... I think it would help paint a cool picture for any newbs like myself to see what they're in for to see where, what, when, how long, and the question everyone loves knowing, what kind of ball park figure it cost? This way they get to see it all summed up on one thread...

So...
Where did you do your flight training? East coast? Central? West? Foreign?
What flight training did you do? PPL? PPL+CPL? etc...
How long ago did you do it?
How long did it take you to get those licences? full-time? part-time? 1 year? 20 years?
And what kind of ball park figure did it run you?

Oh and is there anything you would do differently knowing what you know now?

Cheers!

[RickertsRed]

Another… is flying a hobby for you? Or is it your job?

[Snowy]

Flying is just a hobby for myself, and always will be... I have been extremely fortunate in another career (IT) that starting over isn't an option, nor would I want it to be...

I completed all of my flight training in Windsor, Ontario and received my PPL out of the efforts. I was rather slow at getting my license as I started in 2010 and finished up completely in March of 2012.

Windsor was a great airport to fly out of. I live in Chatham, but drove down to Windsor for all of my training. Chatham airport (CNZ3) is small and uncontrolled as you can imagine... Windsor is a large airport, slow and quiet. It was great dealing with ATC and the airspace/traffic. There are plenty of uncontrolled airports around the area that we practiced those procedures at as well.

I was very much part time with the process due to my heavy travel schedule, often times only getting up every other Friday. Between that, and bad weather days it took me quite some time.

Because of the long process there was a lot of review and getting back up to speed... again, due to travel sometimes it would be 2 months between flights. I had about $11,000 invested when I received my PPL.

I was very lucky to have an amazing instructor, which I stuck with the entire process, which also delayed things due to his schedule. I thought, and still believe it was worth it. He was extremely professional, quick witted and supportive. We became good friends through the process and he is very much a role model for me in aviation.

That is my advice... Get a good instructor. If you don't get along right away and feel like your best friend is sitting beside you, get another one. The training is all in what you get out of it, and if you are stressed or uncomfortable you aren't going to enjoy your time, nor retain everything that there is to learn.

Take your time, don't be in a race with anyone else and enjoy every minute of it. It's an awesome experience and something you'll never forget.

Thanks TDJ @ CYQG.

[Colonel Sanders]

YOUR flight training

Goodness. Ok. It's the early 1970's, and I'm 10 years old. With
the help of cushions strategically placed under and behind my bum,
I can mostly see over the dash and reach the rudder pedals in the
Maule M4-210C.

We're doing circuits at Toronto Island airport. I understand it's been
renamed since then to something weird like The People's Glorious
Bourgeois Flight Port of the Grandiose Toronto Area.

Anyways, this is the 1970's at the Island. No ANR headsets. No
boom mikes. No PTT's. No intercoms. Hell, no headsets. We used
a hand mike and tried to listen to ATC on the overhead speaker in
the extremely noisy cockpit. Really. No GPS, no LORAN, no moving
maps. If you had a VOR, you were Hot Stuff. No one could afford a
DME.

Anyways, I had reduced power and turned base and I was high
and slow. All I had to do was lower the nose to establish the correct
descent attitude - you know, trade some altitude for airspeed.

My fanged ex-fighter pilot father leans over to me and shouts in my
ear - remember, no headsets or boom mikes or intercoms in those days:

"If you don't do something, we're going to die"

I'm 10 years old for Christ's sake, trying to wrestle with a
210hp fuel-injected constant speed prop tailwheel aircraft that
most licenced pilots would wreck if they tried to land it, but I
didn't know that at the time. I was only 10 years old, remember?

Anyways, by the time I was 12 I'm told I could take off and
land that snaky bitch (still have it, 40 years later) by myself.

Years later I hassled my fanged ex-fighter pilot father about
his somewhat uniquely developmental (heavy on the mental)
instruction technique. He shrugged and said that if he could
learn to fly on a Harvard (in 1951) I could learn to fly on a Maule.

Still fly with my fanged ex-fighter pilot father, and also now
with my son, who soloed on that very same Maule M4-210C
when he was 14, and then the Pitts S-2B when he was 16.

http://www.pittspecials.com/images/geneseo.jpg
http://www.pittspecials.com/images/ottawa.jpg

I did many horrible things to my kid when he was learning
how to fly, but I never shouted in his ear, "If you don't do
something, we're going to die". Not even when he was 10
years old. He's a pretty good stick, actually:

http://www.pittspecials.com/images/eric_form1.jpg


Two pieces of advice I can give you on flight training, worth
precisely what you paid me for them:

1) start young. I am not being a pervert. If you want to learn
to speak another language, play a musical instrument or swing
at a fastball or operate speedy motorized equipment, start doing
it young before your brain has calcified. Look at all the great
motorcycle racing champions - they all started ridiculously early,
so that by the time they were 20 (at at their peak) they had 15
years of riding experience.

2) fly more. People don't fly enough. If you have less than 1000TT
fly twice every day wx permitting. That's how you get good.
Remember for every professional there was once an amateur that
simply wouldn't quit.

is flying a hobby for you? Or is it your job?

Goodness. Awfully early in the morning for metaphysical
questions like that. Reminds me of re-reading "Zen And
The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance" this summer at the
cottage.

It's bad form, but I'm going to answer your question with
another question:

"Is breathing, eating and screwing a hobby for you? Or, is it your job?"

my advice... Get a good instructor

Now you tell me. Where were you in the early 1970's?

[Snowy]

my advice... Get a good instructor

Now you tell me. Where were you in the early 1970's?

Not even thought of sir... Born in 1983. Wish I would have had the opportunity and funds to start early. I agree with everything you said, and will be offering the opportunity to my 13 month old son as soon as he is ready, if it's something he wants to do.

[Colonel Sanders]

Either the kid will be interested, or he won't. You'll
find out pretty quick. The important thing is to ignore
all the nanny state crap about child-raising. You know,
keep them safe, fat and sedentary in front of the TV.

Get the kid riding a tricycle, and a bicycle. His knees
and knuckles will get skinned. Won't kill him. Get tools
into his hands, and get him fixing his bicycle. Adjust
the seat. Clean and lubricate the chain. Repack the
wheel and crank bearings.

Then get him riding a dirt bike at young enough age
to horrify all the left-wing women around. He'll love
it. Get him driving and fixing a boat. Teach him why
he needs to run the blower for 2 minutes before engine
start.

Get him driving and fixing a tractor. Get him driving
and fixing a car. By the time he's 12 or so, he should
be pretty competent at manual stick shift, if you give
him a chance. By the time I was 12, I was taking apart,
modifying and re-assembling car engines.

Get him in the airplane. Lots of cushions so that he
can see over the dash - eye height is critical - and
reach the rudder pedals ASAP. Make sure he has
fun - flying an airplane is a terrific lot of fun.

After a while, his little eyes will open up, his legs
will start going, and off he will go. Great stuff.

Teach the kid that he can do anything he wants
to, but that it's going to take a lot of work. That's
the main thing I see missing these days - work
ethic. Everybody wants instant gratification. You
know - they're lazy.

[all_ramped_up]

Was fortunate enough to get my Glider and PPL through the Cadet Program back in 1999/2000 respectively.

PPL though was through Victoria Flight Training on the DA-20A1 and finished in 7 weeks. Cost? Your tax dollars! lol

[akoch]

I started late - at ~39. Out of boredom of my main (IT) work. Never had a dream or inclination to go flying before. Now loving it. Based on the CS's statement I'm hopeless, but I'm still having fun I bet more so than a 10-year kid who does't overthink it.

It took me long, a couple of years at least to finish the PPL license (at 110 hours I think). Came across an aircraft that I liked, and started with a flight school. Survived there for less a year, could not take the attitude, teaching style, flight rescheduling etc etc anymore. Bought an aeroplane, and continued with the freelance instructor. That was the most brilliant move I could do. Finished the PPL quickly and easily about a year ago. Weather/time permitting trying to fly as often as I can. A few times a week. Staring to think of the CPL license now. Though flying is purely for fun and never will be for work.

I am on the West Coast, CZBB and CYPK. Hard to say anything about the overall cost of training, as in my case I paid for my DA20. But once you do it the cost for the training is reduced probably by factor of 10, and the fun factor goes up as much. I personally don't think that renting/going via a flight school makes any sense whatsoever. Both from the cost perspective, and more importantly for what and how you learn.

[Ivan42]

I started late - at ~39. Out of boredom of my main (IT) work. Never had a dream or inclination to go flying before. Now loving it. Based on the CS's statement I'm hopeless, but I'm still having fun I bet more so than a 10-year kid who does't overthink it.

It took me long, a couple of years at least to finish the PPL license (at 110 hours I think). Came across an aircraft that I liked, and started with a flight school. Survived there for less a year, could not take the attitude, teaching style, flight rescheduling etc etc anymore. Bought an aeroplane, and continued with the freelance instructor. That was the most brilliant move I could do. Finished the PPL quickly and easily about a year ago. Weather/time permitting trying to fly as often as I can. A few times a week. Staring to think of the CPL license now. Though flying is purely for fun and never will be for work.

I am on the West Coast, CZBB and CYPK. Hard to say anything about the overall cost of training, as in my case I paid for my DA20. But once you do it the cost for the training is reduced probably by factor of 10, and the fun factor goes up as much. I personally don't think that renting/going via a flight school makes any sense whatsoever. Both from the cost perspective, and more importantly for what and how you learn.

Can you, um, elaborate on that a little?
It costs $10,000 to obtain a PPL within the minimums, around $12-$15,000 for 60 hours. How is purchasing an aircraft the cheaper option? DA 20's run from around $75,000 to $190,000, add to that fuel, maintenance and the cost of an instructor. Unless you got a used A1-Katana...in which case colour me jealous.

[akoch]

I got a 2005 DA2-C1, it was 125h TT and it was 1.5 years ago. The cost was at your lower range, if you include taxes, importation fees etc. Now it is at 600h, and if I was to sell it the price would be actually the same. So 500h don't seem to cost me much. I don't think it is such a big deal - you get yourself a nice personal airplane at a cost of buying another car. The ownership cost is often exaggerated, so scare people off? You can probably come up with an estimation how much will it cost anyone to rent an airplane from a school for 500h.

And yes, getting a Katana and converting it to the 100hp version is a really smart move.

The freelance instructors are anywhere from $20-50h. Mine was in the middle of the range.

The fuel is not a consideration to be perfectly honest. At under 5GPH it is Honda Civic territory. I think most of us can feed and care for a Civic. The maintenance cost (has gone through two annuals now) is also pretty much none-existent. Say 1500/year for everything, including repairs. It is a simple airplane, not a whole lot to maintain.

While I was on the student permit, the insurance was $279/year. After the PPL it is double of that (now can take passengers apparently).

But you are missing the main point - now you have an airplane to play with, go places, work on other ratings/licenses. It is there for you when you need it, and you know it inside out. And if you have to sell it... you'd lose what, worst case 20k when it is at 2500h TT?

[trampbike]

How is purchasing an aircraft the cheaper option?.

You still own an airplane once the training is finished...

Looking back, I really should have purchased a used aircraft with 2 friends also starting their flight training a couple of years ago. It would have cut down the per hour cost, and I'm sure we could have found a very good freelance instructor instead of going to one of the CYHU puppy mill and paying too much to learn so little.

[akoch]

In retrospect I know all too well now that if I started in my own airplane with a decent instructor the PPL would have taken under 60h in few months timeframe. And it would have been pleasant, fun experience throughout.
It may not be the best option for an 18-year old, understood. But for somebody already working (in other than aviation field) this is the best option imo.

[Dizzy D]

PPL at Calgary Flying Club
CPL, Multi/IFR through Okanagan College and Southern Interior Flight Center in kelowna
50 hour float course through Air Hart Aviation

Good times, noodle salad.

[Cat Driver]

PPL in 1953 in Cessna 140 and Fleet Canuck.

Finished in the thirty hour minimum, cost was $8.00 per hour solo and $10.00 dual.

Total cost was around three hundred dollars for flying and ground school.

[jump154]

I started when I was 38, wife and kids foolishly bought me a discovery flight and it just went from there. Took just under 2 years to get my PPL, and about 90 hours and $11-12,000 (dont tell the wife!). Sounds horrendously long, but in that 2 years were 2 winters, both of which involved stretches of at least 2 months without flying - which meant substantial review work. Also hit a couple of learning plateuas on the way (like learning to land).
Working full time, with travel involved meant that 2 flight/week was about the best I ever did, mostly got 1 flight/wk in but sometimes 1 every 2 weeks - so quite a bit of the extra time was my own doing. I looked at it philosphically - I wanted to fly aeroplanes, and I was flying an aeroplane and having fun and solo the cost was the same (actully cheaper as I didn't pay tax as it was training). I don't think there was any unnecessary hours in there.
At fleet mentioned in another thread, I learned at Guelph and my biggest frustration was that the back runway was not allowed to be used for training - I lost count of the number of flights cancelled due to westerly winds too strong for my naescent cross wind skills while the weather was otherwise perfect. Still, when I did fly I got pretty good at cross winds (with a narrow runway to boot - I get lost on 100' runways now).
Took a lot of time to study (I like to read) and aced the PPAER, and scored well on my flight test. Since then still renting - had to move as the school closed. Would love to buy an aircraft, but the money is just not there. Have set myself some goals to achieve in the next few years, as got kind of lost out of the training system for somethign to do - and flying locally all the time just to keep current was getting boring. Still having fun! CPL - maybe sometime in the future - would love the extra skills, don't know if it is worth the extra cost, and being over 40 now 6 month medicals (although I could let the class 1 lapse). Absolutely no desire to work for a living flying, right now i'm more likely to end up in the low and slow community.

[Shiny Side Up]

My fanged ex-fighter pilot father

I thought your father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery.

[YYZSaabGuy]

Goodness. Ok. It's the early 1970's, and I'm 10 years old. With
the help of cushions strategically placed under and behind my bum,
I can mostly see over the dash and reach the rudder pedals in the
Maule M4-210C. We're doing circuits at Toronto Island airport. I understand
it's been renamed since then to something weird like The People's Glorious
Bourgeois Flight Port of the Grandiose Toronto Area.

Anyways, this is the 1970's at the Island. No ANR headsets. No
boom mikes. No PTT's. No intercoms. Hell, no headsets. We used
a hand mike and tried to listen to ATC on the overhead speaker in
the extremely noisy cockpit. Really. No GPS, no LORAN, no moving
maps. If you had a VOR, you were Hot Stuff. No one could afford a
DME.

Anyways, I had reduced power and turned base and I was high
and slow. All I had to do was lower the nose to establish the correct
descent attitude - you know, trade some altitude for airspeed.

My fanged ex-fighter pilot father leans over to me and shouts in my
ear - remember, no headsets or boom mikes or intercoms in those days:

"If you don't do something, we're going to die"

Which, since Shiny got the ball rolling, undoubtedly led to the following exchange after landing:

CS: I just think, like, he hates me. I really think he wants to kill me.

Therapist: He doesn't really want to kill you. Sometimes we just say that.

Fanged Ex-Fighter Pilot: No actually the boy is quite astute. I really am trying
to kill him, but so far unsuccessfully. He's quite wily, like his old man.

[Geo]

PPL & Night Rating at the Calgary Flying Club.

Did my PPL in 15 months in 89 hours in DA-20C1s (evenings and weekends, I'm sticking to my day job) Averaged a little more than once a week and loved every second of it. Since then I have checked out in 4 types (including the PA-28 I now own 1/3 of) and I have to say the DA-20 is still my favorite bird to fly. I can't understand why people keep sticking with the 172. The Katana/Evolution is slippery and a little twitchy and you have to be on the numbers or you can easily overshoot your runway (or float down the pavement if you try to force it). And you had better learn to slip... It's a great machine to learn on because it makes you pay attention and learn to get ahead of it.

I was lucky to get a really sharp instructor who started gliding in Air Cadets. I learned to slip.
And sneak up on cows*.

Did my night rating so I could fly more in the winter (lower density altitude, Southern Alberta tends to be dry in the winter) - and so I get a lot more flying time. Nothing better than leaving work to go straight to the airport, prep, file and fly.

g





* we didn't actually sneak up on and scare livestock, we respect the farms we fly over here in Alberta.
But we COULD have. That thing is quiet, and floats forever.

[doan_1]

30Hrs TT so far @ CYCD. So far so good! Hoping to get my PPL done before the weather starts to turn out here on the coast. Since I commute quite a bit now, doing 3-4 flights a week my costs have been a little higher. I'm into it for about 9000 including my ground school and travel. It also cost a bit more because I started with only 1 flight a week with a week or two between, and a trip to the olympics (I won it through work, so I couldn't exactly say no!) so ended up with a lot of review. I'll let you know when I complete how the end result was!

I am definitely wanting to go CPL, but my financing is running short for this year. So I may have to make that a 2 year project. We'll see.

[RickertsRed]

Awesome stuff! This puts it in perspective of how it REALLY works… takes time, money, and a whole lot of practice… some people and schools make it sound as if you will be licensed and out the door for a few bucks within a month or two, clearly not the case…

Keep'em coming!

[cgzro]

Fabric Tail draggers off a grass strip in France at the age of 15. Instructor was a crusty old ex Mirage test pilot who had the rarest of English accents .. the French/Texan mix. A seriously fun experience. Don't know the cost. My dad was kind enough to fork out for it, however when we got back to Canada (Victoria) he said if I wanted to continue I had to pay half. Well by then I was hooked so I finished in spam cans at the Victoria Flying club, having a blast all around gulf islands, seattle, vancouver etc. Several interesting instructors back then, one of them was an ex WWII Mosquito pilot. Did the PPL and 99% of the CPL but never worked as a pilot. Went to University, got a job, family then 10 years ago got a plane then trained with various air show pilots. Thats when it got really interesting.

My advice ... fly with a variety of different instructors and different planes. It;'ll cost more but you'll learn more, especially with a few different instructors. Also funny when one instructor completely condradicts the other .... just don't tell them .. you just file it under 'ok there are two ways to do X'.

[Brantford Beech Boy]

OK, I'll play.
Certianly more pedestrian that CS's route....

Where did you do your flight training? East coast? Central? West? Foreign?
Seneca College

What flight training did you do? PPL? PPL+CPL? etc...
Ab Initio through to CPL/Multi/IFR

How long ago did you do it?
I graduated and started working 17 years ago

How long did it take you to get those licences? full-time? part-time? 1 year? 20 years?
8 college semesters or about 3 years

And what kind of ball park figure did it run you?
My parents paid my tuition but I believe it was about $700ish/semester plus room&board.

BBB

[moocow]

* West coast at CZBB
* Day VFR + night rating at the same school
* 1 year to do my PPL because I took a break
* $14,000 to complete PPL excluding night VFR rating, again due to a break I took I had to go back and re-do some lessons
* I originally want to join CX's cadet program (pre-iCadet) but got the boot at the interview and now want to fly for fun only. I'm 31 and don't have the money to start a CPL + Float.

[Shiny Side Up]

I can't understand why people keep sticking with the 172. The Katana/Evolution is slippery and a little twitchy and you have to be on the numbers or you can easily overshoot your runway (or float down the pavement if you try to force it). And you had better learn to slip... It's a great machine to learn on because it makes you pay attention and learn to get ahead of it.

I've never really seen the Katana/Evolution series of planes in that way. I find them far easier to fly than the Cessnas. They're probably the only plane I've seen that is more stable in all its axis than the Cessnas. All adverse yaw has also been worked out of most of the diamonds. The lighter props, reduces a lot of the torque and gyroscopic effects, the pencil thin contoured fuselage reduces a ton of the slipstream effect. The castoring nose wheel makes them even more tolerant of an unstraight touchdown. Any decisions about flaps has largely been taken out of the pilot's hands, they're neatly labelled take off and landing. Not to say that its not enjoyable to fly, since I think everything has value to teach a pilot, if we go by the Colonel's standard of what makes a good trainer, if he hates the Cessna 172, he should outright despise the Diamond.

As for my own flight training it has really been quite inconsequential. I can say that I graduated with my CPL MEIFR from a college program when I was 21, most of my initial training was done with Cessna 172. Knowing what I know now, going a different route would possibly have saved some money, but I don't regret doing the program since I feel I had some really good instruction there. Having an "aviation diploma" has helped me zero in my career, but I didn't know that when I started, and only after I started flying did I really realise where my interests in aviation specifically lay.

After that though, my flying training - I prefer to think of it as flying learning never really stopped. Some has been formal, some of it rather informal. The first things I did after my CPL was get some tailwheel and acro training, followed by my seaplane endorsement. I found out that one fo the things I enjoy most about flying is trying something new, or working on a new skillset. It was also perspective changing dealing with other schools and instructors, which I highly reccomend students do especially if they are of a career bent in the ir flying plans. Before I started working on my instructor rating, I did a few jobs here and there, it was a bad time to be looking for work in the early nineties. I think 5000 hours was the minimum requirement to fly a clapped out navajo. I did a few jobs where I didn't get paid and learned a lot about what operators would push you to do, and most importantly how to say no. Mostly I worked construction in the off time to fund my aviation misadventures. That was until I realised that I was spending a fair ammount of time teaching people how to work and figured if I could train ex-cons, wife beaters and alchoholics to not get killed on the job and operate sometime relatively complex machinery, I could probably teach people how to fly airplanes.

[burhead1]

Guelph, Ontario
Started in 1995 finished in 1996
PPL, did my night ratting in Kitchener around 2001
cost around 8-9000
Was going to do it as a career, but I. Just do it for fun.
Was renting, now own a challenger ultralight.
What is next? I am thinking 172/182 on floats.

My only advise.
Find an instructor who has been at the school for some time. I must have gone through five or six Instructors as they would move onto bigger and better things, or i just scared the shit out of them.