Jonny_J

It's fried rice, you plick ;-)

These are just my opinions of course, but I don't actually see 20 hours to convert from 70 hours RAA with XC to PPL(A) as an inherently bad thing. OP says nearly all that time has been learning to fly the very different 172 after building up 70 hours on a jab. Of course there's bad training anywhere and everywhere and of course it's beyond dumb to let the guy that you pay for lessons decide if you pass the test, but I would have thought you could have this exact experience with a fantastic instructor That could do your RA and GA ticket. I don't know if that 70 hours is including dual time, but it's still not a massive amount of total experience, and it's all on one type of aircraft. Spending 10-15 hours just getting used to another type is, actually probably a good thing. One of the reasons Cirrus insurance so often mandates that you take the cirrus flight school thing when you buy your plane is because even if you just fly a 172 for 50-60 hours to pass your PPL then do another 50 hours in 172's solo, that SR22 is gonna be a huge leap! I know it's expensive, but having felt the difference between a jab and a 172, isn't it good to have spend your time learning the differences with a qualified instructor sitting next to you? For me... I see a lot of people talking about total expense and whether RA -> GA is really cheaper than just GA in getting to your PPL. In terms of the amount of instruction you get for your money, clearly it is. But in terms of total spend it might not be. What matters is what's the mission - what will you do with your PPL? If you want to just hire/own a 172 or whatever, sure, probably doing all your training in a 152/172 is gonna be cheaper/simpler long term. But if you also want to take out a jab or a foxbat or whatever, I think it's prudent to also do some lessons in that before you do. A jab doth not land like a Cessna, and you might not want to find that out when you're on your own. Sure the longer you fly, the more planes you fly it will always get easier, I'm just talking about a case where you do all your training in a GA and want to fly an RA or vice versa after relatively few hours. The only thing that really worries me is a trend I'm seeing in younger schools looking to get competitive pricing. It goes like this: find a plane that can be RA registered or GA registered. Buy two. Now you use the RA one to get the student their RPC, then convert it to an RPL in the RA registered one. Of course the checkride goes without a hitch because it's basically the same plane. They then use the GA one to get you to PLL. Much cheaper, maybe $100/hr or more cheaper than using a 172. But you've only flown one very light aircraft. It's on you to use common sense and go and get those 10-20 hours training on something heavier before doing it yourself (though I would hope anyone letting you hire a plane would check what you've flown before giving you the keys lol). I guess I'm just saying that as long as the instructor is good and you're still learning, lesson time isn't a waste of time or money, and if you only want to fly GA/RA planes, train only in GA/RA planes, but if you want to fly both, of course there's a more substantial switch over than going from a Cessna to a piper.

That's actually a really good point. Fair enough they only focus on the crew of one boat - there's already three different stories to follow lol - but getting a big flotilla shot would, I naively assume, have been pretty easy to raise, and could have been a great cultural/educational event outside of the film. On another track, I was thinking earlier that I actually really liked the sounds they put in inside the cockpit - all the shaking and rattling definitely added a great level of depth over the classic cinema style of an actor sitting in a silent model cockpit with engine and gun noises dubbed over. Of course I won't know how accurate that sound is for a spitfire of the era, but it definitely added a great depth to the experience as a viewer (& WW2 warbird twitcher)

I enjoyed the film a lot. Although.. I would have to say that I was scoping that enjoyment against today's cinema trends. Not something I could put a finger on, but just a sort of acceptance that you're not going to get a classic action or war movie these days and it could have been a lot worse you know? Didn't really disappoint, but also didn't really go anywhere, probably 7/10 just for the enjoyment side of things and it not being a superhero movie. Not a movie to add to the "must see before you die list" but something special in the scope of the last few years.

If anything it's a good thing that they keep updating the emissions rules isn't it? I mean clearly it's not a set and forget kind of thing, look at diesel cars. It used to be a much more fringe thing to own a diesel; basically if your use of a car made sense to own a diesel engine. But then heavy handed (and short sighted) 'green' legislation and advisories came in that only focused on certain types of emissions that favoured diesel engines and now we have to put up with disgusting clouds of regeneration exhaust all the time because motorists were being told that diesels were cheaper and greener to run. Now I see the UK has banned the sale of diesel cars in the future and lots of friends I have there are feeling confused because they'd actually been lead to believe they were doing their bit for the environment. Of course it'd be nice if for once legislation wasn't reactionary and short sighted, but wherever you are in the world, we're still talking about governments lol. Personally I'd be very happy with an electric plane when the technology is available.. and tested... very much tested (I don't want to be the person who finds out how many hours until failure anything has). So far all the electric fixed wings I've seen are tiny little things with a very small range, although an electric trike could be nice...

My first reaction was "seriously, how are these people not learning lessons from public votes?" - you'll end up with the greatest pilot being 'Cpt Shooty McSpitface' or something insufferable. But, then, you know I realised. I grew up with my grandfather's stories, and my great uncle's stories, and their friend's stories down the social club growing up. But they're all gone now, we lost the last member of our family from that generation earlier this year, so young people are growing up without access to the real living history. If these silly competitions help carry it to a new generation I think that's a good thing. Honestly, we didn't have a fighter pilot in the family - just two mosquito guys and a wellington/lanc lad, but all of them would have had the same reaction to this news; a bit of friendly rivalry to get a British guy in top spot, followed by utter respect for the polish pilots in the war. Every guy I spoke to growing up had so much respect for them. They wouldn't be sad that a Pole was voted the best fighter pilot. They'd be sad nobody closer to home cared about it until some hack headlines. I always used to hear the old boys say that as long as people remember, it'll never happen again. Honestly, looking at the state of politics and international relations lately, it seems pretty clear people are forgetting.

Thanks for bringing this up - I find it quite interesting really. As OP says, he's spoke to CASA, and landing at a different field within 25nm is fine, it's just the consecutive flights that's up for debate. Honestly I don't think there's enough info between the RAAus and CASA info for us to make the call - you'd have to ask CASA before you fly if you were actually gonna do this. In the intent of the law stuff... hmm I'm actually split. At the end of the day the real intent of the law is to stop new pilots injuring/killing themselves or others by getting lost/disoriented or generally flying beyond their training & skills. They only have a handful of solo hours, all in the same airspace, probably in good conditions. The 25nm limit is I suspect to keep you in clear sight of your airfield should you get yourself into a bit of bother. On that side of things I'd say it is in the intent of the law - If the airfield is less than 25nm away and you're flying between the two, both are going to be pretty easy to see, regardless of whether you're flying from the original airport or the 8th in the chain. The part where it might not be going along with the intent is that it's inherently more risky to fly to airfields you've never been to before, over terrain you don't know and of course the training to plan such things comes in the nav endorsement. If you're flying from... lilydale to coldstream for example (like 3nm) let's be real, you're not going to have a lot of problems. But if you start trying to daisy chain hops together to get somewhere things can easily go wrong - start trying to hop airfield to airfield around the yarra ranges with no nav endorsement for example. Defo interested to hear what they say. Personally I would hope that you wouldn't be able to do this. The nav endorsement is there for a reason after all, and I actually scared myself a little bit by looking up how just how far you can actually get hopping field to field this way with no nav training and maybe less than 10 hours PIC.

As he's 18, and by the sound done a TIF, I would highly recommend taking a year or so of lessons if it's financially an option? Reality is a being 18, time is very much on his side, but knowing himself may not be. Whether Joining the military or spending $100k on getting a commercial licence, it's a really huge commitment either way. Now is also an interesting time for integrated courses. The gov just changed the VET-FEE system to VET student loans and most schools I know that used the old system honestly don't know what their status will be when the 6 month period expires; they're still waiting to see. If he's not self-funding, that's a huge wait and see! If it were my son, and knowing just how much we all changed between the ages of 18 and say... 24 or whatever, I would fully encourage and support his dream, but encourage him to take it slow - at the end of the day every hour he flies now is experience in the bank when/if he takes an integrated course, and an extra hour of total time when he's applying for his first job.. also encourage the ground school side of things. :)

I believe it is 1977 for Heathrow Picadilly line extension (checking Wikipedia), but yeah I remember the high speed train link wasn't until the late 90's. We lived in south London at the time and I remember just because up until then it was always so much easier getting the train to Gatwick than having to get the kill-yourself long tube to heathrow lol.

Yep, rapidly growing population, that's when you want to start scaling back on public transport But hey, why spend money on a new rail line when you've just put a tax on taxi rides ;)

Congratualtions! Very inspiring for those of us following you, best of luck with everything!!

Awesome quiz! I won't pretend I was hoping to do well, but quite happy with 33... that was some time spent with Airfix kits as a kid! (Still can't tell American radials apart lol!)

Hi Tony, Thanks! Ah my TIF was in a little thing called a "Foxbat" - the Aeroprakt A22. I actually found the tif by the plane. I started looking on groupon and most places that seem to use Jabiru aircraft by their websites have a height/weight limit of 190CM/90KG... sadly I'm 195cm/97kg - so too tall and too fat lol. Honestly I really liked the Foxbat. 55 minutes of flight isn't really enough experience for a noob to make any opinion, but I was pleasantly surprised. Thanks for the info! Ah it's the combination of moving to the coverage of a new region and all the licence and regulation changes that go with lol - I think being a little familiar with how things were once is actually something of a hindrance now lol, but it's going to be good practice learning to keep on top of things. I'm definitely interested in the RA cert. Not knowing much, I went into it thinking that PPL and GA aircraft was the way to go, but as I say the TIF experience changed things a lot for the short term. I just couldn't believe how much cheaper that A22 was - unless I misunderstood, the instructor said they find it burns half the L/hr of a C172. Sure it's a 2 seater and can't lift as much, but I don't see either of those coming in to play for quite a while lol. Plus it handled really well. I don't know, I might be a bit unfairly biased against the poor 172 going in - it was the first plane I ever got to fly, because at the time the RAF were changing their trainer planes over. Naturally with all the efficiency and organisation that comes with anything connected to the British government, there was a temporary shortage of planes so they hired C172's from a local school. Whatever the circumstance, we started on those, then the Grob G115's arrived and to 13 year old going up with a Tornado pilot and getting to do some basic aerobatics and such, it felt like getting out of a minivan and into a gokart lol. I definitely hear you on the importance of regular flying. I'm planning to save to the point where I can manage at least an hour a week to get the RA cert.. or RPL.. that's still confusing lol. It seems that a few schools seem to do the RPL exactly as you say - get the RA cert and convert it. In the mean time I'll be getting the Bob Tait book, X-plane 11 and studying lol... probably still buy a lesson from time to time to keep the enthusiasm up!

Hi everyone, I'm a little new to flying and a little new to Australia! I'm originally from the UK, where I racked up somewhere in the ball park of 20 hours as a teen in an RAF youth program, but haven't flown in nearly 20 years. I've been in Melbourne for almost two years, and now starting to feel like it's really time to get back up there! I did a TIF a week ago, just to see if maybe it wasn't as good as I remembered, and boy was that incorrect lol! So far I've mostly just been trying to work out how the licencing differs here to home, and what's changed in the last 2 decades lol! The plan now is really to save and head towards my PPL(A). While saving I'm mostly going to be studying theory, practicing in desktop sims and taking occasional lessons until I can afford to have an intensive couple of months of lessons to get my RA cert or RPL and go from there. Long term goal? Personally I think it's too early to be concrete about one, wait until I've got 50+ hours on my belt and I might have a better idea what's next, but I've been training people in technology for years, so flight instructor is a very appealing long term goal :)