Hello and welcome to my blog! For years I have always wanted to be a pilot, ever since I can remember I have been amazed by these wonderful flying machines over my head and have been extremely excited every time I get a chance to fly on one.
Unfortunately life and finances have always previously prohibited me from following through and making aviation my career as planned.
I am now in a position (just about) where I can make the dream of flying a reality and have recently signed up to start flying lessons.
Why now?
After looking into the PPL(A) for many years and always ruling it out as too expensive, I had recently been given some advice to take a look into Microlights and more specifically the NPPL. This was mentioned to me as a more affordable way to at least get flying. After doing some research into Microlights seeing how advanced they are now, and how very similar they are to other light aircraft it seemed like a really good and much cheaper way of attaining a pilots licence. They are also apparently excellent fun!
I continued to do a lot of research into the different licences and believe that the NPPL will be suitable for the style of flying I would like to do, also some proposed licensing changes from the CAA would allow any hours gained on a Microlight to be used towards the PPL if I ever decided that is something I wanted to do.
What’s the plan?
After having a trial lesson and a chat etc with people around at the club I have now signed up as a student at Kemble Flying Club, I had the option of either Gloucester or Kemble as my most suitable fields to train at and based on the feedback I have seen around Kemble Flying Club I decided this was the place to try out.
My aim is to try and at least schedule one flight per week as long as funds allow, based on my reading I have been told to do this and expect a number of cancellations over time due to weather conditions or aircraft availability etc.
I am also going to be studying on a 3-axis microlight (these are more like a traditional light aircraft) and a Skyranger Nynja to be specific.
These are in the 600kg class of microlight and can take 2 pilots up to 120kg each and a full 65 litre tank of fuel. With a cruise speed of up to 90kts they are a perfect aircraft for training in.
This blog
I intent to use this blog as an area to document my training journey, my thoughts on the process as well as using it as a min de-brief for myself after each lesson, I have decided to do this online as I hope it may provide some insight for others who would also like to consider the NPPL.
I am also hoping to try and record some of my lessons, I have seen other comments that this is a really useful training tool and also something I would like to share. I have been obsessing over multiple Youtube channels over the last few weeks watching all sorts of microlight flying.
Please feel free to comment on any posts as any comments or feedback would be great!