Introducing my new friend...

The economy is in a recession at the moment, you might have heard about it. In fact to not hear about it you have to have physically bury your head in the sand, and even then it has to be pretty deep. Everyone's talking about money...

I sold a car to pay for my PPL, so after I'd established that my flight school wouldn't run off with my money I paid for my course up front, getting a decent discount and missing the VAT rise back to 17.5% in the process. For the last few months of my course I hadn't actually handed over any money to the flying club, so fuel prices were inconsequential and I'd almost forgotten about landing fees!

Flying clubs and schools do a great job, not just in training pilots but also for rental and support after the training, but they're a business, and like any business they need to make a profit. Add in the CAA sticking it's hand in their wallet at every opportunity and it doesn't take long to see why rental prices are as high as they are. Hiring has it's advantages; maintenance, insurance and fuel are all included in the price and if something breaks you can just give the aircraft back and forget about it. If you want to take a 1 hour scenic flight once a month it's definitely the way to go.

Silverstone (on another hazy day) - A view worth £300?

But it's difficult to get the aeroplane for more than a couple of hours at a time, and even a short land-away flight can come to £300 by the time you've paid landing fees, as I discovered when I flew to Turweston to take a look at the new Silverstone circuit layout last month. Hiring is a pretty inefficient way of turning money into noise, and it just isn't sustainable if you want to go and explore. To me, that's the whole point of flying.

If you want to be cost effective, buying a share in an aircraft is a good start. I'd been vaguely looking around for a share since before my skills test, and I had found a couple of leads, but they'd led to nothing. A midweek flight one night in G-BKCC, a PA28 based at Gloucester looked promising, but there were no spaces in the group. Other groups I spoke to offered a couple of false dawns, but in the end were just not willing to let a pilot with as few as 50hrs into their club. I had a chance of a Piper Cub too, a lovely 1940's style 2-seater, but the maximum weight was just too low to make it a practical proposal.

Tripacer - A possible share...

It can be pretty disheartening, looking for a share-o-plane as a low hours pilot. Nobody seems to want you until you've got 100 hours, and I really don't know who can afford that nowadays. But my advice is to stick with it, because, like buses, 2 came along at once. A long-winded route passed through numerous phone-calls gave me an opportunity of a 1953 Piper TriPacer based at Oaksey Park, and one Friday night I got a message saying that a share had become available in CC, the PA28 I had flown in from Gloucester. The initial cost of both shares was about the same, and the rates for both aircraft meant that I'd be able to do a lot more flying with my meagre budget.

The Tripacer offered great classic flying, but the PA28 allowed me to stay at my 'home' airfield, offered better touring capacity, and most importantly, had a large, friendly group of experienced pilots who regularly buzz around Europe and that I could glean an awful lot of knowledge from. CC was the obvious choice. I'd already checked the aircraft out thoroughly when I went flying in her, so ignoring all the usual advice of taking your time to make a steady-headed decision I called up the person selling the share straight away and agreed a price. Two weeks later, the chairman of the Tripacer group called me to say they weren't happy with a low-hours pilot anyway, which made me feel pretty smug about my quick thinking to grab the CC share before someone else got it!

'My' PA28...well, sort of

It took about a month to finalise the formalities and for the committee to meet and agree me, and the insurance company had to be consulted because of my low hours and imposed some conditions. I've had to agree to take 5 hours additional training in the aircraft, and pay an additional insurance premium, both of which seem pretty sensible. I've met the committee of the group, and they're very friendly, and I still can't believe they're going to let me fly their aircraft...I guess I should say 'my' aircraft now too!

So G-BKCC ('CC for short) is my new friend. I've missed my cars - I always feel that the best cars I've ever had have become somehow more than mechanical, like an organic creature with a personality of their own. Given time, I'm sure I'll grow the same attachment to CC. I should have the training done in the next few weeks. Then I can wind my way to new destinations, and hopefully make a bit more noise, for a bit less money than before....