I’m so grateful to Joan Walsh from Saxon Microlights in Essex and who’s also a BMAA Council member, who very kindly helped me out with some advice yesterday. She saw some comments that I’d posted about how frustrated I was about the amount of training I apparently needed given my previous flying experience and how I was annoyed that the exams I took last May were about to ‘expire’ and that I’d then have to take them again.
She referred me to NPPL/XC/REV 08 dated 26 Jan 2009, ALLOWANCES AGAINST TRAINING which is a document on the BMAA web site and said that her interpretation was different to what I had originally been advised. So this morning I spoke to Geoff Weighell, the BMAA Chief Executive, who kindly spared me some of his time. He confirmed that Joan’s interpretation is absolutely correct.
In fact I do not need to do a full NPPL(M) training course. I didn’t even need to take the exams, but no harm done there because revision of valuable information never hurt anyone, did it. All I needed to do was undergo a period of training (unspecified) by a qualified Microlight Flying Instructor and then pass a GST (General Skills Test) and the GST oral examination. Simple 😕
What’s annoying is that if I’d carried on flying continuously last Summer and not spent the time working on MYRO, I could have done that easily last year and be flying now. But that’s water under the bridge. At least now I know that I don’t have to worry about the ‘time limit’ on the ruddy exams and can aim to take the GST whenever I’m ready to at a time that suits me. And I don’t have to carry on paying to do fairly expensive cross countries in someone else’s aircraft when my own has been there waiting for me for weeks and weeks!
And that’s excellent news 😀
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Tony, the bit that made me smile (sorry 😉 ) was when you said you were sweating and shaking and needed a cuppa to recover!
😆
I must admit it was ‘fun’ and I was the only one flying that day, other than Martin doing some test flying on the new SLA and a eurostar from Essex. Still it does give you a lot more confidence for when trying to get home and the weather is changing while you are on your way back.
Yep, it really is, Tony. At last I can see the winning post now. It’s still a little way in the distance but nowhere near as far away as before Joan uncovered this for me. So instead of flying around building up solo hours and doing cross countries (in someone else’s aircraft to boot 😕 ) I can just plan to do some GST consolidation and revision and hopefully take a run at the GST. Then, assuming I’m successful 🙂 while I’m waiting for the paperwork to be sorted I can get the wings back on MYRO and get it permitted ready to fly. With the lovely weather coming up (hopefully) this should be a fantastic Summer for me and I look forward very much to meeting you and Rosemary. Nearly popped into Stoke last weekend but because of the anticipated cross wind I went to Headcorn instead. From your blog, it looks like I did the right thing 😉
Roger
Great News! See you at a fly-in soon 🙂