Chopper

It's very affordable in terms of money, not so in terms of time. About
3k-ish to get your microlight PPL (or NPPL or whatever it's called these
days), then you can buy a share in a nice aircraft for about 4-5k. Then
it's just monthly hangarage and maintenance fees (60 quid/month -ish)
and about 50 quid an hour to actually fly it. It can be much cheaper
than that if you buy a single-seater kit-build and have somewhere to
keep it in a trailer or whatever.

Most people I've met who fly microlights are normal, 9-5, working people
who are by no means rich.

The thing about flying in the UK is the weather is shit. You'd better
get used to hanging around in a field waiting/praying for the wind to
drop, the cloudbase to rise, the haze to lift, etc. Unless you have a
deathwish, you'll end up going home having spent the day waiting to no
avail about 1/2 of the time.

It's worth it for the good days though. Bloody fantastic hobby.

 

ftp://members.aol.com/teenirish/hbdymbox.wav [477 Kb]

 

It was somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the

Planning on buzzing the new bridge?

--

Dave

GS 850 x2 / SE 6a
SbS#6 DIAABTCOD#16 APOSTLE#6 FUB#3
FUB KotL OSOS#12? UKRMMA#19 COSOC#10

 

No prob.

Yes, absolutely - weather permitting. Some of machines currently classed
as "microlights" are faster, more spacious, more fuel-efficient, and
better equipped than your average flying-school Cessnas (mind you,
they're not cheap).

http://www.theflyingschool.co.uk/newsletter_main.htm has a bunch of
write ups of various trips, including France. Pretty much all the
aircraft pictured on those pages are officially "microlights", even the
ones that don't necessarily look like they are.

 

Darwin award contender, surely. Did he try and eject or what?

 

Read "Propellerhead" by Antony Woodward - it's next best thing to
actually doing it for yourself. If I wasn't into flying before I read
that book, I would have been soon afterwards! It's a really great
warts'n'all insight into the whole business of flying in the UK.