Podcast Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Aaron Henriques: Hello everyone. And welcome to the British pilot podcast. My name is Aaron Henriques. Some of you may know by now and today, I'm just going to speak a bit about the flying group that I joined recently, flying a Cessna 1 72, and also some helicopter lessons that I've had very recently. For those of you that follow me already, you would have seen the videos that I keep posting.
[00:00:27] I apologize. But anyway, so I wanted to just go through that with you. But before I do that why I wanted to just put out there is that I'm going to be doing quite a bit more flying. Coming up. And so occasionally I am going to have a spare seat. You know, if it's one of my plan flights and if there's a spare seat, I may well put it up on my Instagram.
[00:00:51] As I have already. And. Essentially people can get the opportunity to come along. So if you're not following me on Instagram already go onto your Instagram. Now open up your app and it's AaronHenray that's @AaronHenray give me a follow say hello, or don't just say hello. In fact, actually let me just talk about those hello people.
[00:01:13] Before I move on, because I get loads of messages, literally those domestic. The people just say hi or hello. Now I don't ever respond to any of them. Usually because they're tagged, you know, if you look on their actual profile you know, something about Forex trading or something ridiculous like that, but there may actually be some of you who actually want to actually chat.
[00:01:35] So. You know, if you are listening to this and you actually want to have a conversation about something or, you know, just say, Hey just add something else to it. Like, Hey, I listened to your podcast or something like that. So I might actually reply to you. Don't just be hello people cause you'll get ignored.
[00:01:52] I'm not being rude. It's just that they're generally spam. Yeah. So, so that's it. So yeah, follow them on Instagram and you'll get to see the opportunities that may well come up for flying. And I also talked to you a bit more at the end about how if it's not opportunity like that, how you can still get up and go and fly.
[00:02:10] So I've joined a new fine group. It's a members group. It's north wield flying group based at Northfield airfield. They are really good group. I have fun with them before I may have mentioned in the last episode, I can't remember. But anyway, I've joined this flying group. I decided on them particularly because they're very close to me.
[00:02:32] To, to the flat that I'm renting at the moment of my friends, they're pretty close to that. It's going to give me the opportunity to me, for me to be able to go up there and fly during my days off. Well I say days off, I decide when I get my day. Joys of running your own businesses. But the Northville flying group they're really good.
[00:02:54] Their aircraft are really well maintained compared to lots of places that I've flown before. The group aircraft themselves, they consist of free Cessna, one 70 twos. One of those is a normal has normal tanks. The other ones that the other two that I've been flying so far. Long range tanks. So they've got a duration of about six hours nearly, which is pretty cool.
[00:03:16] They've also got a PA 28 as well as part of the group aircraft. And if for some reason you want to fly 1, 5, 2, you can also use the north world flying training aircraft as well. They've got a ton of one, five twos and a very craft that they have available to them, but the one 70 twos and the PA 28 are for the All for the group members only as far as I'm told anyway.
[00:03:40] So what does it cost to join those groups? There, wasn't actually an upfront cost. There's a deposit of 200 pounds that I paid and 65 pounds per month. That gives you a very, I would say, a very good rate compared to what I've been paying elsewhere. Right now at the time of this recording, it's 135 pounds per taco hour for the 1 72.
[00:04:05] And to give an example, the other day I flew one and a half hours, and that was only 1.1 tack of hours. So I was only paying for 1.1 hours effectively. Even though my look time is actually one and a half hours. So, you know, it's pretty good. Good rates and the aircraft are well-equipped. And they've got plenty of GoPro attachment bits.
[00:04:26] So it'll be, you'll get to see a few more of those videos. One of them that I put up recently as has had lots of Sorry about that. I was rattling on and didn't realize the recording had failed. So I'll try and pick up where I left off. Yeah, so the, I was talking about Northfield. The, the aircraft are pretty good.
[00:04:44] Well they're all very good, very good condition. And. Basically, all I had to do was go up with one of the group managers who effectively, he, his main goal for that day was to show me around the airspace and the area so that I'm not creating any, you know, I'm not creating any sort of infringements or MLRs so mandatory occurrence reports.
[00:05:10] I think they're called literally about 200 or 300 feet above Northfield circuit. You will stray into standards, controlled zone, and you know, that's a potential license loser potentially may not, but you know, you could potentially utilize it at the very least. You're going to get a very nasty letter saying, what the hell do you think you're doing?
[00:05:30] And I imagine the group probably wouldn't like. That too much. Particularly as they are, you know, obviously wanting to keep Northfield, airfield, open, and GA friendly and whatever. And while there's all these other groups that are trying to shut it down. So yeah, so I would rate Northfield. I have flown there many, many years ago before just for a few lessons and stuff, but I've now joined their group and is open to new members now.
[00:05:54] I hadn't joined before. I may have mentioned because they were wanting to make sure that. The post COVID. The post COVID you know, like the end of the lockdown bit it's not post COVID, I'm just thinking like COVID, and over there at the end of lockdown in the UK, they wanted to make sure that the, all of the people that are have been paying their fees and stuff could go out and fly as much as they wanted before new members joined.
[00:06:18] So they give them about six weeks or so. And then they reviewed it and they said, yep, new members can now join because there's lots and lots of availability aircraft. So highly recommend. Now I want to get your short because I've got a feeling there's something wrong with my phone. Yeah, I record these on my iPhone and I dunno what happened the last time.
[00:06:36] It literally just cut out which hasn't happened before. So maybe this is something new to do with the latest version of the app that I'm using. So yeah, I also had some helicopter lessons, which some of you may have seen already, and I've had a few people write to me about that. And there is no that there is no getting around it.
[00:06:55] Helicopter lessons are really expensive. I think I was pay, I did my head, he got to lessons. With ice helicopters they are one of two, I believe, helicopter, PPL, like training schools at Elstree very similar sort of pricing. The only thing was that I chose ice helicopters mainly because they just, so they just say modern, like in terms of flying schools.
[00:07:23] The the, the, the alternative, there was very much, you know, traditional, as you'd expect sort of flying school ice helicopters was like walking into, I don't know an up-market sort of crew room or whatever. They, you know, they're very professional. They've got their own HANA really nice layout. The owner, Martin, who isn't an instructor, he's just a, you know, he's, he has.
[00:07:46] Private pilot's license for helicopters. You know, he's been successful in business and he. I said he copters and there, it looks like they're doing really well. Anyway. They've just bought a brand new R 44 cadet. I didn't get to try that out. I flew the Kaveri G2, so I had half an hour on that. And then I flew in the Robinson or 44.
[00:08:07] The, you know, the normal, the normal version as well for another half an hour. And it was practicing with that just general handling, you know, maneuvering, getting used to those controls and did a bit of hovering as well, which is really cool. But what I did realize is there's lots about the inside of the helicopter, the controls and stuff.
[00:08:25] I don't know. So principles of flight stuff I don't know. And I think at 540 quid an hour, it's way too expensive for me to be. Trying to, you know, to, to be learning the ferry side in the helicopter when I could do that on the ground. So I have bought or is it, they recommended a book for me. It's called helicopter manual principles of flight technical Hage.
[00:08:48] And that's by HR Quantic yeah, it's from poolees anyway. They recommended that so that I can read up and actually understand what some of that. It's actually doing what it's meant to do, what it's for. And then when I'm in the aircraft, I can actually then just concentrate on putting the stuff that I've read in the book into a bit more practice.
[00:09:11] And it makes more sense in the aircraft rather than wasting valuable minutes on speaking to an instructor in the air about what does that thing do or what's it meant to do sort of thing that, that things I can read on the ground. So that was really cool. If you want to see, you know, the videos of that, I've got them on.
[00:09:28] I think I have, yeah, I've, I've got the, I've got like some short clips on my Instagram. I probably uploaded them onto like YouTube or something like that at some point. But if you want to see like the full videos, for some reason, there's no cop audio. Unfortunately I didn't have the leads or anything like that at the time.
[00:09:44] And in fact, I couldn't even use my own headset because I didn't realize that again. It's another thing. I didn't realize that the helicopters had a single plug, whereas as you know, for most GA aircraft, But for planes, they are twin plugs for most of you may well know that. So anyway, yeah, I'm going to be trying out some audio some aircraft audio I've bought some leads and stuff and.
[00:10:07] Their work. And so I can attach them to the GoPro and hopefully you'll start getting some really bad RT from me. It's something I really need to brush up on because I haven't been flying much for a long time. Haven't flown much on my own for a long time. And it's something that I'm going to have to just get back into the swing of things and go and do so I did actually got the other day I needed some circuit work.
[00:10:29] Yeah, I just want to say, you know, get, get back up on my own in a nice, I guess, safe and comfortable environment of, you know, not actually leaving airfield but going forward, I'll be going off doing other stuff. So with that in mind, obviously I have mentioned already that I will occasionally have the opportunity for you guys to.
[00:10:50] You know, to be able to come up, you know, for you that, for those of you that are like super far away, sorry, but that's life. There are also times when, you know, maybe planning something up, you know, going up north or whatever, or down south. And, you know, I post a, if I've, if I'm likely to be down there and have a spare spare seat, or even if I don't have a spare seat, you know, if I'm flying up north or whatever, and you know, some of you guys I've been chatting to hanging around, just let me know.
[00:11:16] You know, you can always still just jump in and we'll just go for a little fly around the area and then come back and we'll go back. Yeah. So if you, if you just if, if you, if you want to find out a bit more about those, obviously you just go onto my Instagram. It's AaronHenray that's @AaronHenray.
[00:11:30] Give me a follow say hello, although don't be one of those hello people and Yeah, let me know, you know, reply to the stories share it with your mates or whatever. If you've got a couple of pounds that you want to come up with, and then hopefully I can take you up some point in the future. That's it for me today.
[00:11:48] I've got a lot of work to do. I'm currently running a project for one of my businesses, it's a, it's a new startup that I'm running alongside my normal business work and stuff like that. And it's taking up a tremendous amount of my time. So I have been sort of, you know, put him in breaks for myself to make sure that I've just got time for myself.
[00:12:08] And the occasion is days like the other day when I just couldn't be. I was like, I'm not doing anything. So I just sat down and I watched Netflix all day and it's really, really bad. And I felt guilty the next day, but Hey, that's life. Sometimes you need a break. Until the next time I speak to.
