Podcast Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Aaron Henriques: At everyone and welcome to the British pilot podcast. I'm Aaron Henriques. And today I'm going to just answer a question that was sent to me. Just sorta I've got it covered and I thought I'd do it when I'm going for another walk. As I do most evenings around this airfield in Essex, I don't know if any of you know where I'm at.
[00:00:22] I know that some people don't because the messages that I get asking me. I'm at Stapleford aerodrome which they put flight center and. They are, you know, pretty much, well, I think they are like the main school in sort of the London and Essex area for commercial flying training. So yeah, if you're interested in commercial flying, if you hit up their website, it's fly sfc.com.
[00:00:47] Oh.co.uk. Can't really which one? One of them, I'm sure you can work out. And you'll be able to sort of see what they're doing and see what their sort of prices are. The courses are. I've seen I've seen a number of flying schools and I don't know about this one at the minute, but I've seen lots of flying schools during the lockdown.
[00:01:02] And, you know, shortly after the lockdown, who've sort of been putting up some really great sort of like discounts for people who are interested in like PPL flying or anything like that, or. Particularly seen some really good discounts where you pay up front and and yeah, you're, you're just going to get a really good deal.
[00:01:20] The only thing I'd say to that people is. Oh, why is the field so white? The only thing I'd say to that before is that to be careful if you've got any flight schools at the minute, or any anyone, any businesses that you're working with, I'm asking you to pay large sums of money up front. Just be extremely careful with how you're doing it.
[00:01:41] Perhaps use a credit card that might give you a bit of protection. But check with your credit card provider before you do, because I don't want to get sued by you. It's your own decision? But there, there are great deals out there, but just be mindful that if they are giving out these massive deals, where, where you're potentially saving thousands, it could be because they're facing financial issues because of the COVID.
[00:02:03] But obviously it's going to help to get that cash flow through their businesses. Sorry, I'm talking about business so much for those of you who don't know. I do run businesses and I love it. It's like my, my next sort of passion. Other than flying. That's probably why I'm speaking too much. But anyway the question that I was asked about for relating to my last episode was about a night rating.
[00:02:26] What it was, was the person wanting to know. One, how much it costs to do a note writing. I didn't ask much more than that, but I thought I'd give you a bit more, tell you a bit more about what the night rating is, how it's done was certainly how it was done here, how I experienced it what it does for you and when you can actually go on.
[00:02:47] So for me the night rating here, it's five hours. Okay. So that, but that's the minimum that you need. You need to have five hours, which I believe includes five takeoff and landings. At night and they all take off and landings, they're not touching goes, so you actually have to stop. And for us, we would stop.
[00:03:09] Then we would backtrack up the runway would go back to the threshold and then come into runway again and then go up again. For our, as part of our takeoff and landings, we'd also go off. Across country, which you have to do. And you do like some general handling and stuff at night with an experienced instructor who is going to show you the ropes and things are crazy up there at night.
[00:03:31] It's so different to the daytime in many ways. It's great. It's like, what I imagine flying right now is like during the middle of coronavirus where there's no aircraft up there, it's just like you on your own. Because very few people fly pick. If you're late at night where the sun is proper set, I'm talking about like pitch black.
[00:03:50] Then it's, it's amazing. And you can see all the lights and, you know, from all over, we've got amazing views here. When we take off, we're looking straight into like we take off on the high runway here. We're looking, you know, into, into London. And the view is absolutely stunning over there at night. It's.
[00:04:08] It's really something to see, even if, you know, if you're not a pilot, if you're not flying, I don't know if they do it, but ask them one day, you know, come down and go for a lesson and see if, if they'll take you out for a night air experience flight or something like that. So you can see what it really looks like.
[00:04:24] Yeah, so you, you have to do the five hours and within that, you have to have. Solo time as well. Now with that solo time, I spent most of that doing circuits. It's not all of it, actually can't remember it wasn't that long ago. I did it in March. I'd just finished it in March, literally a couple of nights before the before the clocks changed.
[00:04:46] Now, the reason why that's important is because a lot of the fly-ins clubs cannot offer night training when we're in British. That's because it's not nice. For example, at the minute I'm walking around and it's it's wow. It's late. It's like 10 to 10 and it's still light outside. I mean, obviously the sun has set, but it's still very light.
[00:05:09] And the night rating can be done from from sun 30 minutes before, sorry, first six minutes after sunset and 30 minutes before. Sunrise, but with that, obviously the flying schools don't stay open that late. So there are places you can do it. I hear that you can do it at south end and it's extremely expensive.
[00:05:31] I think it's something like 30 pounds of touching go for you to do it. So if you are going to do your nights, you need to make sure that you plan properly. Unlike me, I left it right to the last minute, but if you plan properly ahead and as soon as summertime ends, you know, start getting in there and booking it and your slots because they go really, really quickly because everyone tries to get them done in a really short period of time, even though winter feels like it lasts forever.
[00:05:58] It's actually really short. Particularly as you get so many bad days where you cannot actually feel. At all. So what a night rating allows you to do? It allows you to fly at night, right? And you need to have done a free taker for landings in the last 90 days, 30 days to be able to take your your passengers up, but that will allow you to fly.
[00:06:20] During nighttime hours, which is something that you have to have if you're going on to do your commercial training. Because you're, you're not going to be able to go and do your night, your commercial, pilot license, your, your your instrument rating or anything like that without your Knight rating in place in the first place.
[00:06:37] So I just wanted to let you know a bit more about the night rating, how much it costs. I didn't tell you how much it costs. So it costs me At the time that I bought it. And that was 1,100 pounds, I believe. Those rates had been like that for a while. I cannot guarantee of course that they would be the same and obviously they would change depending on what flight school you're with.
[00:07:01] And they also depends on what aircraft you did it in. So I did mine in assessing the 1, 5, 2 cause I just needed the rating. I wasn't really interested. You know, spending double that on a slightly faster aircraft when all I'm doing is going lapse around the circuit. Yeah, so that, that, that that's the night's in a nutshell and, and how much it costs.
[00:07:21] So hopefully that was useful to any of you that are thinking about nights about doing them. It's something you really need to think about is that planning ahead and I'm getting closer and closer to this mystery fog that is all over the place. It's really crazy. I wish you could see it. I'm going to take a photo and I'll post it up because it's really weird.
[00:07:41] Yeah, but if you want to, if you want to get in contact with me, if you've got any questions about, and at night rating or anything else actually to do with the you know, private pilot's license or your ATPL's, or even your commercial pilot's license, I spent even, I've not done the courses yet. I've spent a lot of time with commercial students.
[00:07:58] I can't talk to you about the, you know, the individual technical stuff, because I'm not. But I can certainly point you in the right direction if you, if you have any questions about it. So get in contact with me, anytime you like. On Instagram, it's AaronHenray that's @AaronHenray. Just send me a message.
[00:08:18] If I miss things open, pop me a message and I'm more than happy to have a chat with you about whatever issue you're doing. And of course I did mention business. So if you are into business yourself, if you've got a little flares and entrepreneur or anything like that, then you can find me on the get growing online podcast.
[00:08:33] That's also wherever you're listening to this, it's in the same app. Podcost platform, whatever it is you use. Yeah. So until next time, as you can see, I don't really do these on a set schedule. I'm not planned. I don't have any funky intro music or anything like that, or outro music just me when I feel like I have something to say, just record and you get it raw.
[00:08:57] Okay.
