Best to learn at busy or quiet airfield

[larry44]

I'm fortunate that I have a choice of airfields to learn to fly from.
Cranfield, Turweston, Sywell, Enstone. Which is the best to learn at
taking into account I'm starting in November and will be taking lessons

during the week and not weekends.
Is the heavy traffic at Cranfield a hinderance or help?

Thanks


Larry

[Andy R]

Post by larry44
I'm fortunate that I have a choice of airfields to learn to fly from.
Cranfield, Turweston, Sywell, Enstone. Which is the best to learn at
taking into account I'm starting in November and will be taking lessons
during the week and not weekends.
Is the heavy traffic at Cranfield a hinderance or help?

IMHO quiet is definately best. At most places you pay by the 'block hour'
and you need a certain number of 'block hours' in your log book to get the
licence.

If you've spent 30% of those block hours taxying, sitting at the hold and
'orbiting for separation' at a busy airfield you simply can't get as much
practice at the important stuff as you can at a quieter place.

You can always do a bit of dual to somewhere busy after you've got the
licence of you're that bothered. Otherwise, with a bit of planning, you can
go somewhere busier on your cross-countries during training.

Rgds

Andy R

[Neil G]

Post by Andy R

Post by larry44
I'm fortunate that I have a choice of airfields to learn to fly from.
Cranfield, Turweston, Sywell, Enstone. Which is the best to learn at
taking into account I'm starting in November and will be taking lessons
during the week and not weekends.
Is the heavy traffic at Cranfield a hinderance or help?

IMHO quiet is definately best. At most places you pay by the 'block hour'
and you need a certain number of 'block hours' in your log book to get the
licence.

Yip so long as you get experience of all types of field. Too mnay
PPLs come away with a fear of too quiet.too busy airfields/ports.

I would say none of the above really gett that much delay. Cranfield
is probably the busiest but does not suffer from commercial at
transport prioritisation

You starting your ATPLs any time soon Cptn R?


Neil

[VinMan]

Post by Andy R
IMHO quiet is definately best. At most places you pay by the 'block hour'
and you need a certain number of 'block hours' in your log book to get the
licence.

I do agree on that.
What's more, in the first part of learning to fly, you actually have to
concentrate on... learning to FLY the aircraft properly.
Later on you'll come to confront the real world and its whereabouts,
other traffic, ATC, poor weather and other calamities.
Good luck !

[Peter]

Post by VinMan
I do agree on that.
What's more, in the first part of learning to fly, you actually have to
concentrate on... learning to FLY the aircraft properly.
Later on you'll come to confront the real world and its whereabouts,
other traffic, ATC, poor weather and other calamities.
Good luck !

I think that's true, especially if you are charged according to the
standard UK ripoff method of brakes-off to brakes-on, which at
Cranfield is going to make training very expensive.

But, and many will disagree, a lot of the attraction of flying is to
go to far away places; places you can't drive to in a similar time.
Most UK PPLs do flights which to be honest one could do in the car in
just as long. And they get bored and chuck it in.

And once you start flying further, especially abroad, you often go to
bigger airfields or international airports. One can't normally fly
direct to some little quiet place, because they won't have Customs,
and may not sell avgas except to locals, etc.

So learning about ATC and using the radio properly is very desirable
if one is to get decent value out of the PPL.

In many ways, ATC makes flying easier. Of course many will strongly
disagree with that :) But try getting into certain uncontrolled
airfields on a sunny Sunday prceeded by 4 weeks of bad weather.
Complete pandemonium, with 5 overhead, 6 more in the circuit, people
overtaking you on the left, on the right, cutting you up on the base
turn....

I learnt at an ATC airfield (not as busy as Cranfield though) and I am
glad I did that.

[Jon]

Post by larry44
I'm fortunate that I have a choice of airfields to learn to fly from.
Cranfield, Turweston, Sywell, Enstone. Which is the best to learn at
taking into account I'm starting in November and will be taking lessons
during the week and not weekends.
Is the heavy traffic at Cranfield a hinderance or help?
Thanks
Larry

I am learning at Shoreham on the south coast and right from day 1
I got the busy airport feel. Its GA with a couple of small commercial
outfits that do the channel islands and France.
This is a challenge to be at as there are Grass and asphalt runways
in use depending on wind though asphalt is preferred The glide slope
on one end of the asphalt is 4.5 degrees due to the south downs being
in the way and the other end 3.5 with the sea as final approach. great
fun on both. the wins are variable due to sea breezes and the downs
that can make circuits interesting. they are standard left hand.
The Airfield has full ATC which splits into Tower and approach
frequencies when busy (which is quite often and most weekends. as well
as the recorded ATIS. in addition to that you can often have several
aircraft in the circuit the maximum I had was 8 but 4-6 is more the
norm when busy. All the other trappings are there.
Sure enough it can be frustrating if you want to take off but have two
aircraft in front doing power checks and then being filtered into
other traffic landing.
At busy times it can resemble any large airport in terms of movements
I have once been on base leg about to turn final when you could see
three other aircraft on the final glide slope. ATC do an amazing job
there.
In short I think that when I get my licence (doing cross country solo
ant the moment) I will be able to go to any airport however busy and
not be overwhelmed by the activity's going on especially if I have
not been there before. However the down side is that you can be
sitting at the hold for a period of time or when in the circuit be
told to orbit to allow higher priority traffic through or even wait or
hold outside of the ATZ. and of course this does cost more since the
meter is running till the brakes go on.

[Peter]

Post by Jon
I am learning at Shoreham on the south coast and right from day 1
I got the busy airport feel. Its GA with a couple of small commercial
outfits that do the channel islands and France.

I think Shoreham is excellent for training. The ATC in particular are
really helpful and courteous.

I am biased however; I trained there :)

[Surfer!]

In message <***@4ax.com>, Jon
<***@you.com> writes
<snip>

Post by Jon
In short I think that when I get my licence (doing cross country solo
ant the moment)

And the next step is to learn to do that in a glider... :D

<snip>

[David Cartwright]

Post by larry44
Is the heavy traffic at Cranfield a hinderance or help?

Heavy traffic can be a bit of a hindrance once you get past the basic stuff.
For the basics you take off, go find a bit of sky, do stuff for an hour,
then come back - so you only have to pick your way through the traffic on
the way out and on the re-join. Once you get into circuit-bashing, though, a
bit of experience of being asked to orbit, extend downwind, etc is useful
but as it happens more and more the educational value diminishes and the
frustration increases. So in that context a non-busy airfield is good.

I reckon that the ideal airfield would be one with a concrete/asphalt
runway, which has a few aircraft per hour, and which is fairly small so
you're not taxying for miles to get anywhere. Why concrete? Easy - when I
learned at Norwich, the runway was instantly usable once the rain had gone
away; on the other hand my brother-in-law, who's learning at a grass field,
has often been frustrated by having an unusable runway even though the
rain's stopped and the sky is blue.

Couple of things, though. If you're learning at an airfield that has either
no radio or only the basic air-ground stuff, do make sure your instructor
does plenty of radio work with you, and go and fly around places where you
need to use the radio (military zones, airfields with full ATC, etc). Make
sure he has you doing practice "PAN" calls, training fixes on 121.5, miltary
zone penetrations, the lot. My RT examiner once told me that he can tell
instantly between a student who learned at an airfield with full ATC and one
who learned out in the country and never really needed to talk to anyone.

David C