[martins]

Hi all,

I know this question might seem a bit annoying, but please bear with me. If you would buy a plane tomorrow for a reasonable budget (let°s say 30-40k), what would it be? Catch - hours spent on that plane has to go towards your PPL(A) hour building, so are microlights out of the question?

[aviatorsguide]

The easiest one to re-sell would be a could place to start as you may not want to keep it afterwards. The easiest aircraft to sell by a country mile is a Cessna 152. That's all the free advice I can give!

William

[martins]

are the likes of Zephyr 2000 and Samba XXL, which MTOM exceeds 450KGs good enough for the purpose? Most people would still consider them microlights, but according to IAA their MTOM have to be below 450kg for a two seater and stall speed below 35kt in a landing config to be considered microlights. Am I missing something?

[willo]

Hi Martins,

The Samba XXL is a microlight, so any flying will not count towards hourbuilding. The >450kg variant is an option (Samba XLA). Capital cost is considerably higher than the Ce 152 but running costs are lower.

Is rental an option?

Brian

[martins]

hi Willo, sure, probably renting is what I will do

Just to be clear, I'm still probably some year away from my PPL, so what I really am doing at the moment is just fantasizing about what and how will I do.. I know it's sort of childish but I want to believe it's normal. The big dream is to own an affordable, simple, economic and somewhat modern aircraft. Basically I want a microlight that will work with PPL-A

I checked with IAA registry and got really confused now - every resource out there says Zephyr's MTOW is between 472.5 and 550kg depending on the version, yet the only Zephyr in the IAA registry MTOW is 450kg. Things with Samba XXL get even more confusing - some are registered as microlights with MTOW 450kg, some are registered as homebuilt with 540kg. Is there any benefit for the owners registering their aircraft as M? Less hassle? Tax?

EDIT: to make things more fun, just found another Zephyr, only registered as ATEC 2000 with MTOW 544kg, registered as Homebuild/ Land Aeroplane . Essentially it's the same machine as the other zephyr, but MTOW is nearly 100kg different.

[willo]

Martins

Originally, the microlight class was for designed for aircraft clearly definable as microlights, but the lines have become blurred with higher performance micros such as the Samba.

The distinction between the Samba XXL & the XLA is the MTOW, but they are principally the same aircraft, but different certification!

regarding tax & hassle, thats not really the case. Both cost similar & both are Annex 2, so operate on Permit. The main distinction was that a microlight licence required a little less training (5 hours less under the old regime; now 15 less) (min 45hrs for Group A; min 30hrs for micro) but you couldnt trade you licence up to Group A with ease. Trading down from Group A to micro licence is a lot less rigorous (5 hours & flight test)

Keeping curency on both licences is a seperate exercise if you hold both

LAPL will blur the lines further!

Drop down to us iin Ultraflight Sunday afternoon if you're about for the Abbeyshrule fly-in & we chat about it more (and probably clarify less!)

Brian

[martins]

haha... I'll see how my plans pane out, if I'll have no commitments I might swing along.

[willo]

Oh for no commitments!!!

There's also a Group A club at Abbeyshrule who do training in a Ce 172 so you could talk to the guys there also. Be glad to show you about

[martins]

got my lesson postponed from saturday to sunday, so couldn't make it, hope you had a good event there