Toying with PPL/CPL for helicopter....

[Mario149]

Think I may be having a slight early midlife crisis. I'm 30 and I've worked in IT since graduating. While I find it reasonably interesting, it's become rather clear that at the end of the day it is just a job for me, not a passion. I've (so far!) been lucky/successful at it, but keep thinking I should do something I really enjoy. I have his fear of looking back in 10-15 years time and thinking that i had the opportunity to do something properly cool for work but wasted it. which got me thinking: I always wanted to learn how to fly and I've always found it fascinating (my degree was in aero eng and I actually worked in defence aerospace after graduating initially). Would like to learn just for me for fun, but I'd there was the possibility of doing it as a job, so much the better!

Thusly, I've recently found myself investigating:

A) getting my helicopter PPL just for the hell of it. With a few months of saving it appears that I could disappear to south Africa for 8 weeks and get it done and dusted: http://www.airbornesa.co.za/costs/index.php

or, in extremis,

B) saving a few more months and selling my 355, getting a CPL a la: http://www.flyoft.com/us-flight-training/helicopte...
There's also a "basic" CPL one that is about $45k

Ref A, has anyone done this or similar? Any thoughts advice?
Now I know that option(s) B may be a little excessive, but exactly how barking mad (or not) would I be to do it? Has anyone done it as well? Or got their PPL and thought sod it and gone all the way? If you are a newly qualified pilot, is work difficult to come by? Was thinking that I could always maybe mix and match by doing IT as stop gap when needed.

[Work too hard]

Can I ask why you have chosen those 2 routes / schools only ?

Which country are you in ?

Allow me to direct you to here where the answer to most of your questions can be found:

http://www.pprune.org/rotorheads-23/

[Newc]

I've gone some way along the PPLH. I'd recommend two things:

- do some intro hours at your local airfield first. Try and get at least to basic hovering - about 6 to 10 hours in. Make sure you can get on with general helicoptering before committing to an intensive course.

- it's quite mentally taxing at first. I wouldn't want to be on a schedule with a couple of flight hours and several hours of ground school in a day - I wouldn't be able to focus at all at the end, and rotary wing aerodynamics is not a simple topic.

[Mario149]

Work too hard said:

Can I ask why you have chosen those 2 routes / schools only ?

Which country are you in ?

Allow me to direct you to here where the answer to most of your questions can be found:

http://www.pprune.org/rotorheads-23/

Thanks for this, v useful, am reading through it now

I didn't choose those 2 schools specifically for any particular reason, they were just the ones that seemed to be able to give a reasonably good estimate on total costs for getting PPL or going further for CPL. Also, of doing this, I'd want to do a "full time" course, I have friends who went down the piecemeal route and it seemed to take forever/cost more, especially in the UK

[Mario149]

Newc said:

I've gone some way along the PPLH. I'd recommend two things:

- do some intro hours at your local airfield first. Try and get at least to basic hovering - about 6 to 10 hours in. Make sure you can get on with general helicoptering before committing to an intensive course.

That sounds eminently sensible

Newc said:

- it's quite mentally taxing at first. I wouldn't want to be on a schedule with a couple of flight hours and several hours of ground school in a day - I wouldn't be able to focus at all at the end, and rotary wing aerodynamics is not a simple topic.

Although I'm sure the flying thing is v tiring at first (like when I learnt to drive and ride a motorbike!), the aerodynamics side I'm not too worried about. There was a fair bit of rotary wing aero in my uni degree so I'm hoping much of it would come back to me and anything new would be easier to learn as a result. So long as there's not too much pure maths involved....! :P