Recency requirements - Recurrent training

[Pan-Pan]

I have a PPL, however I have not flown as PIC in well over 8 years due to lack of funds during University and living overseas for 4 years. Needless to say, I am very 'rusty'. According to my understanding of CAR 421.05, I will need to re-write the PSTAR and perform a flight review with an instructor in order to validate my PPL.

I will definitely need some time flying in order to shake off the rust before performing a flight review with an instructor. I am wondering if anyone here has gone through a similar experience or knows of someone who has. If so, how many hours did it take before you felt competent to act as PIC/successfully complete the flight review?

*Any other useful information/suggestions/ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[Colonel Sanders]

You have not mentioned your total time,
or years of flying experience.

The answers are different depending upon
the numbers above. For example, if you
only have 80TT, and haven't flown for 8 years,
well, you've probably forgotten mostly everything
and will need to start over. Stuff changes, too.

However, if you have 8,000TT flown over 20
years, it won't take long to scrape the rust off.

Shot In The Dark: 4 flights for a PPL flight review
with "average" performance for someone that
hasn't flown in 8 years.

[Beefitarian]

Well, I had slowly flown less and less, I didn't quite get signed off on a club currency check then I stopped flying due to marriage, I had not flown for nearly 4 years after that.

Then I flew .9 of an hour, Oct 21, 2010 I was not sure I could keep flying steadily and I did not know if I could hold a medical at 289 lbs, so I decided to wait. Then I lost 35lbs, flew around Catalina Island for 1.3 hours on vacation with no intervention from the instructor.

I went to a CAME regained my Cat3 medical, went to a FTU and told them I wanted to get my license back, I flew 6.1 hours in 2011 with 3 instructors. They did not talk with each other or write things down. A bit of that time was sitting in in line to take off due to traffic. On October 14, 2011 one of them that I had flown with prior asked to see plain stalls after the last instructor said they were perfect. They didn't seem to say any thing about how much longer I would need to take. I left that school. I don't have anything else bad to say and if I were working toward something needing time I might have stayed.

I then flew 1.8 on vacation on Nov 16, 2012. Took a couple more months off.

April 2012 I started with a CFI at another school told him my tale. Flew 3.9 hours with him, passed my P-STAR which was a story of it's own and now I'm current.

[Pan-Pan]

Thanks for the responses. I have 211 hours of total time (over the course of 3 years). I recognize that it will take some hours of dual time to get back in flying condition, however I would like to have some knowledge of how many hours I should be expecting...I want to be legal and safe, but I don't want to be paying for unnecessary dual time.

[Beefitarian]

At $200+ per hour dual I did not want to pay for another 15 hours hoping those guys would figure out I had done all the exercises needed to sign me off.

It depends on you and the instructor. Unfortunately they are the only one that can tell you more about how long it will take. For me it was worth doing. My life is way better, I don't need to fly every day but I need to fly.

[Colonel Sanders]

It depends on you and the instructor

Specifically, it depends upon how fast you can get up
to speed, performing the maneuvers on the PPL Flight
Test Guide. Here it is:

http://www.tc.gc.ca/Publications/EN/TP1 ... 13723E.pdf

Download it and read it. Before you show up at the
FTU, know what you have to do, and how well you
have to do it. Nobody ever does that, but it will help.

PS Here is the PSTAR:

http://www.tc.gc.ca/Publications/EN/TP1 ... 11919E.pdf

Your FTU will select 50 of these 200 known questions
and ask you to answer them. A pass mark is 90%,
and it is not open book. The objective of the PSTAR
is to familiarize you with the AIM, so that you can find
stuff in it:

http://www.tc.gc.ca/media/documents/ca- ... -1_ENG.pdf

A lot of people use this to study for the PSTAR:

http://www.flyingstart.ca/FlightTrainin ... RIndex.htm

From a practical standpoint, you need to be familiar
with your aircraft that you will be flying for the flight
review. I might suggest that you purchase the specific
POH/AFM (NOT the ground school manual) for the
airplane that you will be flying. Note that you can
economically get the POH for almost any airplane here:

http://www.esscoaircraft.com/c-2-aircraft-manuals.aspx

for not very much money. Note that these manuals
may be lacking flight manual supplements if the aircraft
is heavily modified with an STC. An example of this might
be a 172 which has had the O-320 engine removed and
replaced with an O-360.

[xiz]

Been there and just done that.

I got my license back in 1985 and really didn't do bugger all with it until about 5 years ago. At that time, it took the following to get signed off to solo:

- rewriting the PSTAR
- rewriting the radio license exam (as Industry Canada had lost all record of my previous license)
- 10 flights with an instructor to reach the standards required by the PPL flight test guide.
- A current medical

I'm in the process of once again working up to solo. I've actually just been signed off for solo at RFC (haven't gone up yet, but the signature is there). This time, it took me about 5 flights, and a couple sessions int the Redbird, while not specifically related to VFR solo (basic instruments and partial panel), it did help refresh basic skills which were useful once we got in the real plane.

FWIW, I tend to be quite cautious about these sorts of things. And even though I've been officially signed off, I'll likely take one or two more duals to do circuits, and make sure I've got my landings solid before going off on my own.

[Pan-Pan]

Thanks all for the input. I found the responses very helpful.

Regards,

[Beefitarian]

Talk to an instructor and try to find out what their specific expectations are. Some schools have a defined course. Reading the flight training manual is a good idea.

It depends on you and the instructor

Specifically, it depends upon how fast you can get up
to speed, performing the maneuvers on the PPL Flight
Test Guide. Here it is:

http://www.tc.gc.ca/Publications/EN/TP1 ... 13723E.pdf

Sort of. Except since I'm just a student during any sort of check ride, an instructor can make me do whatever they want. If their renter check out includes push-ups and a coloring contest...

The first FTU gave me a paper with their course written on it. I would check maneuvers off when I completed them and an instructor said they were good enough. I didn't like being told on one flight, "Your stalls are great." then a different instructor next flight says, "I need to see some stalls."

I might have ended up doing everything all over again every time I flew with another instructor. I started to get concerned since that would be an unspecified amount of times, 4 flights meant 3 instructors so far. I decided I didn't want to keep flying there, hoping that one day someone besides me might start writing down my progress.

I'm a bit like xiz, I like doing more dual than I need, hoping to get things to a slightly higher standard.
In fact I would have been happy flying plenty of extra hours, provided I felt confident either, I needed more work or they were keeping track as I was progressing to the next part.

[CpnCrunch]

I've been away from flying for 4 years at a time, on two occasions. Both times I just did the PSTAR (not required if you already have a Canadian PPL, but still useful to go through it because you'll have forgotten a lot of the stuff), and did 2 or 3 hours with an instructor. Last time I also did an hour or two ground briefing, which was useful. Then another few hours practicing circuits on my own. After about 5 hours I felt that I was ready to take up passengers.

I really didn't have any problems getting back into it. Really just some upper air work and a bunch of circuits, and make sure you know all the aircraft systems, checklists, emergency procedures, etc. (read the POH cover to cover).

It is a bit different for you as you haven't been flying for over 5 years. As you say you'll need to do a flight review, so you'll probably have to cover more ground. However as long as you're a reasonably competent pilot I don't think it should be too difficult.