Getting Started

High Flight
by John Gillespie Magee

Oh I have slipped the surely bonds of earth and danced the skies on laughter silvered wings. Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth of sun split clouds and done a hundred things you have not dreamed of, wheeled and soared and swung high in the sunlit silence.

Hovering there I've chased the shouting wind aloft and flung my eager craft through footless halls of air. Up up the long delirious burning blue, I've topped the wind swept heights with easy grace where neither lark nor eagle flew.

And there with silent lifting mind I've trod the high untrespassed sanctity of space. Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

Written by John Gillespie Magee when he was 19 year old fighter pilot during WW11 - as he soared into the atmosphere during a high altitude test flight of a Spitfire V. Magee died three month later in a mid-air collision

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Whether it's spending the odd sunny afternoon flying over England's green and pleasant land, on the way perhaps to a picnic in France, or carving out a career where your office is at 30,000 feet.

Once hooked, flying can grip your imagination and ambitions.

Many people start their 'career' with an half-hour or hour long trial lesson. There are a few who land with knees shaking and perhaps the complimentary 'sick-bag' having been used, but many are bitten by that bug.

Contrary to popular belief, learning to fly needn't be any more expensive than a whole host of hobbies and pastimes. Sure it's going to need budgeting for and it could in the long run, end up having cost a few thousand pounds, but with careful selection of a flying school or group and working at your own pace, your license is within reach.

Lessons can be bought in 'blocks', meaning a large sum of money is needed right from the start and quite possibly more still at a later date. However, most schools and flying groups charge by the hour.

Professional schools, like any other business, exist to make money and while not always the most economical method, they do offer comprehensive training to all levels of competence.

Many airfileds though have privately run flying groups with their own fleet of aircraft and volunteer (but fully qualified) instructors and examiners. These groups do prove to be a far more economical vehicle, they are generally run by the members, for the members and not for profit. Fying charges are just enough to cover the operating costs of the aircraft and a nominal fee paid to the instructors, who donate their time to the group.

A.W.A. Flying Group, based at Coventry Airport is one such organisation. There are plenty more like them based at airfields around the U.K.

Click Here to see what's involved.

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