After Leaving the USA and working as a flight instructor in the UK I thought my chances of doing my IR was very small. The reason for that was I didn't have the money to do the course.
It became one of those chicken and egg things, the banks wouldn't lend me the money because I had borrowed so much for my other training but the jobs for flying offshore were a plenty but the banks didn't look at that.
But as a lot of
helicopter pilot will tell you- no IR, no offshore job!
Like a lot of things on this planet it was about who you know. I borrowed the money to do the IR from a very good friend and set off to Denmark to start my IR. Without that IR my career would stall.
Air Alpha is a company in Denmark that has a lot of involvement in Iceland, supporting the settlements that are too remote to get to by land. They offered a course to convert my FAA IR to a JAR multi engine IR for the same money as what it would cost in the UK for a single engine rating- perfect! Another advantage I found was that converting my UK licence to a Danish licence would save me about £5000- a worthy excercise indeed.
The course would be flown in a Bell222- famous for the TV series AirWolf in the 80's. The machine Air Alpha had was one of the three used in the series. One crashed years ago in Germany, the other I don't know where it is. What a fabulous aircraft! It's fast, noisey (from outside, good job AirWolf had whisper mode), burns fuel like water flowing over niagra falls and is just plain sexy.
The whole course took about 3 weeks, there were some delays with aircraft but very minor (two days), the biggest hold up was getting a JAR examiner, they are scarcer than hens teeth. I had to wait a week for one to arrive.
I thouroughly enjoyed my training. It helped having a fantastic instructor (Michael Stoltze), an airline pilot who flys 737's and has a wealth of helicopter experience, on top of that- a top guy.
If you would like to know more about my experiences at Air Alpha then feel free to contact me. I would be happy to pass on any advice and findings I have.
