Commercial Helicopter License

By | Published 16/06/2013

copit

My helicopter flying lesson was such a good experience! I thought about learning to fly a helicopter as a hobby, the instructor explained it takes about 50 hours flying experience to get your personal license (of which I can now tick off 30minutes!). Then another 150 hours if you want to get your commercial license.

Ok so some quick maths

Two Hour lesson = £250
x
50 hours ‘Personal license’ = £6,250
x
200 hours ‘Commercial license’ = £25,000

£6k for 50hours what! Hardly something I can afford as a hobby, so then I thought, well if I get my commerical license I can make the money back I suppose and it would be an interesting career.

Looking at helicopter pilot salaries is a hard thing to do. They vary so much based on location / country / experience / who you would want to work for and what you class as ‘good hours’ to be working.

For my own personal classification of a good helicopter job in the UK, I found the average salary would be £35-£40k. Now I know aeroplane pilots start at about £70k so I was frankly disappointed.

Saying that, it means you could technically ‘make your money back’ within two years of getting your commercial license.

hel2

In summary, I don’t have the money, nor the commitment to change my professional job role (from Software Developer to Helicopter Pilot), to take this on. I would like to get my personal license, I think it would be a nice achievement, but it is a bit of a steep price tag! Maybe I’ll reflect again in a few years.

For more indepth (and probably more accurate) research, you could start here: http://www.phoenixhelicopters.co.uk/training/

Posted in General | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Helicopter Experience

By | Published 16/06/2013

I was recently given a helicopter lesson as a birthday present. It was one of those gift cards and was pretty easy to organise. You just ring the number and choose your time and date. I have been mad busy and had kept putting the gift off for nearly 6 months, so it was about to expire in two weeks, I needed to book it fast. When I rang the number they had a cancellation the next day so I took that, great!

The gift certificate was from TreatMe.net and I originally had it booked for Blackpool but rang up and got it changed to Goodwood.
The flight school was Phoenix Helicopters and my instructor was very friendly and talkative.

The sat nav got us there with ease, on turning up at Goodwood there are two flight schools so I had to follow the signs for ‘phoenix’. The experience started with a 5 minute classroom lesson explaining the 3 controls in a helicopter, didn’t sound too complicated but at the same time completely alien to driving a car.

Helicopter Experience

The instructor takes you up in the helicopter, explaining how he is using the radio and land speed etc. The views are amazing, helicopter ‘windows’ are so big you get a great 270deg view around you. Once you are up in the air, you go through the controls one by one, trying them for yourself to see how they feel and what they do. Then suddenly he has let go of all the controls and I am flying the helicopter! It takes so much concentration it is crazy, I kept nearly making it nose dive but the instructor would just jump back in, explain what you where doing and help correct it.

It was an amazing experience and anyone who has never done any type of flying (like me). I would definitely recommend it. It is also a great gift for someone, you can make a day out of it.

Posted in General | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Eating Challenge – Calzone Challenger

By | Published 25/02/2013

Amalia is a restaurant in Liverpool with a huuuuge calzone on the menu! This thing is huge not even joking! I’ve added a picture below of it in front of my friends so you get some idea of scale.

Amalia is here:

2 Campbell St Liverpool,
Merseyside,
L1 5AX
0151 709 0402

The Calzone Menu

The Calzone comes with a side of sauce for you to dip into. It is filled with mince meat, peppers, potato, onion, cheese and pizza sauce. For me it wasn’t really to my taste, I don’t like mince meat at the best of times and this thing was stuffed full of it.

The Calzone

Everyone Calzone

Calzone Attempt

Suprise suprise, I failed! I tried to eat as much as I can but it started to lose it’s flavor as I got fuller and fuller. I got a little under halfway this was a tough one!

Posted in Social | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Harlem Shake is hilarious

By | Published 25/02/2013

Recently the Harlem Shake viral phenomenom has hit YouTube. I think it’s hilarious, so hilarious me and mates got involved:

So yes, it is Wolverine, Princess Leia, a Transvestite Clown, a DIY Clown, a Camel Humper, a possessed sleeping bag and me!

To make the video we used the app: Harlem Shake Creator Pro. It was straight forward, recording it in two sections.

Enjoy and spread the lolz!

Posted in Social | Tagged , | Leave a comment

New PC Purchase – Barebones

By | Published 08/10/2012

I bought my last PC in 2007. This was when I was at university and very skint. So I got myself a bog standard PC, then as I’ve been using it I’ve been upgrading the pieces bit by bit. Graphics card, new ram, extra HD. So now the next thing to replace was the motherboard.

When I looked into replacing my motherboard, I realised it was old! Looking forwards I would have wanted to replace the PCU next. I was stuck. If I replaced the mobo with one that fitted my current PCU I wouldn’t be able to upgrade to a decent one in the future. However if I bought a future proof mobo I couldn’t use my current PCU. Ok fine I’ll just buy a PCU as well … nope. Same scenario with my RAM, current RAM IS DDR2 and I would need DDR3 for current motherboards. This was getting too expensive.

I was planning on spending about £90 on a new motherboard. ( I like spending around £100 per component), but as I’ve just said I’d need RAM a PCU and then probably a PSU! Well I found an lternative, a barebones PC, these come as a motherboard, ram, PCU, PSU WIN! I just have to plug my current harddrives in, my graphics card, my dvd drive and away we go!

I went for the “Primo PLUS 500i” Intel H61 DDR3 Ready Barebones (Socket 1155). It is ACE. £125 what a bargain, granted I would have got a lethal mobo for £125 but I like the compromise for upgradeability.

Here’s the innards:

And the front on view:

System Specification

– Case: OcUK IMP microATX case – Black
– Motherboard: Asus P8H61-MX Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard
– Power Supply: OcUK Value 500W PSU
– CPU: Intel Celeron G530 2.40GHz (Socket 1155) CPU
– Memory: OcUK Value 4GB 1333MHZ C9

Now it’s not the most top end PC, but it’s good. Now I can start my cycle again of upgrading each piece one at a time and hopefully this PC will last me another 5 years!

Installation was easy by the way. Simple if you’ve ever been inside a PC and straight forward if you haven’t. HD sata cables connected, graphics card into the PCIE, turn it on, done!

Posted in General | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Eating Challenge – The Olympic Burger

By | Published 04/10/2012
Man vs Food - Olympic Burger

Man vs Food – Olympic Burger

Just been to try the ‘Olympic Burger‘ Oh MY God, it’s be biggest burger I’ve ever seen! For this Man vs Food challenge you get 24 minutes to eat 24 ounces of burger and it’ll cost you £24 unless you eat it all of course then it is free! We where told that only 2 people have finished it and these where two 16 year old lads, EASY THEN I should devour it … not.

The Olympic Burger is served at ‘What’s Cooking‘ restaurant in the Albert Dock, Liverpool, North West England. You can book a table online (which we did, a table for 8) and in the notes section I wrote we would like 7 Olympic Burgers, not sure if this is necessary but we didn’t want to turn up and be disappointed.

Olympic Burger - Menu Description

Olympic Burger – Menu Description

As you can see from the menu, you get 2 12 ounce burgers, 1 cos lettuce, two tomatoes, six rashers of bacon, six slices of cheese, gherkins an jalapenos, all served on a 16 ounce 3 layer burger bun. Oh and don’t forget the two side plates of chips topped with chilli and cheese sauce.

This was tough. I struggled on multiple fronts, the three layer bread is just a killer, the chips add to the carb load and that is a lot of burger! I managed to eat the middle layer of bread and most of the lid, the lid had a really thick crust on it making it tough to chew so I washed it down with a lot of water. I managed to finished one plate of chips, when I got down to the second layer I ate the bacon and cheese got to the burger and hit the wall.. there was no going back.

Man vs Food - Olympic Burger - Food Wins

Man vs Food – Olympic Burger – Food Wins

I didn’t really notice the gherkins, jalapenos or lettuce they went down easy, it was all the carbs that done me in, better look next time. Perhaps next time I’d leave the chips and see if I could get through the burger first, I think getting the meat in first is important as you get given a big jug of water so you can always wash down the burger bun.

I recommend giving it a go, take a few mates along it’s a good laugh! Final bit of advice, don’t try and pick it up and take a bite unless you have a mouth the size of Godzilla’s 🙂

For the rest of my photo’s from the trip and how my 6 mates got on see here: Olympic Burger Challenge Photo Album

Posted in Social | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Eating Challenge – Flaming Challenge

By | Published 02/10/2012

Just done the ‘Flaming Challenge’ at The Bay Horse in Ashton, UK. Although it is available in any pub under the chain “Flaming Grill” in the UK. It is 2 12oz burgers, 2 chicken breasts, spicy chilli beef, cheese, bacon, onion rings and a lot of chips. It comes out at 1KG of food.

If you complete it you’ll get your photo taken and put on the “wall of flame”. Make sure you mention this when you are ordering your food so they can keep an eye on you for cheating. Not that you ever would!

Wow it’s a lot of food, the burgers are layered with cheese and fried onions, the chilli is then spread all over the top and the chicken breast on top of that. The whole burger is topped with the onions rings. It looked amazing, tasted great … and yet I failed! It was toooo much, but I’m glad I tried because at £9.99 that is cheap!

Posted in Social | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Weigh Myself Healthy – Withings Wifi Scales

By | Published 26/09/2012

Everyone wants to be healthy and for most people that means losing weight (me included)! I did used to keep track of my weight using a normal pair of scales but it isn’t very often and when I did I’d remember the weight but not very accurately always rounding up or rounding down. It wasn’t helping much unless I miraculously lost a whole stone then I’d probably notice!

Then I saw these scales and I LOVE gadgets, they’re made by Withings and in there simplest form, you stand on them, they recognise you, save your weight, body fat % and BMI to a secure website. GREAT.

I bought them and I love them! Keeping track of my weight is so easy now. Infact I don’t even bother I just stand on these scales every morning before I shower, then when I’m in a healthy mood I’ll check the website (or app) to see how my weight is doing. The interesting thing happened when I went on holiday, check out the chart below:

This is the website showing my weight over a month period. See the steep incline, that was the measurements before and after my two week villa holiday to Greece. I drank a lot of beer ate a lot of food and put on 10pounds. Then the cool thing is the decline slope after it showing me losing the weight again as I get back into my normal routine.

These scales are so good, they’ve made it so much easier for me to track my weight. Before I would have noticed I’d put on weight on holiday, but no idea exactly how much and I wouldn’t see this trend of me losing the weight again, it lets me no that I’m heading in the right direction and what I’m doing/eating is right!

I bought my scales from Amazon, they come with a USB cable to plug them into your PC/Mac and four little feet for if you are using them on carpet or not.

The setup is easy you literally plug them in to your computer once, select your wifi network from the list, enter your wifi password and they’re ready to go. You can then stand on them and get weighed. Go on the website and sign up http://my.withings.com/ then when you weigh yourself you will start to see your results come through!

I believe they can recognise upto four different people standing on them and will keep your data separate, so you will all get your own graph. There is also an ace app for iPhone and Android to check your stats on the go (to brag to your mates about your weight loss).

Yes they on the expensive side of scale prices, but they are AWESOME!

Withings Wifi Body Scales

Withings Wifi Body Scales Unboxing – scales, usb cable, instructions, tape measure

Posted in Exercise | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Eating Challenge – The Big Breakfast

By | Published 25/09/2012

Last week me and two mates went to Mario’s Cafe in Bolton to take on the Big Breakfast challenge! In the Big Breakfast challenge you get 20 minutes to eat 10 eggs, 10 sausages, 10 rashers of bacon, 10 slices of toast, five black pudding, tomatoes, mushrooms and baked beans, oh and no drinks for the 20 minutes allowed. All for £10.95 (which I think is a bargain).

The breakfast is world record holding. When we where there the cafe owner told us only one person has ever finished it in the time period, so don’t be thinking this is easy!

If your wanting to go, you have to ring up two days before to book yourselves in and the most they will serve is 3 at a time so bear that in mind. Contact Details:

Mario’s Cafe
67 Market Street, Westhoughton, Bolton BL5 3AG
01942 813 287

Tactics

The breakfast comes on a tray, not a plate a tray! The thing I struggled with the most was the toast. How the hell do you eat a giant breakfast AND ten pieces of toast. One tactic is to make breakfast sandwiches out of the food mixing the toast with the food (which a friend tried and failed). I decided to eat two pieces at the beginning, concentrate on the food then hopefully finish the toast afterwards… bad idea! Leaving the toast till the end lets it go cold and hard and it chews and chews and chews.

Stack of 10 toast

Yes I didn’t manage to finish but I really enjoyed the challenge, I finished with 3 eggs, 3 bacon, 3 sausage … and 7.5 pieces of toast left, a meal in it self! My tactic to get me that far was to pair beans, tomatoes or mushrooms with every bite keep it nice and juicy. I ate each black pudding in two bites, ate each bacon in 3 (tail first, then split the rest into two). Also the eggs split into 3. The sausage also went down in 3-4 pieces.

I highly advise you give it a go, just to say you have! It’s 20 minutes drive from Liverpool or Manchester and is picked up on the SatNav. If you do go after reading this please leave a comment with how you got on!

For the rest of my photo’s from the trip see here: Big Breakfast Challenge Photo Album

Posted in Social | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

How to throw an Oktoberfest Party

By | Published 23/09/2012

Oktoberfest costumes and steins (Click picture for detail)

Last night we threw an Oktoberfest party and it was AMAZING. Everyone had such a good time and it was hilarious. Here’s what we did to make it a success:

1) Fancy Dress

General theme was Oktoberfest ( Leiderhosen and Beer Girls ) or just German in general. We had two pretzels turn up (they’re made in Germany) and someone else was ‘Greece’ (apparantly Germany now ‘owns’ Greece after the bail out).

2) Bring your own Stein BYOS

We got everyone to buy steins/mugs to drink out of. You can get them ridiculously cheap on eBay if you have long enough to look. They come in a range of sizes from diddy shot glass size to litre tankards! ( I went for a litre one, see picture for ideas) If you want a new one the average price we paid was ~£9 inc p&p. Don’t forget you can stick it straight back on eBay afterwards.

3) German Music

There is an Oktoberfest album, this is some type of euro-pop all sang in german. I downloaded one album that was 3 hours worth and stuck it on repeat. (no one can tell its repeated because no one has heard it before!)

4) Dress the house

We had labels in German for the toilets, the beer garden and the living rooms. Also had a blue checked table runner and some german flags.

5) Food

Cooked Bratwurst (big hotdogs) with Löwensenf mustard for sauce. Also we had pretzels to snack on.

Thats it’s party on! We did buy lots of german beer and some german mulled wine, but we cheated and had some other alcohol as well. The absinthe went down well, lethal stuff!

Posted in Social | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
« Older