In late 1992, I travelled to the USA to learn to fly. The flying school, Silver Hawk Aviation of Rome, Georgia, advertised in the UK flying magazines and trained a lot of British students. (Rome is about an hour's drive North West of Atlanta.)

A fit, alert and intelligent student can learn to fly solo in, say, 12 to 15 hours of flight time. It took me almost 40. Draw your own conclusions. (Actually, it's the fit, alert, intelligent and young students who solo in a short time.)

Still, I did get to solo, but didn't have enough time to come close to qualifying as a pilot.

Somewhat discouraged, I didn't fly again for about a year, but then I took a few hours tuition at the Ulster Flying Club. This was OK, but the Northern Ireland weather isn't kind to flyers, and nor is the cost -- we are talking the equivalent of near $150 per hour dual in a PA28, compared to say $50 or $60 in the USA.(You can see that a week's flying of 12 hours would be cheaper, even including transport, hotels and meals.)
 
Long Beach Airport So, I headed for the sun again, this time to in Long Beach, California. EFI offer training and examination for both the US license and UK licence (see: I'm bilingual) - so I booked 3 weeks of training for the UK PPL. Unfortunately, EFI made an administrative screw-up and booked me for the exact time when the British instructor and examiner was away. I found this out when I arrived in Long Beach.

EFI plane
I agreed to try for the US license, although I would have to fit in a lot more solo cross-country time. (What choice did I have?)

I was assigned to a very inexperienced instructor, but totally gorgeous with it. Cyndi! Where are you now? I can't blame my poor performance on the newness of her instructor's license - her other student at the time did fine.

To cut a long story short, I had a great time, enjoyed a lot of flying, (the Socata Tampico is a nice little plane), did my check ride (final flying exam) on my last day in the USA. And failed it. The examiner checked out my log book and found what I had received least instruction in, and then tested me on it - flying 'under the hood' -- i.e. with no external visibility. I bear the guy no grudge: he was doing what a good examiner should do, and frankly, I performed well below par that day.  (And I'd had a bird strike that morning, damaging one wing of that plane. And, ironically, you don't need instruments-only flying for a UK licence.)

The solo cross-country flights in California were great fun though. One day I flew a long trip Eastwards across the Mojave Desert to a little desert airstrip at Blythe, just on the Arizona border. Amazing views. Then there were the flights over LAX, Los Angeles International airport. There are three designated routes for light aircraft to cross the airport and it's quite an experience to be chug, chug, chugging along in a little plane while the controllers steer huge Jumbos and DC-10's above, below and around you.

So, I ended up with over 70 hours logged, and still no licence. Someday, perhaps. Unfortunately, I've since suffered a minor stroke, so an aviation medical in the UK or US is problematical, but not necessarily ruled out completely.

I have become convinced that the US qualification is superior to the British one: you learn more about instrument navigation and you get to fly at night, for example. Both of these require further qualifications in the UK.