The best thing next to military training is find a good non-profit flying club. They offer a huge measure of freedom from the problems of greed and survival that affect FBOs. My limited experience with FBOs is that of having done a number of rental checkouts and a few rentals, and I think they are honest and well-meaning but they pad everything to make that all-important dollar.
Case in point, if you are current and have perhaps 450 logbook hours in a Skyhawk on record as well as a current medical and of course a clear FAA pilot license, your cheerful neighborhood FBO will still insist you need to go through a thorough checkout in their old 172. They will say something about insurance. And of course if you want to fly that 172N in IMC you need another full checkout for that. A complete checkout for a current 450-hour pilot to fly around the patch in clear weather and in an old 172? They want to make sure you still can fly a decent rectangular pattern after all that practice I guess.
On the other hand a flying club has no such requirement provided all the normal credentials are in order. Gee, so different.
Some problems I see with non-profit flying clubs on the other hand stem from exactly the reverse side of the profit motive: take the money out of the equation and things get sloppy. Planes do not get fixed quickly when they break, instructors start finding things to do on weekends, records get lost, and ground school classes are few and far between.
Still, having done most of my training with a university-run flying club I can vouch for the experience and there is no question it is the best deal in private aviation training. There is a sense of comraderie and the fleet is somewhat a family affair. What's more, graduates tend to claim their membership long after their ratings and certs are done.
They will stick around for the years between or after their own ratings to care and share with current students. In some flying clubs, such as the one I was in, there is an umambiguous push to reduce the FBO rental mentality. If it's truly a decent club they place barriers to this by enforcing mandatory free service and attendance at meetings.
Perhaps the worst problem with such organizations is simply getting in. You aren't going to get into most of them without an entry ticket of some kind. There's not much getting around this but there are some flying clubs that admit the general public.
Last edited by Cubdriver; 03-29-2007 at 11:48 AM.