This latest “business” came out of my comments on the TB20 CFIT thread here which illustrates the French “VFR” charts, so I asked perfectly good questions / made perfectly sensible points about how France has managed to get this far with an airspace design which in places is so bad that nobody can depict it on a chart which a human can read. If the UK (to take just one example) did that there would be hundreds of airspace busts every year… it would be a scandal.
We have had a few people chuck their toys out of the pram because (literally or de facto) they wanted a mod who is silent and doesn’t participate. Well, they can pay somebody’s salary, because the only non-aviation person who is going to do it for free will be some sort of pervert who enjoys manipulating people, banning them at random, etc.
The main reason why relatively few French pilots post on EuroGA is the same reason why few UK pilots post on EuroGA: they have their own forums back home, to which they are loyal (and posting here would appear disloyal – back to the tribal nature of GA) which go back years (we started in 2012) and obviously the “robust style of discussion” on them suits the tastes of most of the people. Plus there is the language issue, as documented by Aviathor himself (referenced earlier). Every country has its own forums, most of which go back to the start of www forums, c. year 2000. Huge numbers of French (and UK, etc) pilots read EuroGA every day, so presumably they find it informative.
Peter wrote:
If the UK (to take just one example) did that there would be hundreds of airspace busts every year… it would be a scandal.
There are hundreds of airspace busts in the UK every year, and it is a scandal. The VFR 1:500,000 chart in the south of England is incredibly cluttered due to the chaotic design of some of the airspace. Nearly every month in the LAA mag or AOPA news there’s something about the unacceptably high rate of airspace busts, particularly in the south of England.
GPS would hopefully make it a thing of the past but it seems like a lot of pilots either eschew it or don’t know how to use it properly.
denopa wrote:
and it’s unclear which of the food or the weather is worse. (I’ve spent the last 18 years in England and I think it’s the food).
If you think the food is bad today, you’re clearly going to the wrong places. Even in the Isle of Man we now have good food (it used to be worse than England). If you go to the wrong places then you’ll of course find bad food, this is as true for France as it is in England.
In any case, I think there are more French pilots going to England than you or Peter might think. Pretty much every time I fly off-island, I hear at least one F-reg on London info – I know Peter doesn’t bother with London Info so he won’t be hearing any of them :-)
I think more French pilots should try – it’s not as difficult as it might seem and I can say this first hand – when I moved from Houston it didn’t take me that long to learn the weird UK procedures, and that was coming from the vastly more aviation liberal United States. The GAR system also means you can fly into small (therefore inexpensive) airfields – which are usually the airfields where most of the interesting things are happening, anyway.
Peter wrote:
which illustrates the French “VFR” charts which practically nobody can read, so I asked perfectly good questions / made perfectly sensible points about how France has managed to get this far with an airspace design which in places is so bad that nobody can depict it on a chart which a human can read. If the UK (to take just one example) did that there would be hundreds of airspace busts every year… it would be a scandal.
I think we can all agree on the fact that the French airspace is intricate in many places, with TMAs and CTR and on top restricted areas, but it is fortunately compensated by excellent ATS for VFR. As to the charts, I am not sure whether they are at fault, or whether it is just the airspace structure. I suspect the latter. Some say that the Bossy chart is clearer, but it is 1:1.000.000 (unless I missed something). The IGN (or SIA) also publishes some 1:250.000 charts for some of the more complex areas like Paris, Lyon, Rhone valley… But this was not the subject of this thread.
There are hundreds of airspace busts in the UK every year, and it is a scandal.
Yes; I meant there would be in that spot where nobody can read the chart.
The UK gets hundreds of serious busts a year where a major airport has its departures shut down, but the airspace around those is all extremely readable.
UK charts are all readable – except the famous bit around Belfast (previous thread here somewhere).
Peter wrote:
I am not sure what is the point of a “France v. UK” thread?
None. It was not my intention to make comparisons, and I think this is one thing that should be avoided unless very objective like UK vs US vs French airspace structure.
Airport food but even there you get differences of opinion.
French GA airport food tends to be much better than UK GA airport food. But there are exceptions e.g. the cafes at La Rochelle, Bergerac, Annecy (to name the ones I remember) were pretty awful.
OTOH if I said one should not fly to an airport, I would be called elitist by many, because so many people do just head for the airport cafe.
It still comes back to a mod/admin having an opinion, or even posting something that’s backed up, is a much bigger target than another random person saying the same thing.
Peter wrote:
Airport food but even there you get differences of opinion.
Food is probably the most subjective topic to debate, followed closely by politics. 
Peter wrote:
It still comes back to a mod/admin having an opinion, or even posting something that’s backed up, is a much bigger target than another random person saying the same thing.
Note the irony of disagreeing with you now , but I think that rather than your mod/admin function, it is your function as a very active and sometimes controversial (not a bad thing at all) contributor that attracts a high volume of responses – and naturally not always agreement – from others.
Personally, if I think back to older threads, I’ve probably had the largest share of disagreements with @LeSving here and surely hope neither side takes any of that personal.
Peter wrote:
French GA airport food tends to be much better than UK GA airport food.
Again, lets not turn this into subjective comparative analysis of two countries. Otherwise we will end up with another war in Europe, which the EU was supposed to put an end to 
