Most of the private GA is on the north side of the airfield at EGTE. There is an excellent flying group with a fleet of really beautifully maintained Robin DR400’s.
Three or four of the aircraft on the south side belong to Airways Flight Training a based ME/IR/CPL FTO. The remainder look like what constituted the Aviation South West fleet (local flying club) which used to perform the GA handling function. I believe this has now closed or been significantly scaled down after the owner admitted 12 counts of possessing indecent images of children, which obviously Exeter Airport wanted no connection with.
“Controlled airspace” is defined (by ICAO) as airspace where ATC is provided. It doesn’t mean that all flights are subject to ATC. Which indeed they are not in class E.
Huh? I fly mostly in Class E airspace and only on rare occasion talk to ATC other than when coming or going at a Class D ATC controlled airport. Class E airspace has ATC available for those who want to use it, but obviously it’s not mandatory.
It must be obvious to anybody how Class E airspace operates.
The mandatory flight plan in any controlled airspace thing always makes me smile – in Class D it’s merely radio contact or clearance and in Class E it’s nothing. I never file a flight plan, at least never in the last 10 years.
Pop up IFR approaches are an intrinsic ATC labor saving because the system only has to pay attention to the aircraft for a short period of time. If the bureaucracy can’t adapt to something that intrinsically saves effort, then the bureaucracy is causing a problem.
That’s a play with words
Peter, it really isn’t.
If you ask “is class E uncontrolled airspace or uncontrolled” and you want answer “yes/no” (and not some kind of “it depends”), then the answer is 100%, unequivocally, that it is controlled airspace.
There simply is a difference between whether an airspace is controlled or not and whether aircraft within that airspace are subject to air traffic control or not.
That “class E is uncontrolled airspace for VFR” really seems to be a Peter H invention (unless you can show us an official publication saying exactly so, then I will correct myself). 
Peter, the military can raise an IFR plan almost immediately but then you need to be talking to them in the first place. Even Thames get it wrong (they made a complete horlicks of a plan I filed the other day).
Well, yes, that’s what I said. You can do illegal IMC enroute, but in order to not draw attention you need to land in VFR conditions.
I didn’t know that getting an IFR clearance in Germany is so hard.
In the UK, below Class A, it just happens… you don’t even use the formal phrase asking for it. You just say you are IFR and ask for the ILS or whatever.
OTOH, getting an IFR clearance into Class A is almost impossible; that really needs an IFR flight plan (or a fragment of) to be generated and inserted into the computer, and the UK didn’t (I am told) pay for the software module to do this quickly. But then you are into the London Control stuff (with some exceptions e.g. Thames Radar can do it too) which is a pretty well watertight-divided part of ATC here.
But surely German pilots just do it quietly.
You can’t really do this quietly. Flying an IAP requires ATC involvement and on a nice day, they treat your request as “for fun” and during a bad weather day (they have METARs), they wouldn’t want you to do this VFR and make you official IFR first. Nothing wrong with it, just not as quick and easy as in the UK.
The only time you might get caught is if you need an instrument approach to land with, which, presumably, is going to cause trouble in Germany because you need to ask for an IFR clearance, and somebody might want to see your license after you landed
No, not really. Post SERA, AFIL is standard technique in Germany (and everywhere else) and not just an emergency tool like before requiring justification. However, it creates workload for ATC who have to write down a lot of information, call AIS, etc. so they don’t like it. That in turn makes pilots not ask for it lightly.
in airspace E (which is CAS).
That’s a play with words
The real advantage of the UK situation is that the “Hey, I’m now IFR” scenario has a massive administrative burden in other countries and cannot just be done in a second
But surely German pilots just do it quietly. Just like UK pilots who don’t have the IR or the IMCR.
The only time you might get caught is if you need an instrument approach to land with, which, presumably, is going to cause trouble in Germany because you need to ask for an IFR clearance, and somebody might want to see your license after you landed (as would be possibly the case in any unusual flight scenario which draws attention). In the UK you will probably get away with it (if you know the radio protocol) but that’s because (a) the CAA doesn’t do any ramp checks (except with alleged AOC busting) and (b) so many pilots have the IMCR.
You might also get caught if you ice up and have to get down quick – a problem with winter flying in the UK especially if you don’t have the full IR, because the IMCR doesn’t allow you into Class A.
You always need a FP for any flight in CAS, VFR or IFR.
Well, no. Very few countries require a flight plan for VFR in airspace E (which is CAS).
The real advantage of the UK situation is that the “Hey, I’m now IFR” scenario has a massive administrative burden in other countries and cannot just be done in a second. In Germany, DFS would not be delighted, you would probably get something like “why don’t you file IFR from the beginning instead of creating all this workload now?”. Same in all other countries I have experience in. Switching from VFR to IFR cannot be done instantaneously and at the pilot’s volition as easily as in the UK.
You always need a FP for any flight in CAS, VFR or IFR.
In the UK, and lots of other places, you can file an abbreviated one over the radio, and even if you are IFR there is absolutely no Eurocontrol involvement. Normally this is for crossing a bit of Class D. There is no meaningful long distance flight possible in UK Class D (small bits of it, not joined up). The only time there is a Eurocontrol involvement is for “proper enroute IFR”, which in the UK is practically-speaking Class A, and it is almost impossible to do any Class A over the air (yes I know some have managed it but I never have).
There has been much discussion over the years what are the precise legalities of turning up at some airport and asking for an IAP. I have heard various stuff…
