I did this yesterday.
Their parking is severely restricted. There is enough room for 1 aircraft, possibly 2.
You also need a turning circle the size of a 1/4 scale model aircraft 
With the TB20, it’s a towbar job and a lot of muscle; 2 people. But it is a hard surface.
Just got back from Glasgow.
ATC is superb, as is all service from Scottish ATC, whenever I have flown in Scotland. Vectors to the ILS, with the place busy with Easyjet etc so I got vectored through the LOC for spacing.
Sadly I have to say the aeroclub is completely unsuitable. It has at most one parking spot. Booking this is not trivial since the “owner” does not talk to the main (the only?) instructor, and they don’t read their emails.
The guy who “owns” it, Archie, is “interesting”. After 2 phone calls with in FI (David) and 2 unanswered emails I landed there, to be told he didn’t know I needed avgas. Well, yeah, it would be completely normal for someone popping in after this little local flight to not need fuel
but if the two of them spoke to each other or read their email (I sent two), they would have known. Anyway Archie did the avgas OK, after having a little moan.
Actually the TB20 can do EGKA-EGPF-EGKA without a refuel, but not wisely; it would be like this.
Then Archie tells me where to park it
and to do a 180 in that area. I could see all the way from the aeroclub that this would be way too small, but Archie disagreed, saying that he has been flying there for 30 years and he knows a TB20 can do a 180 in this area, because an “Arrow can”.
When it comes to ground movements I am always extremely careful to find out exactly where “they” want the plane and which way it should point, so I tried to establish this in advance after getting avgas, but due to the local “dialect” apparently unsuccessfully. But anything is possible with a towbar, so I taxied to that area, and upon reaching it Archie was making various gestures which I could not relate to anything that was possible, so I shut down and proceeded to finish with the towbar. Archie got furious and called me an “idiot” and some other things. To reduce the temperature I said “I come from Czechoslovakia and cannot understand much English, and yes I am an idiot and I am very sorry for that”. Then us two moved the TB20 with the towbar, upon which Archie saw that the TB20 really could not have turned on the required small radius.
After that, Archie was OK, and on day of departure, 3 days later, he was fine. There is a fair bit of loose material there; the concrete is from WW2.
Car hire is at the main terminal, which needs a 10-15 min taxi ride.
Next time I will go elsewhere. Reportedly Cumbernauld EGPG is OK. No reports on our database though… Preswick EGPK looks great though and very cheap. One can also park at GAMA or Signature for, one assumes, a few hundred quid…
Sally and I had a good little break there. Scotland is beautiful in good weather My first few weeks in the UK, 1969, were actually in Scotland, at a place called Inverliever Lodge, Ford, Argyll (now a yoga retreat apparently) but it was a bit too far away to drive to on this occassion.
EuroGA airports database report
That’s an entertaining read 😆🤣
How much was the landing + parking in the end at the aeroclub out of curiosity?
Wow. “Sorry, I don’t speak English” is hilarious, but obviously effective at mollifying the indigenous population
Pretty expensive for the kind of service you received there… I guess not many options around there if weather doesn’t play along, AFAIK Edinburgh is basically inaccessible to GA. It’s possible you were just unlucky as some of the comments on SkyDemon seem to suggest that they had a good experience at the aeroclub (with somebody called Allen though, might be a function of who you happen to run into or even the mood they’re in).
The solution for both Glasgow and Edinburgh area visits is Cumbernauld. It is located right in between. Their AIP actually states that aircraft may let down at Glasgow or Edinburgh. If not, with any current avionics, one can use the visual approach feature if the weather is too poor for that.
That’s great to know, let down sounds good, but personally I wouldn’t feel comfortable using the visual approach feature in poor weather. You have no guarantee that there isn’t an obstacle in your approach path if it is not a published approach (unless you’re out of the cloud by MSA but then you’re good anyway even without an instrument approach).
Of course, you would have to study that beforehand.
