It was when his Maule went and he replaced it with the Mousquetaire.
IMO it is a great plane and very adaptable for camping, or landing on glaciers in the alps.
I don’t know if its just me but when climbing into one, they always seem much bigger than one expects.
Yes, the D140E is really a decent general purpose 4-seat aeroplane – just not quite as useful as a Maule. Take-off roll is longer than a Maule or Husky but it climbs better once airborne and cruises on less fuel (probably due to the skinny little 500×150 (or 8.50×6) tyres. Cargo weight capacity is good but can’t accommodate bulky items like a 205 litre drum or a motorcycle.
Bref, the Maule upgrade is coming along nicely, but I’ll be tempted to keep the Jodel as well. :)
Indeed, it makes sense to lift a 40 gallon drum into the aeroplane empty and, if desired, to fill it thereafter.
As for motorbikes, this small-ish one was a 2-man lift – and we had to remove the front wheel :)
So, after asking around I got the answer that Nederlands is the best country to register. Is seems it costs around 100euro/year. I even got a quote from a company that can manage the registration for 300euro/year. That seems decent
However I would check you have the right information – have it confirmed by that company that they are able to transfer an already built aircraft on a different country register to the dutch register. Previously, you could have an experimental / home built aircraft transferred to the dutch register quite easily but this was then stopped around 4 years ago, IIRC……
freehugs wrote:
So, after asking around I got the answer that Nederlands is the best country to register. Is seems it costs around 100euro/year. I even got a quote from a company that can manage the registration for 300euro/year. That seems decent
With these things there are lots and lots of poor information around. And it goes in all directions, and it’s mostly all wrong. You really have to get in contact with:
Sites (like forums, FB etc) is of minimal help to get real data. Sorry to say, but that’s the truth. You have to go to the original sources.
I have an even better suggestion.
Find out, and post it here 
Then, far more people will be wiser.
But we already have a thread which contains tons of this data, including extracts from the homebuilding associations, AIPs, etc. And you have already contributed much to that thread – example.
I’ve been watching this situation for many years and one cannot get a definitive answer which will be valid for the number of yours you might want to own a plane, because the regs keep changing. They have been hardening in recent years, like the 28 day limit in UK and France (which seems to have been a coordinated action). The French situation was a grey area for many years, with a huge amount of wishful thinking like “fly out of France once a year for a day and you will be fine”. And same in most other places. There is a risk which cannot be totally avoided. In Romania you probably don’t need to care…
The ECAC status is only one tiny tiny bit of information, and includes none of the info freehugs is looking for and needs. The regulations from one country to the next could be vastly different, each with their own sets of logic. You would need information about:
Then you need to know all the same things about country B. And in the end what the regulations of country A say about maintaining the aircraft from country B, and the other way around.
One thing I know for sure will work, is a LN reg homebuilt anywhere else in the world, on the basis of Norwegian regulations. But I also know for sure that having any other reg in Norway will not work (in the longer run). You simply have to put the aircraft on LN reg to fly it here (for more than 6 + 6 months). This type of scheme seems to be coming (if it isn’t already), and being enforced everywhere in Europe. This is much “stricter” than it used to be some places, but the reason is:
This is simply the way it becomes, and must become. How hard things will be enforced is another matter. It could be not at all today, but super Nazi next year. Who knows? the CAAs should, and the homebuilding associations also should.
But I mean, all this is very off the track of what homebuilding and experimental aviation is all about, or should be all about. The joke today is that experimental aviation once was:
Learn, built and fly. This is the reason why in most countries we are allowed to built our own aircraft, and why there is a 51% rule. Today it has morphed into:
Chose, finance and operate 
AFAICT you have just posted what I’ve been saying the last 10 years, and you have usually disagreed with it, citing ECAC this and that
Put simply, it is a risky business to base a foreign uncertified plane anywhere. And it gets more risky each year. For some reason the national CAAs are waking up to all this and trying to reduce it. You need a Plan B if things suddenly get tight.
Peter wrote:
AFAICT you have just posted what I’ve been saying the last 10 years
Not at all. I have posted what I have been saying for the last 10 years From my perspective, things have only gotten better, not worse. More places have opened up, Belgium and France need no explicit applications anymore, and some others as well (France used to be a jungle of exemption and odd rules, but is now clear and tidy). To “base” a foreign experimental aircraft (any aircraft as a matter of fact) in Norway, has never been an option. The rules are, well if not exactly crystal clear, at least they are not too muddy to understand. But in Norway it is fairly easy to import aircraft and put them on Norwegian register. And the Norwegian register is perhaps one of the best there is in Europe, if not the best of all for experimental aircraft (from what I have seen, but it’s difficult to know due to changes going on, “rumors” and language barriers). I do however know the Norwegian regulations, and they are fairly similar to the US regulations regarding building and operation, with very few restrictions today. We are all part of the EAA here, the same EAA as in the US.
But let’s say I moved to Sweden and wanted to take the airplane with me and keep it on LN. I have no clue how that would work out, if possible at all. From the Norwegian regulations, no problem, but what about the Swedish regulations? The regulations in Sweden are fairly similar from a practical point of view, but very different from a legal point of view. They have a different regime, yet they are also EAA, so the practicalities tends to become the same (more or less). But, I’m not moving to Sweden anytime soon, so I couldn’t care less right now.
In later years (perhaps the 3-5 last years), things have changed, and they still are changing. Experimental aircraft (or homebuilt/amateurs built, which is a more suitable definition of what we are discussing here) are all under the local laws and regulations of the country of register. This means, you have to know those regulations, and prob99 they are only written in the native language. Translating legal documents is highly risky business, even with a lawyer, and a translated document will never become legal, like the one written in the original language. But, you also have to know the regulations of the other country concerning basing a foreign registered homebuilt aircraft. There may not even be regulations for it, but there could be in the near future, and they can come over night.
Regardless of all this, the very cornerstones of homebuilt aircraft legally, historically and practically are to “learn, build and fly”. It is not to “chose, finance and operate” This may seem like a play with words (it’s a joke after all), but the laws everywhere are indeed written based on the original cornerstones.
Overall it is getting better each year, not worse. But things are changing, the CAAs are tightening the grip on their home turf. At the same time it is getting more similar all over Europe, with focus on the original purpose of homebuilding and the ability to fly them freely all over Europe. This “shopping around” of (usually finished built) homebuilt aircraft from a “preferred” foreign registry seems to be more and more a thing of the past (it’s an artefact from the “chose, finance and operate” crowd, rather than a thing among homebuilders in the homebuilding communities IMO).
In Europe we also have the ULs which overlap very much with homebuilts in lots of cases. ULs are “chose, finance and operate”, at least the most expensive ones with 600 kg MTOW. It’s pretty much what it’s all about. The regulations on the technical side in particular, is very uniform all over Europe, with some small variations, and a few larger ones. IMO there’s nothing wrong with “chose, finance and operate”, it just that it’s much better suited to factory produced stuff than homebuilt stuff. With a used homebuilt aircraft built by a medical doctor, his daughter and his mother in law (it has happened), you really have no clue what you are getting yourself into. With a factory built UL, the quality is usually a known quantity, and the factory is there to help with parts and updates.
Lots of decent (and excellent) finished built homebuilts in the market. But is it the right aircraft for you? If you wonder about that, then it probably isn’t, for a whole bunch of different reasons. At the same time, an RV-7 or -8 is probably the best overall GA aircraft you can possibly get today. They are both fairly easy to built (newer generation kits, and quick built options), and the total cost is less than €100k. There are tons of other kits though.
