Menu Sign In Contact FAQ
Banner
Welcome to our forums

Homebuilt / ultralight / permit (non ICAO CofA) and IFR - how?

Posts moved to existing thread on homebuilt IFR. Note that Europe doesn’t have a general “experimental” regime like the USA has.

Further back up this thread you should find some stuff on which countries allow non-CofA aircraft to fly IFR in their airspace.

To do it legally, you need a convergence of

  • the airspace allowing non-CofA IFR (most don’t)
  • the aircraft permit not having a VFR restriction (typically, European ones have it, N-regs don’t have it)
  • the aircraft is not banned from operating in the country in question (usually you can fly through, may need a permit, ma be limited to 28 days’ stay, etc)

It is basically useless.

There are a few that do it regularly, and if you know which types to look for you can see them do it on FR24 (can’t do Eurocontrol IFR without Mode S) but they tend to do it in parts of Europe where nobody is likely to care.

Gosh, that “IFR certified” Italian Lancair mentioned above is still for sale


Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

To do it legally, you need a convergence of

the airspace allowing non-CofA IFR (most don’t)
the aircraft permit not having a VFR restriction (typically, European ones have it, N-regs don’t have it)
the aircraft is not banned from operating in the country in question (usually you can fly through, may need a permit, ma be limited to 28 days’ stay, etc)
It is basically useless.

Not again …

No airspace in the entire world allow “non-CofA” IFR as far as know. Flying IFR you have to have equipment according to airspace requirements. The only (practical, economical) way to document that the equipment is according to airspace requirement, is to use certified equipment. For this reason there exists no non-certified IFR avionics anywhere in the world. The exact same principle is also valid for transponders and radios in Europe. The only practical/economical way to document that the radio/transponder is according to requirements, is to use EASA-certified equipment. There are no other requirements. If you find them, please show them with a reference.

It’s not a matter of being certified according to ICAO or whatever, it has nothing to do with it. It’s purely a matter of being able to document that the equipment satisfy the airspace requirements. Getting certified equipment is the cheapest, most practical and best way to do that.

Each country may or may not have an experimental regime. This has nothing to do with airspace requirements. Each country may or may not have restrictions on overflights with foreign homebuilt aircraft, but again, nothing to do with airspace requirements, and most EASA countries don’t. Each country may have restrictions on longer stay (30 days, 6 months, whatever), nothing to do with airspace requirements.

Besides, experimental aircraft in Europe are not normally non-CofA, that is mostly a UK thing. They are non-certified and do indeed have a C of A, but not according to ICAO. Having a permit to fly, and having a non-ICAO CofA are two very different things legally.

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

It is true that you need certified avionics to fly IFR in most/all places, but in the USA you can install them in a homebuilt Lancair, etc. and fly IFR. You can’t do that in most of Europe, regardless of what avionics you have installed.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

A search with e.g. this

ifr AND homebuilt

(uppercase AND) digs out various threads.

Thx! Did not search for “homebuilt”. As a non-native speaker I was not accustomed to that term

EDNG, EDST, EDMT, Germany

Peter wrote:

To do it legally, you need a convergence of

the airspace allowing non-CofA IFR (most don’t)
the aircraft permit not having a VFR restriction (typically, European ones have it, N-regs don’t have it)
the aircraft is not banned from operating in the country in question (usually you can fly through, may need a permit, ma be limited to 28 days’ stay, etc)
It is basically useless.

I guess there is no list about those matters, right?

Does anyone know how that works in German airspace?

EDNG, EDST, EDMT, Germany

I am certain you could legally fly an IFR-capable homebuilt if the responsable CAA (Sweden, Lux, Island?) allows this. As I understand it, it is not the airframe which needs to be certified for IFR, but the instrumentation and installation. The installation will then be accepted/allowed by the responsible CAA. Condition for this acceptance/allowance is a certified airframe in most of the European countries, but not in the aforementioned ones.

Bremen (EDWQ), Germany

UK IFR is possible in an LAA Permit aircraft, but not automatically outside UK Airspace, if at all.

Maoraigh
EGPE, United Kingdom

You can except that each airframe has to be individually approved, there are just 2 guys in the LAA doing it, both have full time jobs elsewhere, and people who applied a year ago have still not got it. I am told that the court case arising from this has consumed a lot of LAA resources.

I vaguely recall that, for those who got it, France is ok but not Germany.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

a_kraut wrote:

As I understand it, it is not the airframe which needs to be certified for IFR, but the instrumentation and installation.

For certified aircraft, definitely the airframe needs to be certified for IFR! One requirement is that it must survive a lightning strike. This means that e.g. composite material designs need to have lightning protection designed in from the beginning (typically using a conductive metal mesh) otherwise they can never be certified for IFR.

For UL, I don’t know.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

Airborne_Again wrote:

For certified aircraft, definitely the airframe needs to be certified for IFR!

I think the situation is much less definitive. The concept of IFR certification standards didn’t exist at the time most of the current fleet was (FAA) certified and accordingly the concept does not exist in the TC for those planes, or derivative documents. That doesn’t stop you from flying for example a (metal) Cessna 152, (tube and wood) Bellanca Viking or (tube and rag) Piper Tripacer under IFR – many of them have been, are, and will be forever. For more recent types, and it seems to me based on experience more so for older European (e.g. older LBA certified German) types, there may be a TC operating limitation or mandatory placard that addresses flight conditions. How specifically that is related to changing certification standards, somebody else will have to answer…

Last Edited by Silvaire at 04 Nov 22:11
Sign in to add your message

Back to Top