mh wrote:
Granted, [the EASA regulation system] isn’t perfectFar from it, I’d say. The problem is not so much the regulations themselves but the lack of accessibility. The regulations are clearly written for lawyers and not for the people they are intended to regulate.
There is no table of contents or index in any regulation. If they were not available in electronic form it would be almost impossible to find your way in them.
The division between articles and annexes makes it even harder.
Updates to regulations are published as change regulations, so it is difficult to be sure you are looking at the correct version of any particular paragraph. Some regulations are available in consolidated versions, but not all and not in all languages. An even if they are, there may be more changes after the consolidated version.
AMC and GM are published separately even though the AMC are frequently absolutely necessary. Again they are updated with “change regulations”. I only know of one regulation (OPS) where there is a consolidated version which includes the AMC and GM.
Go to www.easa.europa.eu and click on regulations or on document library and then on regulations. Seems pretty straight forward to me. It is much better than the old german system of Gesetze and Verordnungen and Durchführungsverordnungen being put wetween wine standardisation laws and the regulation of public heath service.
mh wrote:
Quite a long document for “no bureaucracy”
Come on! If I had a new, shiny CS retract etc “touring” microlight, where would I likely to be flying? Norway/Sweden (4:1 ratio maybe), then it would be Denmark and Germany, France, Czech and so on. Longer trips would exclusively be in June-August. So I would fill out the form for Sweden (one single page), and it would be valid for 3-6? months (the link in the EMF is bad, the correct link is this). I would print out the permission, put it with the other flight documents. For the summer months I will do the same for Denmark (90 days permission), Germany – nothing needed, France – nothing needed, Czech – nothing needed, Poland – nothing.
For me to travel with a microlight in the likely places I would go, during the time I would go, would be to get 2 (two) permissions per year. For anything else, it is all written nicely in the EMF document (one single, very readable and nice document). This is neither difficult nor a big burden. It’s simply a small nuisance.
But then, I am not likely to get a new shiny “touring” microlight. I will fly with my homebuilt experimentals where those two permissions also would be redundant.
Peter wrote:
The reality is that most (all?) aircraft insurance policies require the flight to be legal so if you disregard the permit matrix (in the document referenced by mh) you have (IMHO) no insurance.Whether that matters is of course dependent on your attitude to risk… and whether you ever fly outside your country’s airspace.
No one is doing that, not that I am aware of. You also have to remember that in most of Europe, no permissions are needed to fly “foreign” microlights. This includes Czech, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland and many others.
Peter wrote:
I have done some digging and I am not any wiser. It is damn hard to find out the information. A huge amount of people have posted on various sites asking if e.g. they can credit microlight hours towards a PPL or a CPL. There used to be, in the UK, a 10hr credit for microlight time towards the JAA PPL. I can’t see any clear references for anything else.It’s a pity that so many people have gone the microlight route for financial reasons (at least, all those I have ever spoken to have told me they do it for financial reasons) and then as the finances of some of these people improve over time, they are stuck and have to re-do a lot of hours in some old tin can.
I don’t have a “hard” reference, but with a microlight license, 15 of the needed 30/45 hours are counted for when getting a LAPL/PPL. But, by then you typically have several hundred hours, and are likely to get the license with minimal hours (most likely you are a much better pilot than your fresh out of ATPL candidate instructor). As a route to obtain PPL, then microlight is not economically sound, but that is not the point. The point is that flying a 40 year old tin can within a suffocating EASA regime, is not a very attractive proposition for people flying a carbon fiber, CS, retract while being free as a bird. IMO, the single only reason to get a LAPL/PPL would be to be able to fly experimental planes and/or aerobatics.
@mh I don’t think that will help him (as it doesn’t address his complaints) and I agree with him. All new versions should be published as complete, consolidated documents. They can publish change documents if they wish but the consolidated version should be authoritative. And it annoys me greatly that PDF versions of regulations don’t have content bookmarked (normally when I generate a PDF all the headings are bookmarked with the hierarchy preserved so you essentially have a list of contents which the PDF viewer can display to me at all times). Even if it went only to subpart/ appendix level, it would give me a better sense of how the document is structured.
mh wrote:
Go to www.easa.europa.eu and click on regulations or on document library and then on regulations.That’s what I do. EASA does a reasonable job of organising the regulations, AMC and GM so that you can find them. But that’s not even half the job.
Seems pretty straight forward to me.Please refer me to the tables of contents of the regulations. Or show me a (complete) consolidated version of part-M.
Airborne_Again wrote:
Or show me a (complete) consolidated version of part-M.
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?qid=1442413539477&uri=CELEX:02014R1321-20150727 (including TOC)
mh wrote:
That one does not include 2015/1536, but the TOC was nice.Airborne_Again wrote:http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?qid=1442413539477&uri=CELEX:02014R1321-20150727 (including TOC)
Or show me a (complete) consolidated version of part-M.
Let’s just hope that they will put TOCs in more regulations. E.g. EASAs otherwise very good consolidated version of 965/2012 including the AMC and GM has 1671 pages and no TOC.
The problem is that the “good” things, like the consolidation of 965/2012 and the TOC in part-M are provided in a completely ad-hoc manner.
Is there any “real” structural difference between the UL and the VLA-LSA category in modern factory made EU aircraft ?
Is it only that “legaly” once you grow fat or fill-up the tanks you jump to the next category ?
There is no structural difference for the Eurofox, at least, in the UK.
Eurofox Microlight is 450 kgs MAUW, either nose- or tailwheel (472.5 kgs with ballistic ’chute). There is a UK factory-built option.
Eurofox LSA category – 560 kgs. Only available as self-build.
IME often there is. I have yet to meet an aircraft that goes unchanged from Microlight to LSA. Even if it’s just a single stringer that needed to be changed. It is dangerous to assume that this would be the case. Some of the microlights aren’t even tested properly for the use of their “certified” envelope.
