Yes, you can click on the dotted line under the route (after you have clicked “continue”), and edit it. You can move the “IFR” to the leg which you want to use as first IFR leg and then click “Validate”. If I move it for example between N864 and WAL, it validates and comes up with this:
N0166VFR NILGI N864 MONTY N864 GODPA N864 REXAM N864 IVLOD N864 WAL/N0166F090 IFR CHASE1C
which you can then further simplify by removing the points between NILGI and WAL. After that, I get:
N0167VFR NILGI/N0163A055 N864/N0166F090 WAL/N0166F090 IFR CHASE1C
In Autorouter click on PICKUP (not on the arrow beneath!) and enter the point. You can show all nearby ATS points on the Autorouter map (map options). The autorouter will now use that point for IFR pickup. No need to edit the route.
Where do I find this “PICKUP”?
What else than a DCT to the point of IFR pickup do you need?
I would just do a Z flightplan and select “VFR departure/arrival” under “advanced parameters”
EDIT: Correct, does not work with the same airfield as destination.
It’s a bit odd that AFAIK there is no standard ICAO phraseology for activating and closing flight plans in the air. Sweden has national phraseology for this:
Rob is in the UK – see his avatar text.
In the UK, you cannot expect to get the CAS join which you just happen to file. In the area of the London TMA (where Coventry is) the traffic is managed tactically, by radar (London Control).
One place to ask might be a based FTO. They actually do a lot of stuff in Class G (with the window screens) but on the IR test you are required to pop into CAS so the FE can see you are capable of talking to London Control 
Another might be to get input from a Coventry based IR holder who flies out of there frequently, as to what one is fairly likely to get, versus what is filed.
Even out of Shoreham, which is simpler than Coventry in terms of traffic if flying south / south east in 10 years of IR flying I have almost never got what I filed. Today I filed GWC (for Guernsey) and got NEVIL, and a huge detour around the (probably 24/7 disused nowadays) prohibited zones south of GWC.
As to how to get something to work on Achim’s router, that is a different thing…
I am talking about Eurocontrol IFR (London Control). If you are talking about IFR in Class G then you just take off “VFR” or “IFR” as you wish (“IFR” sounds better if it is obviously IFR wx) and drill a hole in the first cloud you come to The flight is VFR in effect and no clearance means anything. Even if you got one, it confers no right to enter CAS. A lot of mainland European pilots find this system horrific but actually it gives people a lot of freedom, and works because whenever the conditions are not great, almost nobody is flying.
Yes, I was quietly hoping that some UK pilot would give us the specifics… So the answer to the original question is basically: “Computer says no”? Or actually, computer says yes but controller still says no.
I posted a video here which shows a fairly typical scenario for a Class G departure. On that one (as is usual at Shoreham) I already got a provisional clearance from the tower (they phone up London Control for it) which was basically just a “stay OCAS, track to XXX, squawk YYYY”.
I don’t think the UK will ever have a system for rapid US-style pop-up clearances.
In the south east you have two major airports (Heathrow and Gatwick) whose traffic pattern makes it blindingly obvious it just cannot be done except on fairly specific departure tracks. More north you have two more (Luton and Stansted) which bugger up the situation north of London.
Then you have antiquated ATC software. In all of Europe AFAIK you cannot accept an IFR flight into CAS unless you create at least a fragment of a flight plan for it. There is no ad-hoc tactical management in which you just let somebody in and use radar to make sure they are separated from then on. For a start, there are ATC workload rules about the max # of aircraft in a sector (regardless of how spaced they are vertically!). The UK never bought this software module, AIUI, so they have a complicated job creating the FP fragment and basically hate doing it. They do it for short crossings e.g. crossing a 10nm wide airway, because that’s easy (just look on the radar – most of the time there is nothing there at anywhere near that altitude).
UK ATC almost never discusses this openly because they all signed the Official Secrets Act. I have found out various bits over the years from contacts I have and posted them after carefully checking with the source that nobody will get into trouble over it (as I always do in such a case). The UK ATC business has loads of confidential stuff. Some ATC procedure manuals for an airport are secret (well, commercially confidential i.e. secret) – this is the result of privatisation and was done for somewhat similar reasons to why private IAPs are secret.
On one UK aviation site, a senior NATS (Heathrow) ATCO used to post, and occassionally gave some good answers, but in typical unmoderated pilot forum tradition he used to get a lot of personal flak from the usual whinging whining crowd and eventually after years of periodic abuse he left, deleting all his posts on the way out (he had mod/admin privileges)…
I think UK ATC (I mean ATC, not AFIS or A/G at small airfields who sometimes behave like ATC and usually make a right hash of it) are really top class, especially London Control. That’s at the individual level. At the corporate level (NATS usually but not always) the business is pretty difficult.
So I think the virtual impossibility of getting airborne at say Coventry EGBE and asking for an IFR clearance for a flight to Le Touquet LFAT (a flight which was previously filed “VFR” i.e. OCAS but you want to fly it IFR at FL150 because of e.g. poor wx) will remain with us.
Fortunately it is now fairly easy to generate and file an IFR FP.
Scotland (Scottish Control) is different. A different system with a lot more “can do”. But they also have the benefit of almost no low (terminal area) level traffic, relative to the south UK.
Airborne_Again wrote:
It’s a bit odd that AFAIK there is no standard ICAO phraseology for activating and closing flight plans in the air. Sweden has national phraseology for this:ACTIVATING FLIGHT PLAN; DEPARTED TO
[POSITION ] CLOSING FLIGHT PLAN FROM TO
What happened to my posting? It looked correct just after I posted it?
Another try:
ACTIVATING <flight rules> FLIGHT PLAN; DEPARTED <departure airport> <time> TO <destination>
[POSITION <specify>] CLOSING <flight rules> FLIGHT PLAN FROM <departure airport> TO <destination>
