If you have a GPS, you should always enter “G” in field 10, no matter what as “G” alone does not imply RNP. If the GPS installation (and you!) is approved for B-RNAV, then you enter “R” in field 10 and “PBN/B2” in field 18 just as you suggested. As far as I know, you don’t need any particular approval for the installation. If the box can do B-RNAV, that’s it.
Now, P-RNAV is another matter as it requires both operational and airworthiness approval. It happens that just a few days ago I contacted the Swedish CAA about P-RNAV in our club Cessna 172S with a factory installed G1000. It appears that the quote from the C172S POH above is sufficient documentation to get airworthiness approval. Also in Sweden operational approval is automatic for GA flights if the pilot has taken an approved P-RNAV training course. (Is this the case also in other EASA countries??)
I am seriously thinking of getting P-RNAV approval for myself and my aeroclub C172 just for fun. (Yes — RNP in a C172!) I’ll just have to check the cost…
(Btw, I renewed my IR earlier this year after an extended lapse. I was also surprised that RNAV is not included in the IR syllabus so that you need add-on training in order to use it. The school I went to did include RNAV as part of the IR training anyway.)
Great post by Piotr…
I did the JAA IR ground school in 2011 and there was almost nothing relevant to modern day flying. IMHO, the system “hangs together” purely because most people are going to a jet type rating and then they will sit RHS for hundreds of hours, with an experienced pilot in the LHS who can fly the 737 etc all by himself if needed and who makes sure the RHS doesn’t screw up too badly. Plus the hardware itself is fantastically capable – deice, radar, +5000fpm climb, FL350+ ceiling, you name it. I have 1.5hrs in a full motion 737 sim and the thing goes like a rocket. The vertical performance is a significant fraction of say an F16… So a whole pile of “typical light GA issues” simply falls away even before you get airborne. IMHO, if all these people were to fly “GA” the system would immediately collapse.
The FAA IR (I have the CPL/IR) is much more practical and is enough to fly light IFR, but you still learn zero about European specific operational stuff e.g. Eurocontrol. It is fully usable straight out of the box only in US airspace. But it is much more usable in Europe than the European training, which is obviously perverse.
I think the "Eligibility does not constitute Operational Approval. " stuff refers to stuff like PRNAV which requires
The last one is currently an issue, especially for N-reg (you need to get an LoA from the FAA FSDO in NY and they take about a year) but there are moves within ICAO to remove the need. I am not up to date on this and frankly I don’t care since nobody in a position to enforce this stuff can even spell “LOA”. There is also some talk of F-reg pilots needing GPS training, etc, etc… this stuff is changing constantly. The total number of people I know who understand the current situation is precisely TWO. One of them posts here but very rarely and the other said he never will. Most national CAAs don’t understand this stuff either.
You need to hang out with an experienced IFR pilot and learn the operational stuff…
There is a lot of variation and gotchas in the way different GPSs deal with stuff like missed approach sequencing and you just have to learn it thoroughly for your aircraft. Personally, I don’t use the GPS for the initial parts of a missed approach (which is obviously a highly critical part of a flight and there is no room for “WTF is it doing now” moments) and I just fly it on the autopilot in HDG mode.
I’m not sure that a FAA training would have been any better nor less expensive.
Wrong on both counts sadly. But lots of good advice here. You just need to find a mentor or instructor to help you.
The FAA IR (I have the CPL/IR) is much more practical and is enough to fly light IFR, but you still learn zero about European specific operational stuff e.g. Eurocontrol. It is fully usable straight out of the box only in US airspace. But it is much more usable in Europe than the European training, which is obviously perverse.
That’s true, to fly in Europe I had to read lots of Peter’s great trip reports, IFR Flying in Europe, posts from other forum members like Stephan Schwab who have taken their FAA training to Europe, and of course the whole thing wouldn’t have been worth the bother without autorouter. So a belated huge thanks to the community here!
The issue is that I could not find what the applicable regulation is in Europe.
I don’t know whether I need a formal approval or not as a private operator operating my own plane. It seems that it depends upon the country.
I know (or rather that’s my conclusion after reading many things on the UK CAA website) that I don’t need a formal training as a pilot, as I have a UK EASA licence. This would not be the case if my EASA licence was issued by France where a training is mandatory.
I’ll start with the FAA docs but it won’t tell me what the applicable rules are in Europe. Then I’ll read another time the the G1000 reference book.
But what a mess it is in Europe…
I wouldn’t worry about it. Just file the flight plan, do the PPR or whatever, and fly 
I would guarantee that 99% of European IR holders who own a plane have no idea about operational approvals etc.
Your equipment is clearly BRNAV (RNAV5) and PRNAV (RNAV1) compliant. The next question is whether you have an AFMS in your POH authorising IFR operations. You certainly should have, if you have a G1000 which is factory installed. It is really only people who had modern avionics retrofitted and got some cowboy to do it that might not have the paperwork. I know of avionics shops who quote on the basis that “all paperwork is customer responsibility” and then the installation may not even be legal for IFR enroute…
The main difference between IFR in Europe and IFR in the USA is the stuff on the ground e.g. airport opening hours, PNR/PPR requirements, stuff like that. The flying is almost identical. This might be worth a quick scan.
For work I have had to do quite a bit of reading about PRNAV, GPS, RNAV and RNP.
Sadly it’s all so bloated with references to regulations and sub sections of amendments to other regulations that the only thing I have really learnt about it all is that we are allowed to do an approach called RNAV (GNSS) but not to do one called RNAV (RNP).
RNP approaches are a completely different thing; not applicable to light GA. They exist at a few airports only, and the crews need special training. The whole context of RNP approaches is commercial (AOC) ops, although a private pilot could possibly get trained by throwing enough money at it.
It’s a bit like CAT2. I used to know a private pilot who loved punishment, so he got himself trained and certified for CAT2, which IIRC reduced the DH on an ILS from 200ft to 150ft. He got as far as flying a twin turboprop and of course that was CAT2 approved also. He had the JAA ATPL, too, because anything less would have been “improper”. A few years ago he chucked it all in, completely, and took up sailing. He said that he got sick of “running an airline”. It’s actually not such an unusual fate for those who have climbed all the way up the GA capability food chain…
The whole aviation regulation subject has loads of references to regs but the regs are either dead or superseded by other regs, and most people can’t find most of these regs. And when they find them they can’t read them – a lot of EASA regs are badly written (it’s the European way of lawmaking – UK regs tend to be much better written). And there is no straight process for discovering which reg is currently applicable to which operation. Often, multiple regs can be applicable – especially nowadays when EU countries supposedly incorporate EASA regs in their national law, but not all of them have, and all of them retain areas where they still have regulatory powers. I think I know just one guy who can find his way round this, and he works inside EASA. There is another one out there who seems to know his way round it, at least from the UK angle, and he works as a consultant to the CAA. Nobody else has a hope.
I used to know the UK regs pretty well but a couple of years ago just gave up. When you have a 500 page document just on licensing, you lose the will to live.
The USA is FAR (no pun intended) better, with regs all in one place and which almost never get changed because they have proved themselves over decades.
I must be a relatively lonely individual because I actually like to understand regulations, and I take a small amount of joy in helping people who can’t be bothered with them at all, but as you say, in Europe it is extremely difficult to do. Unfortunately even the rule makers can’t work it out. I made a query to EASA about an element of FCL, directed towards their FCL department. The assistant couldn’t work out an answer so referred it up the chain to someone else, who advised me that it was a tricky question not entirely covered by current regulations, and that they would look into it further and give me a decision. That was more than one year ago and I am still waiting on an answer.
I appreciate that it would make the documents quite a bit larger but I would much rather that they removed all the lines in the documents that say things like “as detailed in xy.z.123.c.pt.1 Ch1 s 2.3.43” and replaced it with the relevant text.
