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The EIR - beginning to end

It is almost impossible to get a UK ATCO to post on a forum (they have political / secrecy issues at work over that; I have seen some of it played out) but I have been told that they won’t do vectoring because a VFR pilot has to then refuse a vector into IMC which will complicate things for ATC, whereas with an IFR pilot the presumption is that a vector can be complied with.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Is Glasgow not in the UK? Because they definitely vectored me as a VFR across their arrivals, stressing “maintain VMC” which they wanted read back as well, and with the words “you are now radar controlled”.

I see the UK’s Manual of Air Traffic Services (Part 1) states:

Approach radar controllers in particular should exercise extreme caution in vectoring VFR flights – a geographical routeing instruction is preferable. Prior to vectoring, the controller must establish with the pilot the need to report if headings issued are not acceptable due to the requirements to remain in VMC, avoid obstacles, and comply with the low flying rules. Controllers should be aware that pilots of some VFR flights may not be sufficiently experienced to comply accurately with vectors, or to recover to visual navigation after vectoring

That said I have, on various VFR flights in the UK and abroad, been satisfied with the weather and have requested or stated that I can accept vectors. Consequently I have received them.

Last Edited by James_Chan at 04 Jul 13:01

Another reason to avoid vectoring VFR traffic is that the aircraft might not have a DI or other source of stabilised heading. I would refuse a vector in that case, but other pilots might attempt to fly the heading using the wet compass which would not be pretty.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

Using my EIR for the first time

I did my first IFR flights after obtaining my EIR two weeks ago, but that was in reasonably good weather with little actual IMC time. Yesterday I put the rating to good use for the first time and this trip alone showed me how useful the rating and the newly learned skills can be in Europe. My plan was to go Mainz, EDFZ, to Genk/Zwartberg, EBZW, to pick up a friend, fly him to Dahlemer Binz, EDKV, and return back to Mainz.

The weather chart showed an occluding front I had to cross on the way to Belgium. I had to delay my departure for an hour and departed around 10am.

The planned route had quite a large overhead due to Eurocontrol restrictions, but I knew I would not fly this anyway so I did not bother to put any waypoints into the GNS430 other than the IFR pick up waypoint…and I did not even fly to that one.

The route would have kept me off the high and obscured terrain of the Eifel, but after obtaining the most recent weather of Buechel and Spangdahlem I decided that a shortcut would be ok to fly, the morning fog had dissipated. This is what I actually flew:

The NOTAMs showed some restricted areas, extra TMA airspace etc around Kleine-Brogel, but even after trying to get extra information via the AIP supplement I was a little uncertain what was possible and what wasn´t. After cancelling IFR near my destination I simply asked Liege Approach if my understanding of the NOTAMs was correct.

After departing I received the IFR clearance very quickly by Frankfurt Arrival and soon entered IMC. The clouds mostly disappeared shortly after level-off at FL60 and here is Hahn airport, EDFH, the first big Ryanair base in Germany. This is where I did my very first landing at a controlled airport after the US Air Force had left it in the early 1990s.

After a few minutes we approached the occluding front which put us into solid IMC until shortly before our destination. The ride was very smooth and we encountered no rain, it was a great opportunity to build IFR experience without using the view limiting device.

Once we were in range I got the latest ATIS information of Maastricht and Kleine-Brogel, the weather had cleared as predicted and I cancelled IFR a couple of miles before reaching Zwartberg. Due to the conditions in the frontal area and the high terrain in between I would have cancelled the trip if VFR would have been my only option.

Zwartberg is a wonderful little airfield with a great restaurant. I did not take any pictures, but we had a great lunch sitting outside just next to the runway. We saw this Shorts Skyvan depart with a couple of spotters strapped into its back. They went for a photo shoot, picturing a couple of jets that took part in the Kleine-Brogel airshow. The Shorts is not a beauty queen, but this one looks cool anyway.

The weather at Zwartberg was wonderful, the webcam at Dahlemer Binz showed the cloudbase at more than 1000ft AGL (there are some HUGE windmills in the area), WX radar and GAFOR concurred with this, so we departed after lunch. I decided to go VFR since the MVA at our destination was too high to cancel IFR legally with the expected cloud cover. Staying clear of the Beek TMA we passed Fort Eben-Emael, which is situated mostly inside the hill under the brown field surrounded by woods in the left part of the picture. The Germans took this Fort from the Belgians in May 1940, after landing on top of it with about 40 transport gliders that had been towed to the border by JU52s.

On the way to the border we also passed the Henri-Chapelle American Cemetry, those were awful times.

Shortly after this, when approaching the German border, things got very interesting quickly and unexpectedly. I could not take pictures because of the quickly deteriorating conditions. It was very interesting to see how one hesitates in disbelief to make the obvious decision to turn around, since the weather should have been absolutely flyable. Well, it wasn´t, and we eventually turned around when the clouds went to below 500ft GND. With all those windmills around it would have been foolish to continue. Those instrument skills certainly help to fly a coordinated one-eighty under stress in bad conditions! We tried our luck further south, but the weather did not cooperate. Since we did not want to go all the way back to Zwartberg we finally diverted to Theux, a very nice grass airfield just northwest of Spa. It was my first diversion while on an international flight plan, but the Belgian AIS was very relaxed. Being very low, we had transmitted our intention in the blind on the Flight Information frequency, and somebody had already relayed the information when I finally reached them by phone.
A few gentleman of the local club were at the airfield and opened the clubhouse for us, we even got some fuel. It was an unplanned visit, but a very nice one.

After two hours the weather had eventually cleared up sufficiently and we finally departed for the short hop to Dahlemer Binz. We passed Spa-Francorchamps and landed at EDKV in very windy, but otherwise perfect weather.

This is the airplane Remko had to pick up, a rebuilt 1943 Commonwealth Boomerang. He had performed at my home airfield Wershofen the week before and was on his way to Paris for the Villaroche airshow.

For the way back to Mainz I decided to go VFR, my neighbour who accompanied me was eager to do some sightseeing instead of flying on top. The cloud base was quite low at times, but visibility was superb and despite the wind the flight was very smooth. Halfway home I found a field that I landed on in a glider a couple of years ago, seen here in the lower right corner.

Flying along the Rhine river never gets old. The famous “Loreley” can be seen in the first picture.

Crossing the Rhine again near Ruedesheim, beautiful.

We ended the flight circling our homes a few miles south of Mainz and were greeted by a beautiful rainbow. Life is good!

Last Edited by Caba at 08 Sep 17:27
EDFE, EDFZ, KMYF, Germany

Great use of your EIR! Congratulations!

What flight plan are you filing usually? Z I would assume? There is no code for VFR-IFR-VFR. What would happen if you get stuck in the clouds?

Last Edited by Dimme at 08 Sep 18:17
ESME, ESMS

You really should plan defensively in order not to get stuck in the clouds, especially in those light and underequipped aircraft. West and east of the front the weather was fine and I had 50gal of fuel when I departed, that gives some peace of mind. If the plan does not work out don´t be afraid to tell ATC. We are there to help you and usually have a good idea of the weather within 200NM.
Anyway I plan on completing the full IR once I´ve flown my 15hrs PIC time on the EIR.

EDFE, EDFZ, KMYF, Germany

Congrats Caba for the rating and good you are making use of it on day one

It feels to me for EIR you need more skills to manage IFR/VFR transitions and IMC/VMC flying than an IR rated person whole can go simply IFR/IMC with less realtime hassles and planing on-the-fly, nonetheless it is a good skill to build on in early days later when a full IFR/IMC does not go to plan, in the other hand you may get pushed to the same mistakes as VFR only pilot: trying to maintain VMC in new hostile terrain/weather to land rather than going “safely up and far”, so your comment on the extent of weather and fuel endurance are really valid for EIR type of flying….

If I have a lot of endurance, I will just fly south untill it clears !

Last Edited by Ibra at 08 Sep 22:32
Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

Dimme wrote:

What flight plan are you filing usually? Z I would assume? There is no code for VFR-IFR-VFR.

You file Z. Z doesn’t mean just VFR-IFR — it means “there will be one or more changes of flight rules and the first one will be VFR.”

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

Thank you Caba for a great report. Really interesting to read. I know next to nothing about met theory but the two structures on your MSLP are both bad news

The inverted V is one and the trough next to the front is the other. Of course the actual severity can vary hugely but you did pick a nontrivial case

All EIR flight plans have to be Z, strictly speaking, and that makes it a bit of a give-away in case you decide to cheat a bit IMHO, had the EIR been a big success, ATC would have got used to realising that the Z flights are people who are supposed to be watched to make sure they are not IFR where they aren’t supposed to be.

We did all this before but the EIR has another huge problem in that SIDs and STARs are banned so you have to be VFR for potentially a very long distance from the airport – at both ends.

And in a higher performance plane the EIR would be used mostly as a ticket to high altitude VMC on top, with oxygen etc.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
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