@Peter wrote:
I often joke that to get into a lot of farm strips, your grandfather must have fought in the Boer War with the owner’s one
Well OK, but even if your grandad missed Spion Kop, nobody at Glenswinton will rush out with a scattergun to shoo you away. 
But if you happen to be a descendant of the RFC officer who sold or traded his Webley-Fosbery semiautomatic revolver to the GSO2 who devised the evacuation of 2nd Aus Div from Anzac, you might not get away in a hurry…
I think the “UK PPR” thing is nothing like as hard as PNR/PPR at a lot of other places – because in the UK they all speak English. And if you want to fly to really private sites, they are PPR for a reason (they are operating under the radar under the 28 day rule which they have to do for at least 10 years) and in most cases they are not open to general visitors anyway. I often joke that to get into a lot of farm strips, your grandfather must have fought in the Boer War with the owner’s one
The bit about the empty profile is just that a lot of people won’t respond to posts whose writer has an empty profile, not least because it is hard to get the right context. I am hoping to get the signup changed so that it says something along these lines.
Sure I know your site. As excellent as the one covering Italy. Add MCR01 Club and EDWQ and you can’t miss me at PuF.
@Peter: I perceived differences in style and scope between forums, but that’s fine with me. If in Rome, do as the Romans do, so I don’t have an issue with PPR. It’s UK style and that’s fine. Every aviation community has their idiosyncrasy. Go ask a german aviation group about manned towers, “Flugleiter” and aerodrome opening hours and you will have enough comments to read for a month.
@a_Kraut: You probably know http://fliegen-in-uk.de/ ?
The topic of PPR in the UK is covered here.
P.S. Your profile is empty..
Actually, you just picked a particular UK forum which is dominated by a dozen people who whine moan and whinge and call for boycotts of any airport charging more than £10 I used to be on that site for a decade so I know it well.
This ritualised religious negativity is a long-standing problem on the UK scene. Then they wonder why airports close and get sold off for housebuilding, when the owner has got fed up with running a site full of bickering and bitching individuals. Le Touquet at €30???? A TOTAL RIPOFF!
All good stuff for generating large amounts of advert clicks of course… you get way more click-throughs from 13 pages than from 1 page.
I have flown a lot around the UK and PNR/PPR is a non-issue. Just a phone call. The “international aviation language” is freely spoken, so it is very quick. Mostly they just take your reg and say “see you”.
VFR trip route planning takes much longer, with having to get weather, enroute notams and all the other stuff…
I can’t believe you got 13 pages of “input” on your PPR question
..which demonstrates the relevance of this topic for you UK flyers :) . Sure, I can phone (btw: some UK airports are NOT PPR) the airfield. This just adds up to the tasks to do before departure.
I can’t believe you got 13 pages of “input” on your PPR question The GAR form is incredibly simple nowadays – just email it to the hmrc address, 4hrs before arrival in the UK.
Some UK airports are PPR too but you can just phone them. They speak English
The main barrier IMHO is on the mainland, where you need an airport which has Immigration, and France has dismantled many of theirs, plus put a long PNR on most of the orders. 24hr PNR basically kills all but long-term-planned flights.
The GAR/Customs regulation can be dealt with in my opinion (people manning the tower at my non-controlled home-airfield are entitled to check the id cards: “oh, you have a valid passport? That’s fine then, have a nice trip!” and Skydemon sends the GAR form). But I had to get used to the PPR rule. After some initial lamenting , I came to terms with that rule.
What might keep some people from bumble around your South ís the VFR airspace structure coming from middle/north Germany: you have to dodge some dutch airspaces and then ask for a direct Costa-Calais, otherwise it is a mess. Then the structure south of London at least needs your attention.
Once you have been there (UK), you most likely come back.
It’s a difficult balance between trying to help by being informative, and giving too much information and scaring people. The boundaries in your head are probably the hardest to break.
Envious of other pilots going to Switzerland for lunch, straight after my PPL I planned a trip France-UK. Good thing I didn’t go, as I hadn’t planned any kind of customs in either country. I was much happier in my ignorance
The 2x Schengen stops are a bit of a pain for my monthly moules marinières
A previous thread on international ultralight privileges is here.
Looking through that French ULM one above, I think the author just enjoyed writing a lot of stuff about the UK Looking at some of the links, it was done more than 10 years ago. And a lot of it is more or less irrelevant e.g. the quad rules… in Class G nobody flies these. Much of the other stuff is not applicable e.g. the stuff about airways… they are just an airspace class (Class A, no VFR). No big deal if you have an aviation chart. In the UK, once you comply with any permissions required for a non G-reg UL, flying around Class G is just like anywhere else, and there is a lot of it. The main difference I see there is that, in the UK, you have to plan a flight OCAS because you can’t rely on getting a CAS transit (but there is a lot of “OCAS”), whereas in France you need to plan to avoid the (extensive) military areas and the CAS part is generally easy to be cleared through (but in much of France there is a lot of “CAS”).
But yes if you create a perception of “great difficulty”, it will spread easily, especially over the internet, and especially when so many French pilots would need to make an extra stop (x2) to clear immigration.
