No I was G to N. It has remained on N. The shed that the aircraft was in was run by an EASA outfit who hated N Reg. I found out the hard way. This was circa 2000’s and they made life quite awkward. To say the least
Added they are now bust..
You definitely need a good A&P/IA to work with the DAR. Unfortunately of my “2005 team”, the DAR is now dead and the A&P/IA was permanently banned by the FAA. Of course his EASA66 was not affected 
My plane sat in the hangar for weeks until I found that “team”. I wrote about it here. It was extra complicated because the hangar company was somehow involved in delivering the A&P/IA, but the guy was moonlighting and wanted to keep a low profile.
who did his level best to crush the project.
What did he do?
I am writing this from very vague memory of almost 20 years ago, but did you go G to N and then back to G, or was it someone else? That guy spent about £10k.
WilliamF wrote:
US made aeroplanes do not need an Export C of A to go back on to the N Reg.
William that was not true in my case. I had to get the Export CofA because the DAR had requested it. No discussion. My aircraft is as American as Grandmas apple pie.
It so happened that the FAA had a file reference on it and a very helpful female at the FAA got me the copy, otherwise the transfer would not have happened. I used a DAR, with his ’’own’’ IA/AP to supervise. That worked well despite the efforts of an idiot at Full Sutton who did his level best to crush the project. Now at Sherburn. Be aware…..Anyway it will save you a huge amount of grief if as Peter states above the checklist is followed to the T. My cross to bear was no fire certificate for an interior upgrade. Long story………
Here are some brief notes from speaking to one DAR recently:
I also found this description. Not sure how old it is.
AFAICT, a US DAR is required for both an Export CofA from the N-reg, and importing an aircraft to the N-reg.
We were exporting M-BONO to become G-BONO once again. The IOM registry surveyor just makes himself available for one day remotely, reviews all your paperwork and asks you for specific photos and videos of elements of the aircraft. It’s a virtual survey, and it’s a system that works well. In reality for a DAR visit, he will have reviewed everything long before he gets to the aeroplane.
We will need Mike Bonventre the DAR we use in January, for the Quest Kodiak, he’s pretty busy at the moment, with at least 6 weeks lead time on services.
We’ve just done a Manx Export C of A
Do you mean exporting from the Isle of Man (M-reg) to another registry? Did it involve an FAA DAR or someone else? It should not be an FAA one of exporting from the M-reg. It is FAA DARs whose fees have gone up, 3x according to one I spoke to the other day, so best part of $10k.
US made aeroplanes do not need an Export C of A to go back on to the N Reg. That’s pretty universally accepted. You just get copies of the historical docs from the FAA and use those as your basis of certification.
We’ve just done a Manx Export C of A, it’s a desktop survey and about £2500. In reality most of these jobs can be done using video calls and scanned copies. C19 proved that was acceptable practice.
There is a discussion of the Export CofA here.
It isn’t correct that an Export CofA is always needed. Guernsey doesn’t need one and IIRC neither does the IOM (can’t find the ref right now; @neil may know). Also I didn’t need one – here.
The last one above is interesting because it suggests that most US-made planes should not need an Export CofA when going onto N-reg – because they must have met FAA requirements when originally made. The challenge might be getting a letter out of the mfg stating this, after many years. If this is true I bet it is a well guarded secret
I did not need an export CofA when I bought my Grumman Traveler on the Belgian registry and registered it with the FAA. The previous owner deregistered it in Belgium upon sale with a remark that the plane was going to be registered with the FAA and I just sent the FAA all the required documents; the registration part was actually quite easy. Getting the DAR to issue an FAA CofA was also somewhat a non-issue, but rather expensive.
Can we solve the mystery?
