2 years ago I wanted to organize a commander flyin abroad as a European Meeting of Commander Owners Group, but I met strong opposition. I received many emails from owners saying they would rather not participate than fly to France. These are owners and an AC11 is a travel machine not a bimble plane.
Were the objecting owners UK based?
Yes they were.
What’s even more shocking — 99.9% of the US PPLs have never flown abroad!
I guess I’m in the 0.1% who has then :-)
I received many emails from owners saying they would rather not participate than fly to France
Why the resistance on going to France? I’ve never flown there myself but from what I’ve heard the GA scene in France is pretty decent, airspace structure is reasonable, fees are reasonable etc. (Not affecting the Commander group, but affecting people like me – the French and UK now have a mutual agreement to let each others permit-to-fly aircraft into each other’s airspace without requiring bureaucracy)
…airspace structure is reasonable
In some parts of France maybe. But I would not want to fly VFR across France. I know enough pilots who had to pay hefty fines for infringing airspaces that could only be guessed from the chart (one of them a former director of our local aviation authority and senior examiner…). And from my own experience in France you have the highest probability of getting ramp inspected, but that maybe applies mostly to German commercial operators that French officials seem do dislike a lot.
I think the NE bit of France is hard to work out
although I suppose, strictly speaking, one can always work out a route if one looks at the chart for long enough 
My VFR trips into France were always either into N France, or if going deeper south I went either down the centre (which is easy) or down the west coast.
The EIR should make all this much easier because you just knock up a Eurocontrol route e.g.
and off you go…
I absolutely love flying to France. OK, I rarely stop there and take in the culture, but from a flying point of view its good.
But, I did find the VFR planning overwhelming beyond the typical L2k, Deauville, Cherbourg near coastal airports. People say the UK is complicated, and it’s probably true, but for a big country such as France, the controlled airspace seems to be quite built up and very widespread. You have your military routes at the weekdays. The need for 2 different charts because one shows the military routes, and the one on the other scale doesn’t. Lots of restricted and danger areas along the western coast on the way down to Rochelle. I haven’t flown in any other country other than UK and France, but I can appreciate the transition from understanding ones own VFR complexities, and then undertaking to understand another countries VFR complexities and chart differences is a challenge. When I planned a 4 hour route from UK to La Rochelle I recall spending more than double my flying time doing the planning. In reality, the routing made for a very easy relaxed flight, and next time around it wont take me 10 or more hours to plan it properly.
On the plus side what I do like is the relatively high Class E airspace, the helpfulness and consistency of ATC, the former is something we don’t enjoy much in the UK airspace.
I think any new country VFR is intimidating particularly where they have a habit of arresting you if you overfly a nuclear power station. But I think VFR in the southern UK is the hardest I have seen in any developed country.
Otherwise it is just a case of familiarity. Let’s face it, VFR navigation is usually straightforward as it is what brand new minted PPLs have to do. But every country is a bit different in how you do it.
ATC is the key if a country has complex airspace. The UK model of ATC is just completely unfit for purpose….Flying airways IFR is fine but otherwise it is terrible.
Admittedly I have been lazy since I got the first IR in 2006 and done most of my non-UK flying IFR, but I did some very long VFR trips before that (France, Greece, Spain) and what completely transformed those flights was a GPS moving map along the whole route.
In retrospect I would have never done those trips with just a paper map and navigating from one waypoint to the next, without having a continuous moving map reference.
And same in the UK. I hope to pop up Shoreham to Cranfield this weekend sometime. The route
will be flown entirely at 2400ft, all Class G. I would not do this without having the UK VFR chart as a moving map, because if something happened to the IFR GPS (in which the EGKA MID WOD WCO EGTC route will be programmed) I would be immediately in big trouble. And that is the same in most countries. Unless you are flying in the middle of nowhere, you just can’t afford to screw up.
But the solution is quite simple. Skydemon is a popular product, which should be accurate in northern Europe I would think. Personally I run the “printed” VFR charts, under a generic moving map product called Oziexplorer. In 2003-2006, on the long trips, I used to get the paper maps scanned into TIFFs. Nowadays the mapdata is rather more available…
The confidence boost of having such a product is immeasurable. I would not leave home without it
I would not agree that ATC is the key, because a pilot is supposed to be able to navigate a route from A to B without any ATC assistance – whether VFR or IFR. It just so happens that e.g. the UK is a bit difficult (sometimes more than a bit difficult) about CAS transits whereas say France is usually very relaxed about the same. But the pilot’s responsibility is the same. Without a clearance, one cannot go into CAS, and one can never be 100% the transit will be granted. So the “job” has to be autonomous navigation.
Peter, just curious, how would you negotiate the double ATZ crossing at Farnborough and Blackbushe?
Ask Farnborough to let Blackbushe know you are coming when you first contact Farnborough?
Hope to contact each of them separately in rapid order?
Just blast over the top of the ATZs no contact?
Even more fun if Farnborough get class D of course…..
At 2400 he will be above them both no?
