Originally Posted by
skadi
The helicopter was well below of the cloud at around 800ft AGL. And in uncontrolled airspace the requirement is "clear of clouds" (for both aircraft).
skadi
That's not quite true. This requirement is only true in Airspace G below 3000 ft MSL / 1000 ft AGL (whichever is higher). Above that, and in all other Airspaces, the cloud separation requirement for VFR is 1000 ft (300 m) vertically and 1500 m horizontally. This was only changed a few years ago, until then you would have been right, as the only uncontrolled Airspace in Germany is Golf.
Here's a nice
overview of Airspaces in Germany.
But if the fixed-wing aircraft came out of the clouds, it would (should!) have been under IFR, and if the ceiling was 4800 ft, it would have been in Airspace Echo.
Speyer is uncontrolled and has no instrument approaches (and thus no RMZ), so if it was going to land there it would have had to transition to a visual approach soon after coming out of the clouds. Even at an unusually high descent rate of 2000 fpm it would have taken two minutes in good (10+ km) visibility to reach the helicopter's alleged altitude.
Bernd