Originally Posted by
Genghis the Engineer
You can get a briefing by an instructor (we call then FIs, "CFI" means Chief Flying Instructor here) and an examiner sign off that you understand how to fly in the UK - that will do you for a year. After that you need a UK licence. However if you have an FAA PPL and over 100hrs, you can do a quick conversion, quoting the current guidance material (Part Q Subpart 2 of CAP804, technically obsolete and pre-Brexit but still widely used as guidance material for issue of UK licences and largely still valid)...
Thanks for your detailed post and to those who followed up with additional information. I'm a Brit and, although I have lived in USA for almost half my life, thoughts of returning to UK and flying there still tease me sometimes.
Back in 1982 I returned to England with an FAA PPL. My log shows more than a year between my first and last flights for that period of UK residency. Was I illegal after 12 months had elapsed or were the rules different back then?