I can't remember which poster said I should stop quoting my ATPL material and look at the rules, what are you on about?
That would be me, and what I was on about was that you should stop quoting your ATPL material and look at the rules.
If you KNEW I was wrong just say it and quote me the ANO/AIP/JAR/ICAO Doc reference and I will go and look it up!
I did that, though it is not in my nature to be didactic and brusque, so I put it rather more nicely. I told you that I had scoured the ANO and RotA and there was no reference to the figures you quoted. I was even helpful enough to give you links to the relevant legislation so that you could check for yourself. The trouble with my quoting chapter and verse is that the rule you mention just ain't there. What if I told you that there was a law that brown poodles may not go into Royal Parks on Thursdays, and when you said that you could find no such regulation I said "If you KNOW that, then quote the regulation."?
Taking off "into-the-soup" VFR (then IFR) at an uncontrolled airfield with no flightplan is foolhardy at best.
It is how many, many IFR flights take place. GA is strongly discouraged from using the big, grown up airfields which are connected to controlled airspace, and ends up in the Fairoaks, Blackbushes, Elstrees and Biggins of this world, from which there is no "right" to a radar service, it is only available in the gift of controllers at Farnborough, Luton or Thames, if they have time. As you would be told if you went onto the ATC forum, an FPL is of almost zero safety value outside controlled airspace.
It is great that you have so much faith in your ATPL course notes, but I fear that you will find, once you have been out in the real world for a bit, that it is not as black and white as the printed page.
Will