Good stuff...
It's debatable whether one should make the privileges of the IMCR dependent on currency.
While this is a plausible safety argument (and always remember that "safety" can be used to force just about anything through; a bit like "do you agree that convicted child molesters should be able to work as PE teachers") it would remove IMC privileges from the great majority of PPL/IMCR holders. Most UK PPLs are already struggling to clock up something like 20-30hrs/year, VFR.
It would amount to a back door abolition of the IMCR.
One needs to decide whether to support the IMCR, or kill it off. If you want to kill it off (on "safety" grounds) then you ought to kill the basic PPL too, on the same patently obvious grounds that the usual training falls way short of its privileges. In reality one has to assume that pilots have the sense to not do something that's dangerous.
I would support a currency requirement for the IMCR if one got Class A privileges, but there is no way that would happen. The IR training industry would vigorously campaign against any such proposal; the fact that almost no UK PPL is doing a JAA IR being beside the point.
To change the subject slightly, could anyone advise on how I stand flying in IMC with an IMCR (or JAA IR come to that) in an N-reg a/c in the UK? I heard today off of a very knowledgable FAA instructor that wherever in the world you are, you must have an FAA IR to fly an N-reg in instrument conditions.
A year or so ago I wrote to the CAA with exactly this question. Their reply was that it is up to the FAA to decide which (if any) of the IMCR privileges work in an N-reg. So I wrote to the FAA and their reply was they they regard the IMCR as "equivalent" to the FAA IR. For those that are going to jump at me over the last sentence, DFC no doubt et al, let me remind them of the obvious caveat that the IMCR privileges are themselves limited by the ANO to be well below those of the FAA IR (i.e. no Class A, 1800min vis) but it does mean the IMCR appears fully valid in an N-reg. One cannot really go any further than this is clarifying this old chestnut.
Tied up with this is the other old chestnut whether an FAA PPL holder (an FAA PPL has automatic night privileges, normally) can fly in the UK at night (whether in N or G) given that UK night is normally IFR. I have never seen this one answered, and now that I have the IR it doesn't concern me anymore.
On a related tack, the supporting case for flying an N-reg with a UK PPL with the night qual/rating is
FAR $61.3 (a) (1) says: "when operated within a foreign country, a current pilot license issues by the country in which the aircraft is operated may be used"
and of course that provides a supporting case for the IMCR privileges in an N-reg, too, unless one goes for the anally retentive argument that a "license" is not the same as a "rating" in the above context.
Last edited by IO540; 11th Mar 2006 at 10:18.