You certainly used to be able to fly any microlight on the strength of your UK PPL A, but many Grandfather rights seem to be pushed aside these days (including the licence itself shortly
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I self taught myself to fly a flexwing (a Griffon tripacer)... or rather self taught myself to stop before I killed myself
I'd take off, fly the length of our longest field (2000m ish) and land. In the end I could fly around the field at low level, but never got the courage up to climb away, which was daft as it would probably have been the safest option. In the end, a couple of heavy landings made me decide to give up as I couldn't find any flexwing instructors within 50 miles. I sold the microlight for more than I payed for it and went back to flying PFA types. I did enjoy the flexwing and found the control imputs quite natural. The bit I struggled with was the rather course foot throttle, which seemed to only work full on or off.
SS