If your authority states, for example per 14CFR 61.51 (c) that you must log instrument time during the time you are operating solely by reference to instruments in actual or simulated instrument conditions, then do so. What you are efectively logging is IMC time. Those are the rules under FAA.
Not at all. Under 14 CFR 61.51, a pilot is not required to log flight time except for the purposes of showing recency of experience, or to meet the requirements of a privilege, certificate, or rating. On is not required to log instrument time. One may log instrument time, but may only do so when flight is conducted by reference to instruments, either simulated, or actual instrument conditions. One need not be IMC; so long as one is required to operate the aircraft by reference to instruments, it's instrument time. The FAA has no prescribed category for logging time spent on an IFR flight plan, as it's meaningless.
Under JAA you log IFR whenever you are flying under instrument flight RULES. Even if you are flying in VMC the JAA regards flight time on an IFR plan as instrument flight time.
May log, or must log? Again, there's a difference. Previous posters have stated that all time spent under IFR must be logged as IFR. You're suggesting that JAA requires that time to be logged as instrument time?
When I finished my business in the US, I had nearly 2000hrs TT and roughly 120 IMC - in the IFR column. I keep a separate logbook for my FAA flying, this basically means that I have in excess of 1200 hrs IFR but only around 150 hrs IMC.
That basically means you have 150 hours of instrument time, and 1200 hours of nothing.
As long as everybody plays by the same rules... where they may play.
Ah, but you see, we don't. I the real world, we don't pad our logs, and we certainly don't log instrument time for periods of the flight in which a distant control center has issued a paper clearance...any more than we log flight time when we look up and see airplanes flying overhead.
A few years ago during an international weather modification project I met an incoming pilot from the EU who claimed to be qualified. When I glanced through his logbooks, it turned out that all the padding he'd done given the regulations under which he operated left him barely qualified to operate a motor scooter. He advertised himself as having ample flight experience, but his instrument experience was a fraction of what he logged, for the very purposes of this thread. His PIC time was likewise, and he had logged flight time for his simulation experience in a King Air, of all things. In the end, having reviewed his logs and inteviewed him, and former associates of his, I determined that the conclusion was correct and recommended his termination. While he met the JAA letter of the law, he was, in fact, unqualified to operate on our behalf, and did not have the experience to be doing what we were doing.
We're most certainly not all operating under the same rules.
You're asserting, then, that the JAA regulation requires you to log the time...or permits you to do so?