Of course as I have said before if these meetings were open to public scrutiny like our own select committee meetings we wouldnt have to speculate whether or not it was true
What difference would that have made? You want everyone to listen to your views, but in an endless stream of posts and threads I have never observed you take any feedback or input whatsoever. Your own listening capacity appears to be zero.
Last May Jim took the trouble to get permission from EASA to publicise the interim outcome of FCL008. It was clear and NOTHING has changed to provoke this recent torrent of bile.
1. FCL008 was not proposing a Europe-wide IMCr for all the reasons that have been articulated to you ad infinitum
Martin Robinson himself said in the GA article "
AOPA UK was not seeking to foist the IMC rating on the rest of Europe, as some had claimed, but it was extremely concerned to retain it, or else adopt a rating with almost identical privileges, in Britain"
2. FCL008 did not have access to any mechanisms to create either a national-only rating or a "limited by national discretion" rating
3. Therefore, the only two outcomes of interest to an IMCr holder that FCL008 could achieve would be a more accessible full IR, and a sub-IR rating that was acceptable/workable across Europe. The EIR was the best such rating that could be agreed.
All of this has been in the public domain since May. If you or AOPA, or Eric Sivel for that matter, had some mechanism for "saving" the IMCr consistent with 1 and 2 above, then you should have publicised it. The AOPA article admits that they don't know what the mechanism should be - yet castigates FCL008 for not having some magic potion to come up with such a mechanism.
Given it has been clear for 6 months now that FCL008 was not going to "save the IMCr", why don't you, as a self-proclaimed IMCr campaigner, tell us what you have been doing to achieve this objective? Similarly, AOPA UK appear to have sat on their backsides for 6 months and woken up now to an outcome and terms of reference they have known about (through their IAOPA representative) for most of 2009. An "urgent" meeting with Eric Sivel in December 2009. What have they been doing all year?
The rest of the AOPA article is irrelevant. It deals with some recent personal comments about the IMCr made by Jim Thorpe. He is not the "UK" representative, he is a European representative who happens to be from the UK. Amazingly, FCL008 had topics other than the IMCr to work on - gliding and the full IR. What makes the IMCr nutters think there should have been some FCL008 "vetting" so that only someone who had a prescribed set of opinions could sit on a committee?
I happen to like the IMCr because I both believe it is safe and effective, and personally had hundreds of hours of IMCr-holding flight in which I used the rating to the full. I hope the rating can survive, but I despair over the mix of obtuseness, naivety and malice shown by some IMCr campaigners; especially in this attack on Jim.
The man isn't a huge fan of the IMCr, his comments are balanced in the sense of acknowledging strengths and weaknesses. Big deal. Wake up and accept that some people think the IMCr is not great. Despite my personal and positive experience, I have heard first hand from too many experienced IFR instructors, whose views I respect, that the standard of many IMCr holders they fly with is poor or, even, shockingly poor. No matter how many "FACTS" you post, you are not going to sway first hand experience of this sort that will shape people's views.
brgds
421C
The only possible counter to my points above are the Eric Sivel comments which imply that FCL008 both had the mandate and the tools to "save the IMCr" but chose not to use them. I believe this to be plainly and simply untrue. I do not know whether Mr Sivel was misreported, misinterpreted or misguided in this respect. I suspect we will find out.....