IMCr

[Fuji Abound]

I will have a go.

Do people use the IMCr just as a get out of jail card? Or do you look to exercise the privileges actively?

People use the IMCr (and IR) in a whole host of ways. The illusion that no one uses the rating seriously is just that - an illusion, while on balance it would be fair that IMCr holders as a population are more cautious about how and when they use their priviliges than IR holders.

Can you say just rock up at Biggin on a perfect day and ask to use their ILS just to get more experience with him? Or does that just pi$s off a lot of people in an otherwise busy circuit?

That depends. Generally the weather is not the over riding factor - but how busy the circuit is. Many airports are not busy during the week and will happily accomodate you whatever the weather. Equally on a glorious Saturday when the world and his wife is flying they will not want you shooting approaches for training. Many airports these days require you to book practice approaches so it is worth checking.

My iphone has a lot of applications that tell you the cloud base etc but I still struggle to find where to expect the tops of cloud to be – no doubt this is on one of the met office sites, but if someone can direct me to a good reliable site that gives this information in English that would be greatly appreciated as well

This one is an old chestnut. There are very few good sources of accurate cloud top information and event hen you often need to do so calcualtions for yourself. IO540 of this parishes web site has some of the best information on this subject and would be a good place to start.

I guess, how do you use your GPS in the real world to fly a standard approach in IMC?

The reality is you use a GPS all the time in every aspect of the flight. Most IFR pilots will do very little VOR tracking and the vast majority of en route flying is based on their GPS. So far as approaches are concerned nearly ever IFR pilot with GPS will "back up" and approach with thier GPS - doubtless in the case of an NDB DME approach the reality is they will fly the approach based on the GPS with the NDB DME "backing up" the GPS!