The thing which is important to me is whether one can prolong one's UK/JAA PPL and UK/JAA IR by flying an N-reg aircraft, on the privileges of FAA papers.
I am not sure if this worked in the past for the PPL. I let my UK PPL lapse by more than 5 years (and then had to renew with an examiner) but the big Q is whether at some point I would have had to re-set all the PPL exams?
On the JAA IR, I have understood that if you never renew it (using the annual flight test) but are flying IFR on foreign papers, then you never have to re-sit the exams and can just renew the IR by doing the annual flight test, but (a) I have never seen this clearly written down and (b) am not sure if this will continue under EASA.
Does anyone have any references for this?