In the UK, can you just take out your plane at your uncontrolled airfield and decide to go up penetrating clouds in airspace G? Without having filed an IFR flight plan and without the goal of flying IFR?
Yeah, I imagine a great summer day with one nice cumulus cloud next to the airfield and several CFIs deciding to practice. Around here, there would also be the zillion of gliders jumping at that cumulus cloud and those guys are even allowed to fly inside the cloud. The "not speaking to anyone" part makes it even more interesting.
The reality is that the UK, with its GA community approximately same size as Germany and bigger than France and bigger than perhaps the rest of Europe put together, and with a long established culture of flying IMC non-radio, has had zero mid-airs in IMC since WW2. 1-2 a year in VMC, usually near airfields or with people doing silly low level stuff.
Emotionally this concept is hard to accept, of course. But safety regulation should be based on data, not emotion.
Achima, perhaps you see why we believe we have a safer system with a simple to obtain IMC rating. Once you base your analysis on facts rather than emotion then surely you would come to the right answer to:
Common European rules should solve that once and for all
and adopt the safer british system rather than the stupid "enroute" instrument rating that EASA are proposing.
This is taken from something written by someone who flies at my airfield:
Salutary lesson. They say it takes two minutes to lose control in IMC if you aren't trained. I think it is more like fifteen seconds. Crossing Northumberland on my way back from Dundee to East Anglia a couple of weeks ago, I was dumped on by a snow shower that was not in the forecast. I didn't fly into it - it landed on me like a net being dropped from above. Complete whiteout with no warning. For a few seconds I peered into the whiteness, hoping my X-Ray vision would cut in and when it didn't I looked down. The roll angle was over thirty degrees to the right, the pitch was ten degrees down and the speed was marching through the yellow sector en route to the red. And the altimeter was unwinding like a spring. But my balance organs were telling me I was still straight and level. Thanks to Ricky and his IMC drills, I knew what to do. But crikey! Two minutes would have been fatal.
Now tell me that he shouldn't be allowed to have an IMC rating!