ShyTorque
Oggers, I refer you again to the text from the AAIB report I quoted in post #105.
You are really clutching at straws. That pre-dates all the current regs. What an AAIB inspector thought might have been legal in 2009 is a very tenuous basis for rejecting the current regulations and advice from the CAA that has all undergone a major change since the report's recommendation to close off that particular loophole. It doesn't occur to you that the recommendation was acted on or perhaps rendered moot by the intro of EASA Ops.
Oggers, you are simply regurgitating what you wrote earlier. I do read the regulations, I'm very much aware of what they say.
I take it (looking at what you have written here and elsewhere on the forum) that you make most of your flights departing from a fully IFR equipped airfield, climbing to your MSA on a SID inside CAS and remaining so until your STAR and IFR letdown to a nicely lit runway. I have no issues with that although some don't have that privilege and there is a very different world outside of that type of operation.
Again, you are confusing the rules about airfield operating minima with other IFR rules. How do you think an IFR transit is done when operating from non-airfield sites?
This thread is about unpublished let-downs for private pilots. There is no confusion, the regulations on aerodrome minima apply to IFR approaches (whether the 'aerodrome' happens to be a field or a proper airport). This from the UK AIP has not previously been "regurgitated":
4.12 Aerodromes Without Published Instrument Approach Procedures
4.12.1
For an aircraft landing at an aerodrome without an instrument approach procedure either:
a. a descent should be made in VMC until in visual contact with the ground, then fly to the destination; or
b. an IAP at a nearby aerodrome should be flown and proceed as in (a); or
c. if neither (a) nor (b) is possible, first obtain an accurate fix and then descend not lower than 1,000 ft above the highest obstacle within 5 NM (8 km) of the aircraft. If visual contact (as at (a) above) has not been established at this height, the aircraft should divert to a suitable alternate with a published instrument approach procedure.
I don't see how the CAA could spell it out any more clearly than that.
