Peter wrote:
Actually a lot of stuff is just too much pain without a laptop.
It can depends on the laptop! The form downloaded from Calais uses a pdf with a windows specific font and is not editable on a Mac without installing that specific font! quite a pain… 😱
This is good for another thread 
but if I was an airport I would set up a website for PN/PPR/etc.
And not a piece of crap like the awful Myhandling which is spreading in France and which is ironically hated by the very people who do prefer handling, never mind those (light GA) who also hate paying for handling. And in a country where there is a very strong preference for local-culture, this would be a great business opportunity for someone doing a nice clean job. A future revenue stream from the hosting too (but must keep it cheap).
OTOH one can see why we get this “form everywhere” thing: it costs the airport or the police nothing, they need zero expertise, and they don’t care about inconvenience for the pilot. In fact some prefer to have less traffic anyway…
uses a pdf with a windows specific font
A PDF can have the fonts embedded, surely? Not embedding is really dumb.
That Deauville form cannot be fully completed electronically. One has to print it out, write on it, photograph it and email back the jpeg. Or convert to image and annotate in a graphical editor…
