UdoR wrote:
Whenever the ramp check starts with some bad mood there’s something “in the air” that happened before.
That is fully in line with my experience! All my ramp checks have been complete “no events”. Sometimes the Flugleiter even asked beforehand “Do you have all your papers with you and would it be ok if I have a look so that I can make a tick on my ramp check list?”
The situations I witnessed where ramp checks have not been going so smooth have always been cases where the true reason for trouble has been something else: Either due to a misunderstanding as in your case or due to the fact that the pilot actually did something wrong but rather than admitting his fault wanted to explain the Flugleiter that he has nothing to say …
Peter wrote:
To me it looks like the €50/line rule is intended to hit cases of large-scale logbook forgery.
There is no such thing as a “EUR50/line” rule in Germany. It is an urban myth spread by people that like complaining about “the administration” even more than flying.
Whenever somebody brings up such a story in a flying forum – like here – this causes dozens of pages of complaints but you never get closer to an actual case than “I heard from a friend that somebody he knows claimed that somebody had to pay …”
in the club I’m flying there were just too many accidents where it turned out that the pilot lacked even the basic required experience, and/or did not have a proper license (e.g. check flight or medical lapsed).
Interesting. Can you link some accident reports?
I got checked by a seemingly overstrained Flugleiter
Who, without being BFL, can’t even do that…
To me it looks like the €50/line rule is intended to hit cases of large-scale logbook forgery. These do happen and always will happen due to flight training and licensing having various total-hours thresholds.
Of course I am not suggesting the case under discussion was logbook forgery, but if it was, we aren’t going to get more info 
Well I too heard the 50€-per-false-entry-rule, but know of no one to whom it was applied. Any other than that I never had real bad experiences when my logs had been checked.
I also have to admit that I look at ramp checks with two different eyes. They’re nasty, yes. But during my 40 years in the club I’m flying there were just too many accidents where it turned out that the pilot lacked even the basic required experience, and/or did not have a proper license (e.g. check flight or medical lapsed). So in principal, ramp checks in a final consequence may safe lives, if they make for a higher level of diligence.
Whenever the ramp check starts with some bad mood there’s something “in the air” that happened before. Last year I got checked by a seemingly overstrained Flugleiter who wanted to see my logs and all my flight preparation documentation. He asked me questions about the airfield. That made me ask if I did something wrong. It turned out very quickly that he thought that I had taken the wrong landing pattern (on the wrong side of the airfield). It was because I made an S-slope on final and my final turn from that S-slope (“S voraus” in german) was a right turn, and he only saw that last turn and expected a left one. I showed him the GPS log on skydemon and all was clarified in a second, no more document checks. Funny enough – because that airfield has in fact both landing patterns on the official AIP document – I had him confirm to me the correct landing pattern in use on radio during my approach, just to be sure, and he acknowledged, but did not remember.
However I would not have wanted to be in his situation on that day. The air was so full of GA planes, like a mosquito swarm. And just while we were chatting on the tower a motorglider landed (engine on) the opposite direction, without any prior notice whatsoever. It really looked like anyone was doing what he wanted.
dublinpilot wrote:
Presumably this was a long time ago.
2010 as I said before.
dublinpilot wrote:
In the modern world he’d get a lot of one star reviews for the airport
Yes, probably. I hardly do this though as most of the time these are isolated events and I am not in the revenge business too much. Fact is, he had a factual point and if he had prosecuted me or reported me to the LBA, a fine would have been likely. At least at the time.
Seba wrote:
Just out of curiosity, did all of this happen in German?
Of course. I am Swiss and German is my mothertongue. Good chance that he would not have done it in English as he might not have known how to dress someone down in a foreign language.
Seba wrote:
Not necessarily in Germany. You are lucky if you can pay with card in some places, so assuming a small airport even has a social media page is being overly optimistic.
eddh.de comes to mind. And yea, most airfields do read the reports there.
To be clear: I’ve been back to Speyer many times and never experienced anything like it again, on the opposite, it is a great airfield to go to these days. I also did not want to slag of Speyer, but merely point out that there are people who take the logbook issues very seriously in Germany.
Also there is a lot more solidarity in some countries than in others. People just don’t go public with stuff. They talk about it personally but not publicly. I’ve just heard dreadful stuff about a well known avionics shop, which will never be posted on any forum.
OTOH, in the UK for example, people will slag off any place where they got bad service.
dublinpilot wrote:
In the modern world he’d get a lot of one star reviews for the airport, get pilloried on social media and the airport would have to make a press release apologising while expanding that this wasn’t a true reflection of ‘who we are’ while confirming that he was receiving retraining.Oh, your’d also complain (and get loads of support) because you believed this happened because he didn’t recognise your self identified gender of ‘pilot’.
Presumably this was a long time ago.
Not necessarily in Germany. You are lucky if you can pay with card in some places, so assuming a small airport even has a social media page is being overly optimistic.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
This guy expected me to have filled in the log before leaving the aircraft or rather before presenting it to him. He insisted, that all times need to be properly logged before you report at the Luftaufsicht after landing.He was obviously wrong and just enjoying himself. But he sort of had a point in as so far that a paper log must be present and filled in correctly in Germany at that time. So he decided to make a point to this bloody foreigner and do his best Sgt Major imitation on me.The 2 minute thing obviously just was too good to miss on.
Just out of curiosity, did all of this happen in German? I doubt they would go through the trouble of doing that in English.
In the modern world he’d get a lot of one star reviews for the airport, get pilloried on social media and the airport would have to make a press release apologising while expanding that this wasn’t a true reflection of ‘who we are’ while confirming that he was receiving retraining.
Oh, your’d also complain (and get loads of support) because you believed this happened because he didn’t recognise your self identified gender of ‘pilot’.
Presumably this was a long time ago.
