Hi, As A newly minted PPL from Belgium, I might be interested, in oder to have some ideas how to extend my horizon & see what is possible.
I would be also interested in the reverse perspective of how it is to fly to the UK coming from Europe, and the peculiarities of GA flying in the UK.
+1 for the presentation & thanks for offering to do it.
Regarding US VFR vs Euro/UK, I have 1000 Hrs + in each and would be happy to advise. Don’t claim to be an expert, but been there, done that! Maybe a Q’nA session?
David
The presentation which I did back in 2012 focused on getting people to realise that there is no black magic to flying VFR around mainland Europe.
I could not do US-oriented stuff because I have not flown there much at all.
My advice on “touring” around the mainland was mostly to do with flying at a decent height, and strategies on getting ATC to play ball on that (which mostly they do). Whereas in the UK, even if your Plan A is via CAS, you need a rock solid and immediately activatable Plan B which is OCAS.
UK PPLs have been trained to fly at 2000ft 
and my feeling is that much of the mainland community is not all that different. For example when I fly in France it is blindingly obvious that there is almost no traffic in the Class E routes (what UK PPLs call “French airways”) which run mostly between VORs and in the FL065-115 range, mostly. Yet these are the best way to fly distances in France. For Germany, I have less data but again see very little traffic higher up.
Occassionally, I pop into some of the GA sections on FB and get a bit horrified at the level of ignorance. I tell people to read the AIP and Notams and then of course I get beaten up for offering arrogant advice but actually it is the right advice, nowadays. The AIPs are much better than 10 years ago. FB is useless as ever, with mostly one-liners and generally a waste of time, but a lot of people, especially the new young pilots, like the “shallow” one-liner social media.
I would be interested, though I find Tuesdays hard.
Good response so let me work something out
We can do another day. We can also do earlier than 2000 UTC which I am sure is too late for many, although an invitation in the telegram group for comments produced a zero response on that one; OTOH there is zero response on most things these days
I mean it as much as anything else as an explanation as to why I can’t make the regular Tuesday meetings. As it happens I am now free next Tuesday (or indeed most of the week). But perhaps it’s worth everyone who is interested saying what times are best for them?
This is a nice idea, and could even be extended into a series of presentations. I had been thinking how useful it could be to have an intro to aircraft ownership as well, because most of the resources I’ve found are US-centric. Other topics could be IFR flying in Europe or differences between the US and Europe. These seem to be the recurring threads. I would happily contribute, as writing and presenting are areas where I have a lot of experience.
I agree this needs multiple sessions.
When I did it for real, with a projector and prepared slides, and taking care to not “read the slides” (the common big mistake in presentations) it stretched to 2.5hrs and I could see peoples’ eyes glazing over (I have that effect on people anyway ).
On Zoom this happens much faster.
I would be interested too, but I can’t say yet if I can participate because of my work. would it be possible to make a recording of the zoom meeting or post the slide show?
