eurogaguest1980 wrote:
Are you planning to leave the aircraft in Europe?
Yeah, I’m moving to Portugal permanently, giving up my US citizenship, and obviously want to take her with me. I’d be pretty upset if I had to sell it for some “certified” one, since I put so much into it with so many upgrades.
Peter wrote:
In practice this means you end up flying more and more “under the radar” i.e. flying non-transponder or with just a Mode C, and do local flights, probably non-radio, and very rarely fly outside that country.
Being experimental with full access to my transponder, I guess I can change my reg to show up as anything or nothing at all. But since the Tires airport is towered, and it seems I have to file every flight in Portugal, that may not work anyway XD
And with this thing’s capability, my hope was to use it to cut travel times between Lagos, Lisbon, and Porto to less than an hour, or to go visit friends in places like Italy. So hopefully I can work something out, like a German registration while based in Portugal.
Maybe I have the benefit for registration that my airplane is a kit plane, and that the company that makes and supports these kits is still very much active and is willing to provide documentation. It’s kinda sad that there would be pushback against this homebuilt, since one of the biggest reasons I picked it is that due to no stalls it’s actually safer than most of the certified aircraft out there.
hmng wrote:
Welcome to EuroGA!
There’s an EAA chapter that might be a good contact point for you. They are mostly in the center of the country, in Viseu.
They would know a thing or two about relevant rules and bureaucracies.
https://eaa-portugal.webnode.pt/perguntas/
Oh wow, thank you!!! I was searching for a local Portugese EAA chapter, but for some reason couldn’t find it on Google. Hopefully this will help a lot!
Most of the uncertified community is Europe is flying with Mode C transponders, presumably for this reason (FR24, Flightaware, etc). It is fairly normal to not apply for the required cross-border permits.
Mode S is required only for IFR and even then only if you do it “big time” like across Germany and surroundings. Within say France you can do it with just Mode C for the most part AFAIK. Portugal and Spain, I have no idea. But I think most European countries ban IFR in uncertified planes anyway so even if your N-reg plane has no “VFR-only” restriction (probably that’s exactly the case, coming from the US) you can’t do it per airspace rules. I know somebody who got the UK CAA IFR certification for his G-reg RV and he found that France allowed it but Germany apparently didn’t. He has now sold the RV and packed up flying.
If you put “homebuilt” in the Search box you will find long threads on this stuff, and the privilege matrix. A lot of it is not definite though because it is all non-EASA and thus buried deep in national laws. There are also ambiguities e.g. whether a 28 day limit can be met by doing a flight out of the country every 28 days 
This stuff is controversial and most owners don’t want it aired, but on balance I think it should be aired because EuroGA should be informative and there are lots of people who spend 100k+ buying something which “somebody on a forum” (or probably the salesman) told them they can fly it “anywhere because so and so does it” and then they find they can’t quite legally do it. So they end up with a nice fast toy which sits in the hangar, and comes out for a short local.
Had another thought about this earlier. My airplane is owned by my LLC, which I’ll keep after I move, and in US getting a plane registration renewed just involves sending a few bucks to the FAA. They never come out to look at it, or even check if the plane still exists. So maybe I can keep my N-registration going indefinitely, get a CS-X## registration locally, and then just change the numbers to N if I need to fly elsewhere for whatever reason. Still “legal” if someone looks it up, since it’s technically legally registered elsewhere, just with a double registration. Again the issue will be that I will be based out of a towered airport and may need to fly elsewhere to swap numbers. Or maybe Portugal will turn out to not have any issues with experimental registration.
MTozoni wrote:
So maybe I can keep my N-registration going indefinitely, get a CS-X## registration locally, and then just change the numbers to N if I need to fly elsewhere for whatever reason.
I’m quite sure the Portuguese authority (or any European authority) won’t put the aircraft on its register unless you can show that it has been deregistered by the FAA.
MTozoni wrote:
My airplane is owned by my LLC, which I’ll keep after I move, and in US getting a plane registration renewed just involves sending a few bucks to the FAA. They never come out to look at it, or even check if the plane still exists. So maybe I can keep my N-registration going indefinitely,
Seeing that there is a lot of N-reg airplanes around Europe I think that definitly is a good idea. You will have to pay EU VAT for it and get a document of free circulation, whereafter you can fly pretty freely in the EU as an EU resident, whereas customs status is concerned.
It may be advisable that you reconsider giving up your US citizenship unless you have very good reasons to do that, I am not aware that Portugal would exclude double citizenship if you have the right for it. And as an American with an N-reg airplane, you will most likely have less problems than an European with one, even though due to the fact that yours is registered to an LLC will already get some problems solved, insofar that you would need this kind of construct anyway if you want to give up your US citizenship.
So I’d leave it N-Reg, import it into the EU proper and base it in Portugal. As long as you only fly in Southern Europe not many people will care a great deal about it which the EAA chapter in Portugal can’t let you know about. As an N-Reg experimental I would suppose you are a lot less restricted than if you take it into EU registry. As for overflight permits e.t.c. this is really for EAA people to tell you about.
As you know, you can not own a N-reg unless you’re not an American citizen. And if your LLC owns it, and the owner of the LLC is not an American, then it can only fly 40% of its yearly hours abroad and you have to keep a record of every flight hour and send it in with each reg renewal. Did that in the past before I became a citizen. But you can always keep it in a trust, of course.
BTW, has anyone checked Sweden? They were always pretty experimental-friendly and didn’t really enforce the N-reg back in the days when I lived there. Maybe it’s changed.
Peter wrote:
Mode S is required only for IFR
Not really. Many countries require mode S for VFR. E.g. anywhere in Germany over 5000 ft.
Yes; what I meant is that Mode S is absolutely required only for IFR in the Eurocontrol system, in the sense that if your transponder fails they will not let you in at all. VFR can be “hacked” with a Mode C in most places, adequately.
I don’t think Sweden is any good for an N-reg now, although perhaps you could move one onto a Swedish reg and keep that in Portugal, if Portugal allows foreign reg uncertified types to be permanently based there.
AdamFrisch wrote:
They were always pretty experimental-friendly
There are some signs that this may change. The Swedish authority has generally taken a turn to the worse in the last few years. It seems the lawyers are taking over.
AdamFrisch wrote:
And if your LLC owns it, and the owner of the LLC is not an American, then it can only fly 40% of its yearly hours abroad and you have to keep a record of every flight hour and send it in with each reg renewal. Did that in the past before I became a citizen. But you can always keep it in a trust, of course.
That is why I asked the OP to reconsider giving up his citizenship. If he owns an LLC in the US and an airplane, keeping the citizenship going may be well beneficial. I know quite a few double citizens here. Some have recently given up their citizenship out of tax considerations though, but others tell me that with the right tax lawyer, these issues can well be solved without such drastic steps.
