Here’s a contrarian view:
Forget all the microlight or whatever it’s called BS. Get a proper airplane. A C182 Peterson. You can bimble at 40 kts but can also traverse Europe at 140 kts (I’ve done both in one of these magical contraptions). You can load wifie, friends, kitchen sink plus bags and strap mountain bikes to the wings (yes, really, there’s a mod for this). Land on a dime and take off almost like a helo. There you go. You’re all set.
a reserve of only 10 minutes is required
You better have a very low Vs and avoid any terrain or water – because you will end up testing it fairly often 
On any plane with more than two seats where you can fill the tanks and fill all the seats, I would say the tanks are too small.
I would agree, for modern sized people. But most planes flying today were designed decades ago, when people were much smaller, on average.
But most planes flying today were designed decades ago, when people were much smaller, on average.
There was a writer here that extrapolated the growth in average height of humans, all back to the Viking age. He found out the Vikings were 20 cm tall 
aart wrote:
Yes, these kind of machines did cross my mind! Problem is that the UL fields here do not allow operation of anything like LSA or VLA..
What? and why would people do that? Is that a common practice further south in Europe?
LeSving wrote:
What? and why would people do that? Is that a common practice further south in Europe?
Further South for you in Norway means basically everywhere outside Scandinavia :)
And yes, it is quite common for such fields who are mostly private and quite often only available for based ULM’s with PPR for others. Quite a few ULM fields are only approved for ULM’s by the CAA in question. Some I’ve seen are also too short to accomodate other than STOL certified airplanes. Pal of mine was trying to learn to fly on a field in France where the runway was 250×10 m and had a hangar within 30 m next to the runway… I would not like to try that with anything actually and it would not be allowed on any airfield accomodating other things than ULM’s.
The other bit is that quite a lot of such fields live with constant threat by it’s neigbours not to exceed more than a few movements per day and therefore have not much interest loosing these to non-based people. That is even true for some larger airfields which do allow certified traffic, such as Oberschleissheim in Munich who have only 500 movements per year for non-based planes.
What is the regulatory motivation behind ULM-only airfields?
Peter wrote:
What is the regulatory motivation behind ULM-only airfields?
As I understand it the same as behind the ULM scene as a whole, basically very few regulative requirements as opposed to airfields which have certified traffic.
boscomantico wrote:
In all fairness, all 172s after 1997 cannot be flown (within MTOM) with four adults at all. With the most widespread models, say 1973-1982, it really depends on the single aircraft.
In our C172s we have 398kg useful load. (+4 kg taxi fuel)
2 × 90kg up front
2 × 70kg in the back
100 ltr (app 2h + 45 min reserve)
no luggage.
