For sure you won’t get a long term permission, otherwise the UK would be full of foreign reg homebuilts (especially PH-reg and even better N-regs) nicely bypassing the – often described as “officious” – LAA inspectors 
Unlike other countries the UK has no PH-reg community (none I have ever seen) so the grip must be pretty tight. OTOH the PH-reg community outside NL exists mostly in countries which don’t allow F-reg for certain popular types, e.g. France after 1998. But even then we would see loads of N-reg homebuilts in the UK, and I have only ever seen one, in 18 years, and it was quietly sitting in a hangar – a Lancair 320 IIRC. The only way they might exist in any numbers is if based at a farm strip and flying to another farm strip, only, so keeping below the 28-day permission radar.
So clearly the CAA+LAA maintain a firm grip.
The CAA has delegated powers to make regs, as do most CAAs. Most of the real detail is not in the national criminal law system. There used to be a book called LASORS which contained most of these but AIUI this has been split up in recent years. CAP747?
The “ECAC recommendation” is mostly not implemented around Europe. It works in certain countries near Norway
Peter wrote:
The “ECAC recommendation” is mostly not implemented around Europe. It works in certain countries near Norway
I think one has to distinguish here between basing a homebuilt and flying it. The latter is really (also legally) no problem in most of the european countries. However the further south you go, the more bureaucratic it gets, if you care to do everything according to the rules 
I agree with the above after the last comma
But, seriously, how can long term parking be regulated? A parked aircraft is just a load of metal and some other stuff. You could legally park a Saturn 5 in your garden (well, no, but you get my drift). The legal issue, post permit expiry, must arise when you want to fly it back out. Then you need a fresh permit, and unless the CAA is stupid they will ask where it has been in the meantime. You can’t prove lack of flight via a lack of radar data because transponder use is, ahem, less than 100% especially in that community.
We have done this to death in past threads and, trying to keep this somewhat on-topic of the UK, UK’s 2005 anti N-reg proposal, later abandoned, did indeed limit parking. This was for certified planes, BTW! This led to some bizzare but legally rigorous debates about having to dismantle the plane after the expiry and having to cart it on a trailer to say Jersey. Or keep four planes in Jersey (or Croatia which was then non-EU) and move one of them to the UK for 90 days, and just rotate them. The more recent Italian luxury tax proposal was similar in the wording, in that an AOG’s plane would in theory be screwed and would have to be dismantled (later they amended it that it could be parked in Italy with a maintenance company doing work on it).
With no known CAA enforcement, and any insurance non-payout (the real issue IMHO) predictably not being publicised even if it happened, nobody is any wiser. But when you have some bollox-worded reg saying XYZ it does concentrate the mind of anybody who has family, assets, etc, and cares about being insured. I know many people who are not in that category (no substantial assets is quite common) and they can “just do it” and say “live and let live”.
But a more general question is why would I care about long term parking outside my own country? If you live in the UK, so why not gegister your homebuilt there? Or am I missing something?
In my case the only reason to register my Europa in the Netherlands was the fact, that it wasn’t possible in Germany. A work around so to say without a shortcoming as I know today.
In the UK, you would do it to avoid the annual LAA inspections and the need for the LAA inspector to agree to most of the more substantial mods.
Obviously, that will make sense only if the regime you are on offers an improved flexibility. N-reg would, PH-reg would too. Any regime which does not need an annual local-CAA check is “better” than the LAA one. Look at the dead slow IFR LAA programme for an example – however homebuilt IFR is also an airspace issue so even having no VFR-only restriction on the permit is of limited help.
The UK principle is that the CAA has delegated the inspection powers to the LAA and in turn the CAA protects the arrangement by blocking long term basing of foreign reg homebuilts. It would make no sense for the CAA to allow foreign reg homebuilts because anybody who wants to would just bypass the LAA.
Peter wrote:
It would make no sense for the CAA to allow foreign reg homebuilts because anybody who wants to would just bypass the LAA.
Somehow I have the feeling, that these rules are not there to make any sense (and that might be the main reason why so many people don’t care) In Germany it’s not possible to register a homebuilt here, when its built is not supervised by the OUV (the german “LAA”). However there is no restriction on long term parking of ECAC-homebuilts. Sensible?
IFR allowed in N-reg homebuilts, but not so in ECAC homebuilts – sensible? And the list goes on and on and….
Yes; it is a mess. It is so because the whole regime exists sub-ICAO and has been the playground of local regulators who mostly don’t quite know what to do with it. Politically it is a hot potato because if you allowed it too much, the certified route would be undermined and with it the CAA fee income, etc. It would also destroy the maintenance business (possibly less than totally if there was a large shift, because one would get away from the DIY community to more normal operators). Arguably it would also destroy the GA airfield network because most of the owners avoid landing fees over about 5 quid
If one day I lost my medical etc and had to move to a homebuilt then I would go to a G-reg LAA type – but more because there is no other option. I would definitely want an IFR approved type. However, out of the UK, you need a permit in every direction except south.
Peter wrote:
nicely bypassing the – often described as “officious” – LAA inspectors
I have never met an “officious” LAA inspector (I’m aware that they exist, but it’s entirely your choice whether you use an officious one or not). The LAA doesn’t employ these people, an LAA inspector is a freelancer, and the one who does my permit revalidations is pretty much the epitome of “non-officiousness” and does a lot of good work keeping vintage Austers (and other, often one of a kind aircraft) flying.
The process you’re probably thinking of as officious is the need to get certain modifications approved by LAA engineering, which is an entirely different matter altogether (and it can be debated forever whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing that the LAA requires engineering approval for these modifications). There are certain things that annoy me about the LAA – the paperwork they required for my 8.33 radio and the work around it served absolutely no good purpose at all for instance – and I’m going to have to do it all again when it comes to putting Mode-S and ADS-B in, and some of the LAA’s ‘gold plating’ can annoy me at times, but on balance the LAA system isn’t officious at all – certainly for the day-to-day and year-to-year running of my own aircraft.
We had no LAA problems fitting Mode S and 8.33 to our LAA Permit Jodel. We’ve also been happy with our Inspector’s requirements.
Peter wrote:
The “ECAC recommendation” is mostly not implemented around Europe. It works in certain countries near Norway
The way it is defined and ment, it works mostly anywhere it is supposed to work. But I guess it does not work the way you would like it to work; Purchase a newly, already built Evolution from the USA, keep it on N-reg indefinitely and “park” and fly it long term anywhere in Europe
Discussions about this and similar stuff on this site is always frustrating IMO. Way too much negative “cannot do” attitude instead of “yes can do” attitude. The whole homebuilt scene is grown out of a solid dose of “yes can do”. If it weren’t so, there would be no one building airplanes in their homes and garages. The same attitude prevails also when operating these aircraft around the world.
The last issue of Kitplanes has a main feature about a guy flying his rather heavily modified self-built RV-8 across both poles. He flies VFR and IFR, and funnily enough, the only place he wasn’t allowed to land, due to insane stubbornly bureaucracy (and a good dose of stupidity/ignorance/poor planning by himself IMO), was the USA. He simply had to fly across it all, from Bahamas to Canada The main point however: The guy was from Spain, the aircraft was built by him in Spain, registered in Spain by Spanish CAA. The whole article can be found here. and it will be continued in the next issue.
On this site it always ends up in a discussion based on a UK-centric point of view, where the “relevance” of a homebuilt plane is tied to perceived “utility” a guy from UK can possible make of it, importing a finished built N-reg experimental, flying in the European continent while at the same time interpreting every little legal note in the worst possible way. This point of view is irrelevant for 100% of everyone actually involved in experimental and homebuilt, and completely alien to me and others.
