it is mostly as expected but there is some curious stuff about a conversion candidate having to for an ATO assessment first, and the ATO will decide whether he/she is good enough to go forward for the encounter with the examiner.
That makes a conversion another bent-over-a-barrel exercise, like the old “170A flight test”.
[link updated to replace a dead link]
Q Can I contact any ATO in any EASA state for this?
A Yes. You are not restricted to UK ATOs, however the ATO must be approved to conduct competency-based modular IR training.
Q Can I use any IRE? Can I use an IRE with a non-UK issued EASA licence?
A The ATO will guide you into the UK CAA system for the designation of Examiners.
Is it just me? Or is there a glaring contradiction there? Either way, it implies that only an ATO can recommend someone for the flight test…..and of course, being the altruistic institutions they are, will do this without requiring any redundant, expensive and time consuming training….
Any ATO will be motivated to prove that the non-EU rating is inferior and requires a huge amount of “proper” training to get up to the required standard….lambs to the slaughter…
where is it in the rules or AMOC that this is necessary?
I do not doubt for a second that one will need extra training to get up to teststandard.
It may not be in the AMOC but if the UK CAA will only accept Initial IR exam requests via an ATO it’s academic… I understand in other EU states it may be possible to arrange a flight test without going through an ATO….
That’s all true but for many people it will be somewhat academic, because sorting out an examiner in another country is an extra step which – unless the examiner goes to some effort to set himself up and advertise his services – is likely to be too much hassle.
It’s a little bit like doing the IR conversion in another country. On the face of it, the old (actually the present) process is just 15hrs of flying at some Spanish or Greek FTO. The reality is that it is a lot of hassle and you might do it only if there is assurance that e.g. NDB holds won’t be tested. Can such assurance be obtained for non-UK IR tests? NDB stuff can swell the required training by 5x or 10x, if you are going to fly to the specified tolerance.
If you are in the UK and some examiner sets up at say Cherbourg, Caen or Le Touquet, so the whole job can be knocked off in a day, that’s fine.
But he also needs to be informal and “normally communicative” and basically a nice guy (or gurl) (e.g. read more than the first 2 lines of your email – unlike so many people these days 
) so that e.g. you can email him pics of your plane, your papers, etc, so you don’t turn up there and find he refuses to do the flight because the plane has some defect or deficiency. For example, in the UK, you can’t do the initial IR test in a Cirrus with no DME or no ADF. I can understand the DME requirement because there are a lot of ILS approaches where DME is mandatory unless there is radar, you do have to fly the approach as published (otherwise “IFR” becomes a farce) and you can never be quite sure of what you will get… And if you might get an NDB approach then you are going to need an ADF, otherwise again “IFR” becomes a farce.
The fact that everybody flies NP approaches with a GPS is a different matter… it would be nice if that was acknowledged officially, but doing so would be a tacit acceptance of the “fact” that airport-based VORs and NDBs nowadays exist solely as a charade to legalise AOC IFR ops, and I can’t see that happening (in UK or Germany, anyway).
And if an examiner advertises the fact that NDB work won’t be tested, you might get some “interest” from the UK CAA when you ask them to add the IR to your UK CAA issued PPL, and frankly they would be within their rights to get funny about it (see my above comment about IFR and farce). They used to accept IRs done at FIS in Spain (a facility which I believe is now of little use because it is now a UK controlled FTO) because the lack of NDBs in the test (they were nominally covered in the training) was never openly advertised.
So there are lots of details to be ironed out, none of which are difficult, but it’s going to take a bit of time.
Quotea standard vision limiting device such as an IFR ‘hood’, or
‘Foggles’ will normally be sufficient
I like the use of the word normal. How can this be? A standard vision limiting device is either its sufficient or its not sufficient.
In yet another astonishing move, the original PDF was removed from the CAA website after only 3 days, so I uploaded my saved copy elsewhere and updated the link.
No wonder it was removed ….full of contradictions and inaccuracies…someone was embarrassed
Which class of medical do you need? Any updates on that?
The medical you need for the Euro IR is
There is reportedly a route into the Euro IR pipeline for those who cannot pass the Class 1 audiogram. Of those I know who should know, nobody wants to talk about it. See here.
