Thanks Cobalt but perhaps I am not phrasing my questions well
Hi gallois,
The reason your question arises, is because you have mis-understood how IFR in the UK works.
Essentially there are two IFR systems in the UK.
1 EuroControl airways controlled flight
2 Other non-controlled IFR flight.
The first one operates are you expect it to. You file your flight plan along recognised routes, validated with EuroControl. You get a clearance to your destination and you shouldn’t have IFR cancelled by ATC (though it can happen apparently). You don’t need to worry about controlled airspace crossings. That’s for ATC to organise.
With the second one, IFR is just a state in your mind. You are not flying on EuroControl airways, and have no automatic clearance. It’s essentially just like a VFR flight, except that you can go into IMC. You still must negociate all entry to controlled airspace/restricted airspace, and essentially you need a VFR chart/software to know where this is. So when you leave controlled airspace you must be ready to either avoid the next block of airspace or negociate your way in.
With this type of IFR, there is no question of being “dumped”, because you’re outside the system from the begining.
The second type of IFR is commonly used by IR(R) holders, those flying IFR at low level and those flying IFR without a flight plan.
I hope that helps clear it up.
dp
Hello David. Welcome to EuroGA 
and many thanks for posting your video.
I watched a bit at home and a bit more at the office where like others I can’t hear the sound loud enough; I suspect the recording is only on one of the two channels and there is something wrong with my stereo “speakers” in the monitor… On my own videos I combine the sound on both channels.
It is a great example of using the IR in the UK. You could have done that type of flight using the IMCR but that restricts you to Class G and Class D; no good for Class A. For most UK IFR done as VMC on top, the IR is necessary to get high enough. But that’s true for most of Europe; one needs an IR to get useful airspace access.
If I was to comment on phraseology, I saw some odd stuff on the ATC side too, where e.g. they, quite unneccesarily, told you to expect a radar control service above 3000ft, etc. I have not heard that before in the UK; normally you are told “radar control service” (by a radar ATCO) the instant you enter CAS, VFR or IFR. One does often get “Cleared to descend out of controlled airspace, Basic Service on leaving” from London Control.
In general, sticking to standard phraseology, with the callsign at the end of each readback, etc, is desirable when flying outside the UK because much ATC in some countries is only just hanging in there with ELP 0.01 and they have no understanding of English as a language.
However you climbed into clouds with the VFR clearance prior to receiving your IFR clearance.
This is legal if you hold an IMCR or IR. In Class G, you can enter IMC (become IFR) entirely inside your head i.e. non-radio It’s a great system.
They get the instruction from London Control to “remain OCAS, squawk 1234, next frequency 120.125”. AFIS cannot give me any clearance either VFR or IFR all they do is pass on the message. I depart and in the climb contact London who give me a basic service OCAS and a clearance to enter after which it becomes a Radar service.
The middle step in the above (London INFO) is avoided if you depart from an airfield which phones up London CONTROL and gets you the provisional departure clearance, which is like above: OCAS, txp code, track, frequency for London CONTROL. But some UK airfields refuse to make that phone call (or they are busy) and some don’t have a phone Then you have to call up the FIS (London INFO) who give you a basically useless service and eventually, sometimes half an hour later of hacking it in low level IMC, you get handed over to London CONTROL for a climb into CAS.
In Sweden, you would get a complete IFR enroute clearance at your first contact with ATC even if your flight was (partially) OCAS.
In Sweden, a lot is different because of more taxpayer funding I vaguely recall there is a way to phone up London Control for a provisional clearance, but there is no US-style “clearance void” concept where you can just phone up and depart and enter CAS without any further clearance.
After a couple of misunderstandings with ATC I decided to deviate from this rule a little bit: when handed over while flying a radar heading, I would add “radar heading XXX” to my initial call.
This depends on the context. There is no practical need to pass one’s FL, to any radar unit (and nearly all ATC doing CAS has radar) because they can see your FL. What they may well not have is info on your previous lateral clearance e.g. whether DCT KPT or Heading 305, with the latter obviously being a very different thing from the former, especially to a unit which sees only your filed route. Actually I am told most ATCOs don’t even see your filed route; they just see you as a straight line between the entry and exit points of their sector. Maybe ATC here can comment? So, if on a heading, one often gets the instruction like “Contact Paris 123.45 with your heading”. It happens more in the UK but it happens elsewhere too. Or I might initially call them saying “on a heading to avoid” if avoiding wx, which also tells them to not mess you about too much
So how does lost comms work in that environment, specifically if comms are lost during a leg of an IFR FPN in G airspce? Does one need to haul out a VFR chart and try to find a way to complete the flight while remaining OCAS since there is no way to get a clearance to enter CAS? That would be very challenging in IMC given the complexity of UK airspace, especially in the south, and perhaps impossible in some places/altitudes.
You have no lost comms rights if OCAS when it happens. You have to remain OCAS and take care of yourself. The ICAO lost comms procedure is only for flights wholly in CAS, because your departure clearance is meaningful only for CAS.
Once OCAS, there is no right to re-enter CAS.
And yes the UK does not use the term (at say Shoreham) “N113AC cleared to Dubrovnik…” which most of the world uses. Not even if departing in CAS e.g. EGHH, IIRC. Perhaps an airline pilot can report on what happens at say Gatwick EGKK? This may be partly an acknowledgement of the obvious fact that such a clearance may be meaningless e.g. if sitting at LDDU, being told “cleared to EGKA” is silly because EGKA is in Class G, but the LDDU ATCO doesn’t know that. A lot of pilots visiting Europe have been caught by this, because most IFR pilots don’t need to know about OCAS flying back home.
Just wondering, could you do the same thing with EIR?
Yes, if you can do VFR departure and VFR arrival. Otherwise, with the UK IMCR you could, but only if the non-VFR end is in UK airspace 
The GoPro records ‘line in’ sound at a low level and my editing software (iMovie) will only crank it up so far – I wish I could find a fix for this.
Your video editor should show the volume on each channel. Does it show a reasonable excursion? Presumably the signal is coming from a spare headset socket? The audio there is normally mono, so just one channel can be picked off, but there are some intercoms which use stereo and then one has to mix the two channels with resistors. Some threads here and here is what I use.
Why is the situation so different between Scotland and England for Low level IFR ?
Probably funding… London CONTROL refuses to provide a service to traffic below something like FL080, though this varies. It’s a bit like Paris Control does only at/above FL100 (used to be FL120) and below that you get Lille, etc. But London CONTROL will also throw away an IFR flight plan if they don’t think it is “high enough” – basically not enough of it in Class A.
Let’s say I file a flight plan from La Roche sur Yon (similar in size to the airfield in David’s video) to Quimper.I get a clearance through the AFIS such as cleared to Lugen, you will be outside of controlled airspace up to 5000 feet, take off at your own discretion.Note no mention of VFR as in David’s video.
I think the not very useful but perhaps accurate answer is that France has ample taxpayer funding of this (and much else) and has developed a unified airspace system which gives them a “known traffic” situation all over France. For air defence reasons this is obviously great, especially in today’s climate where a civilian plane can so easily be a threat (9/11 and any smaller version of it). So French ATC can afford to be very relaxed because they can see you the whole time. This is much helped by every ATCO having access to every flight plan so if they see a Mode S target with G-ABCD they can look it up. They don’t require Mode S for VFR so presumably they have ways to deal with this, by keeping a closer eye on certain targets in certain places; someone told me they get much more excited about 200kt+ unknown traffic. So France often uses nonstandard terminology because it works well for them – e.g. here. I guess there are times when it doesn’t work and the lack of “cleared to” might bite a pilot in the bum if he screws up and does something bad.
So it’s worth doing an IR.
Go on – you know you want to.
You will never look back
Peter wrote:
In Sweden, a lot is different because of more taxpayer funding
That might be true, but the national ATS system in Sweden is funded by enroute charges, not taxpayers. And we still have a seamless ATS system for IFR flights in uncontrolled airspace, including FIS with radar.
(Except in the trivial sense that ultimately the “taxpayers” are the ones who also buy airline tickets etc.)
Peter wrote:
You have no lost comms rights if OCAS when it happens. You have to remain OCAS and take care of yourself. The ICAO lost comms procedure is only for flights wholly in CAS, because your departure clearance is meaningful only for CAS.
Certainly you have lost comms “rights” since the rules refer only to the flight plan and not to the clearance (except insofar the clearance has modified the flight plan). In fact sometimes a “proper” IFR flight can have a clearance limit which is short of its destination (e.g. because coordination is not ensured from the start). In case of lost comm, the flight would just follow its flight plan past the clearance limit.
Whether the UK system is set up to respect those “rights” is a different question altogether.
but the national ATS system in Sweden is funded by enroute charges,
Not from GA, 99% of which is below 2000kg, and there are no VFR charges (below 5700kg AFAIK). So it is a cross-subsidy from the airlines and all the other bigger stuff. This is obviously nice to have, but it would be risky to regard it as set in concrete. But one can say the same for much else in life, starting with all those chamber of commerce funded airports, or EU grant funded airports with 1 flight per day and 50 employees, etc, etc.
Certainly you have lost comms “rights” since the rules refer only to the flight plan
That may be the theory but I don’t think it is today’s reality, in Europe generally, for a flight which is a mixture of CAS and OCAS etc.
Peter wrote:
Not from GA, 99% of which is below 2000kg, and there are no VFR charges (below 5700kg AFAIK).
Actually, it used to be the case that everyone, including light GA, payed enroute charges in Sweden. (But below 5700 kg it was a yearly sum for each aircraft.) That changed with the Eurocontrol charging system.
Peter wrote:
So it is a cross-subsidy from the airlines and all the other bigger stuff.
This is an endless debate. The vast majority of controlled airspace exists for use by public transport aircraft. They make money from moving people and things around, and the are subjecting a common good – the airspace – to air traffic control, which excludes or inconveniences all others. It is only fair that the services to others who do not benefit from this airspace (a) get the services in this airspace for free – this really should be the case, and (b) that these services are available in other airspace as well, in return for us being concentrated in this airspace not of our own volition.
But of course, charging for public services and taxation have little to do with fairness…
Yep. In a truly fair system, the GA user would receive payment for the burden and inconvenience of using ATC that’s in place for the benefit of commercial traffic.
… or even better, get compensated for the airspace not available to them without having to fly at all …
I would take this one step further and say the basic ability of AT in the UK to accomodate IFR traffic is truly dreadful. Especially down south, but infact for vast swathes of the country, they will argue the airspace is far too busy. Flying recently in and around Miami there is none of this nonesense and my impression is the airspace is equally as busy.
