[rusty eagle]

A couple of years ago I was told that I would need signed off instrument hours for licence conversion from my 1980's PPL A. Is that still the requirement?

[Flyin'Dutch']

No.

[rusty eagle]

That's good to know. Thanks

[GAFlyer4Fun]

Is the question confusing instrument flying hours with use of radio navigation aids?

What is actually needed is https://www.caa.co.uk/General-aviation/Pilot-licences/Convert/Converting-to-an-EASA-licence-from-a-UK-national-or-JAR-licence/. That link indicates CAP804 is still a live document, and the following CAP804 quotes are from the CAA website today which I assume to be the current version of CAP 804.

CAP 804 Section 4 Part P Licence conversion table row (k) column "Any further requirements" says

Demonstrate the
use of radio
navigation aids
(see note 5)

where note 5 says

Demonstration of the use of radio navigation aids should be to the satisfaction of a Chief
Flying Instructor or Examiner. Successful demonstration should be certified by the CFI or
examiner in the applicant’s personal flying logbook.

[rusty eagle]

Ah yeah - radio nav. Not used that. So hopefully I can do some flight simulator practice and then have a flight session or two for sign off. What would I be expected to do?

[GAFlyer4Fun]

.... as it is intended to fill the training gap between poo brown and JAA PPL syllabus, I guess it would be the radio nav section of the JAA PPL syllabus (or the radio nav section of the EASA PPL syllabus).

[GAFlyer4Fun]

Getting an IR(R) is overkill for satisfying the Note 5 requirement, but I bit the bullet and did the IR(R).

The reason being that if I was ever going to do an IR(R), the total cost of doing some training to get to the standard needed for note 5 plus an IR(R) course is more than just doing an IR(R) course. A test pass for IMCR/IR(R) satisfies Note 5 even if the the IMCR/IR(R) has lapsed.

If I was never intending to do an IR(R) then I would simply have done the minimum radio nav training with an instructor to get to the standard needed to satisfy Note 5 so that the CFI/examiner would be happy with the standard demonstrated.

[Irv Lee]

I always tried to do some radio Nav for the people needing it as part of their training hour from the start of this century if the aircraft in use was capable. However, I know three different people (all farm strip, own aircaft) who since 2012 asked me to sign photoid copies for them and when I looked at their forms they had ticked radio Nav. Knowing each pilot's type of flying and personal aircaft, and that I hadn't done any with them, I was surprised, and asked about it. Suspiciously, all three said that it was doing a 180 degrees turn on instruments wearing those foggle things, and they had done that! (To be honest, even that surprised me.) When I pointed out it wasn't that, they all admitted they had never done what I said was radio Nav but said they were going to try submitting it anyway and the caa would reject it if they hadn't done any...!
Presumably there is some "rural pilots" version of the flyer forum somewhere they pick up interpretations like that! Made me wonder why the caa insisted on signed copies of medicals that they already had logged in their system but decided they didn't want signed copies of radio Nav training.

[GAFlyer4Fun]

That was another reason I did the IMCR just before licence conversion - it would be on the CAA system as clearly satisfying Note 5 if they changed their mind and wanted certified copies of the radio nav training from an old log book that might get lost/stolen and the flying school either no longer existed or had destroyed the records after N years.

[PeteSpencer]

ISTR if a flying school closes or goes bust, all training records have to be sent to the CAA.This certainly happened to my IR files when Bonus at Cranfield went bust a few years ago.

When Ipswich Airport closed in 1996, the school I did my PPL at in 1992 closed down.

Its successor opened a few years later under a different name/owner in Cambridge.

When , in 2008 I was obliged to do the Night Qualification(sic) prior to starting the IR I dropped in on the offchance (principally because they operated PA28s) to see if they (of a number of ATOs at Cambridge)could fit me in at short notice before the clocks went forward. They asked me where I'd done my PPL.
When I told them, they said 'just a minute', walked over to a battered filing cabinet and fished out my old PPL records.

So: Records are usually kept!

Peter

[Irv Lee]

As @GAFlyer4Fun said earlier, the difference between tests pre and post Jar was to be trained to (and demo during skills test) a position fix by radio instruments and to track a vor or ndb in or out bound for a few minutes, it would appear that is what they were looking for. I might be mistaken but I thought earlier conversion forms from pre jaa licences to either Jar or later Easa required the form to be countersigned by a CFI or similar, then that was quietly dropped during the early days of Easa.

[rusty eagle]

Thanks for all comments - I'll have a chat with a CFI later in the summer.