Experimental Aircraft; what's this all about?
Discussion
I was browsing the nutters on the Clegg's listening, pick your own freedom web thingy, and came across this guy asking for an Experimental Aircraft class. It's something the Spams have which lets them fly old warplanes and planes built out of outsize airfix kits in sheds. Is this a good idea? If it made the Vulcan cheaper to run it could be a good thing, although I'm sure it will give the CAA a conniption fit.
The US Experimental Category can be summarised as "If you're happy to fly it, you can fly it, as long as you don't hurt anyone else in the process of finding out that it might not be quite as airworthy as you thought. Above all, don't try and blame anyone else if you come a cropper"
As such, it covers some truly awful bits of tat that can and do end up generating a pile of wreckage somewhere, but at the other extreme some superbly engineered and competent hardware, but for which the market is so small it doesn't make sense to proceed with further certification - the buyers in that market know exactly what they're getting, and often fight tooth and nail to obtain the scarce examples available.
In the UK, we have a system of Permits To Fly for aircraft which don't qualify for a Certificate of Airworthiness - there are two types: CAA Permits, which largely cater for ex-military types, and LAA Permits, which covers non-commercial construction (homebuilts) and orphan types where, typically, the original manufacturer is defunct and there is no holder of a valid type certificate.
There have been rumours of an EASA Experimental Category floating around for a while, but nothing really concrete. To be honest, when the european bureaucrats have finished with it, I suspect that if it ever appears it would probably be a retrograde step from where we are at the moment with the Permit system.
As such, it covers some truly awful bits of tat that can and do end up generating a pile of wreckage somewhere, but at the other extreme some superbly engineered and competent hardware, but for which the market is so small it doesn't make sense to proceed with further certification - the buyers in that market know exactly what they're getting, and often fight tooth and nail to obtain the scarce examples available.
In the UK, we have a system of Permits To Fly for aircraft which don't qualify for a Certificate of Airworthiness - there are two types: CAA Permits, which largely cater for ex-military types, and LAA Permits, which covers non-commercial construction (homebuilts) and orphan types where, typically, the original manufacturer is defunct and there is no holder of a valid type certificate.
There have been rumours of an EASA Experimental Category floating around for a while, but nothing really concrete. To be honest, when the european bureaucrats have finished with it, I suspect that if it ever appears it would probably be a retrograde step from where we are at the moment with the Permit system.
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