Light Aircraft Association

The CAA are having a binge on registration letters. If you read the document on these, all 14 pages of it, you will understand that this is not an easy subject. At least 6 people so far have had correspondence ordering them to comply with the regs. So if you see 2 guys in suits hanging around and lifting the covers on your aircraft do give them a heart felt welcome.

Checking Registration Letter compliance has been going on for a while.
I was 'pulled up' by letter in 2011. It was a fair cop when I became more subjective about how the letters were coloured and their size. I fully complied and as instructed sent Photo of change to Registrations Department and all was well. I think a web photo done for me!

What annoyed my friend was he'd paid a CAA approved maintenance company to do the letters and it had been inspected and passed by the CAA afterwards. They didn't complain the letters were hard to see, being black on white, they were too big!

I'm certainly not a 'goody two-shoes' type , but can actually see where the Feds are coming from here.
I remember a letter in Pilot magazine about 20+ years ago from a guy who had his collar felt over this at a fly-in . He made the mistake of accompanying his letter with a photo which showed his fuselage lettering to be of car reg. no. size and barely even readable close up. Sympathy ? Errm Naah !

CAP-523 is fairly straightforward in its requirements and also quite flexible if things like fuselage area aren't sufficient and there are unfortunately quite a few aeroplanes around whose reg's are either too small, too flash or non-contrasting colours .
With todays slimmed down CAA, I can't really see too much active snooping taking place. Might be a good idea though not to clobber your Inspector if he brings it up at PtF renewal time.
Was a bit surprised that Rob's mates letters were too big. It's normally the other way round.

I totally agree about small letters. It was the fact they were too bold and done by an approved organisation that annoyed him. The specs are as you say clear and reasonable. I don't know how the other aircraft at Cranfield were non compliant.