> 1. Which character set should I default to on the server.

If you only use characters from win1252 - I recommend to use win1252.

> 2. I will need to move all my data to a fresh database declared with UTF-8. Could I use fbcopy to do this, connecting to the source database with chasrset NONE and the destination with charset win1252. Would this then correctly encode the none-ascii characters in the new database?

Yes.

> 3. Going forward, I will need to provide a connection character set. If this is not supplied, does firebird use the default OS character set?

No, it will use NONE.

SY, SD.