On Wed, 13 Jan 2010 04:02:38 +0000, shkdriver wrote:

Anyone ever purchase a used glider with an experimental certificate,say
for example, an ASW 19b, and change to a standard certificate? I
understand that some gliders were imported and flown as experimental
such as jantars, due to govermental restrictions on reciprocal
airworthiness circumstance. The ASW 19b has been given U.S. standard
certificates. Just wondering
Scott W.

I looked into this recently and came up with the following, I didn't
actually try to do this as I didn't buy the glider in the end. But the
exercise was worthwhile..

First make sure that an equivalent model of the glider (make and model)
has been certified by the FAA and as a cosequence there is a Type
Certificate Data Sheet (TCDS) available for the type from the FAA (you
can find these online by searching for tcds at www.faa.gov).

Read the the description there and, at least for the types I was looking
at, it specifies the individual serial numbers of gliders that shoudl be
are conformant with the requirements of the TCDS, in my case it was
listed as a bunch of specific serial numbers for earlier builds and a
contiguous block for later builds of the type. As well as any mandatory
modifications that need to be carried out for the FAA Standard CofA.

One of the requirements stated in the TCDS is specific wording on the
original Certificate of Airworthiness for Export from Germany (where the
glider came from, the owner of the glider had this in his well documented
glider, not sure how you would get one of these otherwise, perhaps the
manufacturer or the LDB in the case of germany)

My stumbling block was that the FAA TCDS specified particular wording
that should be present in the Export C of A from Germany, this wasn't
present in exactly the specified words for the the particular glider I
was looking at (even though that particular glider was specifically
listed as conformant by serial number). I think this was a timing issue
in terms of which document was issued first... i never resolved whether
this might be an issue.

The final step is a rigorous inspection of the aircraft by an FAA
designated Inspector (that the FAA do for free apparently...!! ), I
forget the formal name for this inspection. But essentially it is just a
very thorough Anunual Inspection.

Once complete its a little bit of paper work and you are on the Standard
Airworthiness Category.

Let me know if you succeed, I'll be doing this sometime soon,..

Peter