On Mon, 01 Aug 2005 05:07:38 GMT, (sleepy6) wrote:

These aircraft can be maintained and inspected by the owner if he
attends schools to get the repairmans certificates offered. Note that
this does NOT give him the authority to make modifications to the
plane. Completing these schools does not even allow him to make "major
repairs". Just because the word "experimental" is involved does NOT
mean that other experimental (such as amateur built) rules apply to
LSA.

Actually, the same rules *do* apply to ELSAs...or to be more correct, the same
*lack* of rules. 14CFR Part 43 does not apply to any aircraft certified as
Experimental.

Experimental LSAs, like Experimental Amateur-Built aircraft, are governed by the
operating limitations issued at the time the plane is certified. The ELSA
operating limitations specified in 8130-2F Change 1 certainly imply that major
changes may be performed ("All major changes or modifications will be listed in
the aircraft records...") but make no stipulation on the minimum requirements
necessary to perform such a modification.

Last January, I asked an Inspector at the FAA Light Sport Aviation Branch
whether the owner of an Experimental LSA was free to modify the aircraft. The
reply was, "There is nothing regulatory requiring the aircraft be held to the
consensus standard after certification in the experimental category so they
would be free to modify as they see fit but the aircraft would have to back to
phase 1 testing...."

This pre-dated the Change 1 to 8130-2F, but I haven't seen anything in Change 1
to contradict this.

Ron Wanttaja