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Pegasus time limit



 
 
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  #31  
Old January 6th 07, 06:54 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
phil collin
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Posts: 15
Default Pegasus time limit

I was looking for a glider last year and a local club was selling a peg
that had been re-lifed on hours abroad i.e. Europe. So I'm pretty sure
there is a firm doing the work some how...

wrote:
What about Canada? I have no idea and don't own a Peg but maybe there
is some FAA loophole if you export the ship to Canada and then
re-import it under a new registration and air worthiness cert.

Just a thought. Canada wouldn't be a terrible distance to drive.



On Jan 5, 6:02 pm, "Craig" wrote:
It is indeed an unfortunate situation. The Peg's a nice ship. It
seems to me that Centrair's reluctance would be primarily economic.
They no longer need the US soaring community as a customer base and
they have a regulatory sunset in place for the 51 STC'd birds that are
in the high liability US market. Sounds like a "get out of jail free"
card to me.

The class action route is likely to be expensive and there may be
statutes of limitations that restrict what can be done, etc. If you
valued each airframe at $15k that's still only $765k for the lot of
them. Rounding up to an even mil. for the whole thing, it's still no
more than a couple of personal injury cases would cost. On a larger
scale, Beechcraft bought up nearly the entire fleet of Starships and
destroyed them for similar reasons if I understand correctly.

The French market may be the best bet if the Pegasus reverts to the
higher hour limit upon re-registration. Are there other countries
where this might work? If so it would spread out the number of ships
flooding the market. The weak dollar doesn't help either. Sorry to
hear the bad news.

So Tom, I'm assuming the weather in Idaho has been crummy and you were
just trolling to see what would come to the surface or do you have a
dog in the fight?

Best regards,
Craig


  #32  
Old January 6th 07, 08:07 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
ASM
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Posts: 79
Default Pegasus time limit


Craig wrote:
It is indeed an unfortunate situation. The Peg's a nice ship. It
seems to me that Centrair's reluctance would be primarily economic.
They no longer need the US soaring community as a customer base and
they have a regulatory sunset in place for the 51 STC'd birds that are
in the high liability US market. Sounds like a "get out of jail free"
card to me.

The class action route is likely to be expensive and there may be
statutes of limitations that restrict what can be done, etc. If you
valued each airframe at $15k that's still only $765k for the lot of
them. Rounding up to an even mil. for the whole thing, it's still no
more than a couple of personal injury cases would cost. On a larger
scale, Beechcraft bought up nearly the entire fleet of Starships and
destroyed them for similar reasons if I understand correctly.

The French market may be the best bet if the Pegasus reverts to the
higher hour limit upon re-registration. Are there other countries
where this might work? If so it would spread out the number of ships
flooding the market. The weak dollar doesn't help either. Sorry to
hear the bad news.

So Tom, I'm assuming the weather in Idaho has been crummy and you were
just trolling to see what would come to the surface or do you have a
dog in the fight?

Best regards,
Craig


Hi Craig,

15K....where did you get this number from? Who determines the prices of
used gliders?
What you guys need to realize is the fact that the fleet of existing
gliders is getting smaller and in a few short years there will be just
a million dollars sailplanes available and then what? a hang glider?
and no used sailplanes? I guess a wakeup call is really necessary for
the entire soaring community. Period. Some of the postings here are
showing nothing more than just simple ignorance. It is disturbing and
mind boggling.

Jacek
Washington State

  #33  
Old January 6th 07, 11:14 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Doug
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Posts: 21
Default Pegasus time limit

I'm still curious about the wording in the manuals from across the pond on
the 3k hrs issue. Also, how do you get around the 3k hrs limit in your
country?

Anyone have a comment?

Doug

wrote in message
oups.com...

Jacek, Doug et al,

Jacek's quote from the Pegase Owner's Manual is accurate. There is NO
translation problem. The wording is exact and clear. Unfortunately, the
Centrair factory made a mistake by saying two different things on two
different pages. One statement said "3,000 hour service life" and the
other referred to a "Five year or 3,000 hour inspection." When the
glider was certificated in the US, the reference to the 3,000 hour
service life was used for issuance of the STC- mainly because Centrair
did not provide a 3,000 hour inspection plan. Apparently, they had
promised to do so, but went out of business before coming up with it.

When they ceased operation, the Type Certificate was taken over by a
new entity- Societe Nouvelle Centrair (S.N. Centrair). They also failed
to offer an inspection protocol. That is where we sit now.

When the FAA inquired about the discrepancy in the two pages, S.N.
Centrair once again failed to provide a plan for inspection and
reiterated that the 3,000 hour service life is applicable in the US.
Once the FAA gets information like that from the manufacturer or the
holder of the Type Certificate, the procedure is cut and dried. The FAA
is not allowed to make judgments contrary to factory information
involving service life- unless the FAA determines that the service life
from the factory is too high. S.N. Centrair REDUCED the life limit,
therefore, an AD was issued.

If S.N. Centrair had said that the 3,000 hour inspection was the
governing reference, we would not have this problem. Since no
inspection plan is specifically offered, interpretation could have been
left open to the A&P or I.A. as to what needed to be checked.

As a result of the French holder of the Type Certificate specifically
instructing the FAA to disregard the reference to a 3,000 hour
inspection, the FAA had no choice but to issue an AD requiring owners
to use a pen to cross out the inspection reference. Unless S.N.
Centrair reverses this instruction, the AD stays in effect. If they DO
reverse the decision, the FAA (according to Greg) would be more than
happy to issue an amended AD.

This happened last year, when an AD was issued concerning elevator and
aileron hinge pins on the Centrair 101 gliders. S.N. Centrair issued a
Sevice Bulletin mandating replacement of hinge pins on a specific range
of gliders by serial number and/or hinge pin delivery date. This
bulletin was turned into an AD that required replacement of pins in ALL
Centrair aircraft, regardless of serial number. When this was pointed
out to the FAA, Greg rewrote the AD and we were off the hook. He hopes
something similar can be done in the case of the service life limit,
but it has to come from S.N. Centrair.

Once again, TRANSLATION IS NOT THE ISSUE!

Mark Mocho



  #34  
Old January 7th 07, 08:08 AM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Craig
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Posts: 6
Default Pegasus time limit

15K....where did you get this number from? Who determines the prices of
used gliders?


Hi Jacek,

The $15k number was simply a wag at a bare hull value w/o instruments,
trailer, etc. I could be off by a factor of two and I doubt it would
change the economics for Centrair. No offense was intended & I
apologize if it came off wrong.

Best Regards,
Craig

  #35  
Old January 8th 07, 10:37 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Jeremy Zawodny
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Posts: 85
Default Pegasus time limit

Craig wrote:
15K....where did you get this number from? Who determines the prices of
used gliders?


Hi Jacek,

The $15k number was simply a wag at a bare hull value w/o instruments,
trailer, etc. I could be off by a factor of two and I doubt it would
change the economics for Centrair. No offense was intended & I
apologize if it came off wrong.


Actually, that $15k value isn't *too far* off the mark in my mind. If
you've got a decent peg that's over the 3,000 limit, you need to factor
in the transport costs of a few thousand dollars and such.

If you start at $20 and add $3k for transport (I have no idea what the
real cost it), you're within a few thousand dollars of what a few pegs
(with far less than 3,000 hours on them) have sold for in the last year.

Jeremy
  #36  
Old January 23rd 07, 12:27 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
tommytoyz
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Posts: 57
Default Pegasus time limit

Why not register the Pegasus in D-registration and fly it here in the
US? FAA licensed pilots are permitted to fly D-registere gliders......

  #37  
Old January 23rd 07, 09:41 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
jb92563
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Posts: 137
Default Pegasus time limit

For those with lots of time and little money:

Go Experimental!

Deregister the glider, disassemble the thing to some degree
(51%)....take pictures, put in some new parts, rivets etc and Build an
experimental glider out of the parts you have available......Call it
what ever you like, probably anything but Pegasus, register it, test
fly, get COA and now you have a glider with little resale value but
lots of fun value......

Oh and by the way, apply for your repairman rating as well since you
built this aircraft and are now qualified to do all the annuals on it.

For those with lots of money:

Mount it on a pole at your local glider club along with your club
banner and buy a new glider!

For those that like to fight and get bloodied:

Hire a french lawyer and ask him to drain you of surplus cash and get
bloody irritated for a couple years so that you will grow to hate your
Pegasus.....which you will eventually leave abandoned for all the
rodents on your airfield to make their home.....better there than in
your new glider right?!

Looks like a pain no matter which way you take it!

Sorry your options look grim....perhaps its just time to move on and
enjoy flying rather than beating a dead horse.

  #38  
Old February 14th 07, 09:16 AM
dumass dumass is offline
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First recorded activity by AviationBanter: Sep 2005
Posts: 6
Default

Looks like the Californians decided to bite the bulllet and dump the overtime Peg.
No letters from Centrair (they are wise and shut up)
Unfortunately for the Peg owners looks like my prediction is still holding.
No hords of lawyers packing for France (they know when a case is lost)
We will have a few nice upgrades to the glider fleet here in Canada.
  #39  
Old February 14th 07, 09:35 AM
dumass dumass is offline
Junior Member
 
First recorded activity by AviationBanter: Sep 2005
Posts: 6
Default

Ohh, there is still that Californian Frenchman (or French Californian or whatever he is) with his French lawyer cousin that maybe still wants to keep on going and collect money from you Peg owners for the lawsuit !!
 




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