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#32
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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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