Left Mag Dead... After Annual???

If you do OAA, you don't have to worry about taking the cowl off and
looking. Since you were the one that put the cowl (and every other
inspection plate and removable frumpus) back on the airplane after you took
them off in the first place, you have as much time as your little heart
desires to thoroughly inspect the aircraft.

True, and the OAA really is a great educational tool as well. I know
every square millimeter of my aircraft, thanks to ALWAYS participating
in the annual inspections.

Where I always get MIPs (Mechanic-Induced-Problems) is when they do
ANYTHING under the panel, or electrical in nature. In 8 years of
ownership, with two airplanes and three different shops, I have yet to
have any new gizmo installed in the panel that did not result in a
problem with something else.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

"Roy Smith" wrote in message
...
Does your car repair shop test your car after fixing it?

I once picked up my car from an oil change and as I was backing it out
of the parking space, I noticed I was leaving behind a heavy trail of
oil. They hadn't screwed the oil filter on right.

Ditto! I found out about my incident when there was a big puddle of oil on
the garage floor.

On 28 Feb 2006 12:50:44 -0800, "three-eight-hotel"
wrote:

snip

Is it a pretty standard practice for the shop owner to fly an airplane,
after annual? I've heard couple in this thread, where that is the
case, but is that the norm? This thread is the first I've heard of
this practice, although I find it a reasonable or plausible
expectation. I haven't heard of this as the experiences with any of my
aviation aquaintances...

Depends on the maintenance facility. There are a bunch of 'em out
there (including a lot of "factory authorized" ones) that have neither
the staffing or the insurance to do a post-maintenance flight.

The last one I was allegedly affiliated with had rental aircraft,
flight instructors/solo-ing student pilots, and a charter operation as
well as a maintenance facility. I was quite familiar with the
insurance policies involved, but really don't want to think about how
much all that insurance cost.

With regard to piston singles and yours truly, once I had 100 hours in
my logbook w/high performance/complex/tailwheel endorsements and a
current medical, I was covered for VFR flight up to a quarter-mil
hull in anything my boss said I was qualified to fly.

I didn't fly every airplane I worked on, but I (or one of the charter
pilots) flew in every one that had any major maintenance or periodic
inspection. These flights would all be prior to customer
acceptance/delivery.

About the only major malfunction I haven't experienced inflight has
been an engine fire. The most common post-inspection malady I can
remember is a plugged injector nozzle after fuel system
inspection/maintenance. Probably the worst from my technician/test
pilot perspective was a nose gear problem after installation of a new
engine.

Somebody in this thread mentioned flying with the customer after
maintenance, unless I was PIC, forget it. Some of you guys scare the
heck out of me...

TC

Somebody in this thread mentioned flying with the customer after
maintenance, unless I was PIC, forget it. Some of you guys scare the
heck out of me...

And with spring just around the corner, it's about to get a LOT scarier up
there...

:-0
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Has anyone else had a similar problem? The mechanic said the plane was
started and running after annual, so is this just a major coincidence?
Is it true??? Are we all just test pilots, when we pick our planes up
from an annual?

The reason aircraft maintenance costs so much more than automotive
maintenance is because the increased risks of serious injury and even
death require a different approach. All maintenance is done under the
supervision of specially certified personnel, using only approved
procedures and parts of the highest quality due to stringent design
approval and quality control. All this results in a much lower error
rate than automotive maintenance. And if you believe that, I've got a
bridge to sell you.

Maybe it really works that way in the airline and high end (meaning
turbine) corporate and charter world. I don't know. But the reality
of maintenance when it comes to privately owned piston pounders is very
different.

Aviation parts are low quality and high cost, the airplanes themselves
seem to be designed to make things difficult for the fabricator and
impossible for the serviceman (remember that the FAA must approve the
design), the processes used to repair are antiquated (I believe we're
the last industry left to repair using oxyacetylene welding), the
mechanics generally undertrained and underpaid (the auto dealership
pays more, so where do you think the good ones go?), and when you drop
the plane off at the shop, you take your chances. You are a test
pilot. As a general rule, a plane will come out of annual with more
things wrong then when it went in. Why? Because you won't pay to have
it done any differently.

How much was wrong on your $1900 annual on your C-172? Was anything
repaired? Parts replaced?

If I was going to annual your airplane the way I annual mine (meaning
check everything I believe should be checked, lube everything that
needs to be lubed, and not just do the required minimum), and I was
going to charge you the standard labor rate the local auto dealership
charges, I would need to charge you about that much just for the basic
inspection and routine maintenance - and that's assuming I worked as
fast as someone who does it all the time. Anything wrong would be on
top of that.

There used to be a local shop in my area that worked that way. I would
get into a plane they released from annual and just launch, without any
worry. A basic annual on a Bonanza was $5000 - any repairs were
additional. It was started by a former airline president who had
several airplanes and who wanted everything done RIGHT, cost no object.
He discovered there was nowhere he could go to have it done that way.
When he died, he left the shop to the head mechanic free and clear.
The mechanic still couldn't make a go of it. Why not? A friend of
mine took a cowling there to be repaired. The repair cost as much as
the rest of his (admittedly owner-assisted) annual put together. Hard
to keep customers that way.

The unpleasant reality is that the average annual on a simple
fixed-gear fixed-pitch 30 year old airplane is really about a 25 hour
process if you don't have to stop and fix anything significant. Yes, I
know the book says otherwise - but if you do it by the book, you will
miss stuff and make mistakes. At $1900, that works out to $76/hr,
before you consider parts. The local Chevy dealer charges more.

Now realize that most of this work requires only minimal skill - you
could easily do it yourself if you wanted to, even legally. But if
you're going to pay a pro to do it, he has to charge you the same rate
for unscrewing panels and removing seats that he charges you to
internally time a magneto or repair an exhaust crack.

Most people who are not going to do their own automotive maintenance
wouldn't even consider buying a car that was more than 10 years old.
They buy new or relatively late-model used, even though the savings on
purchase price are quite substantial (a factor of 5-10). They do this
because they know the maintenance will eat them alive, or they won't
have anything resembling reliable transportation. The same equation
applies to airplanes - only most owners simply can't afford new. The
result - high maintenance costs and reliability problems.

Michael

No, the way YOU do an annual inspection (note clearly the word inspection)
takes about 25 hours. An annual INSPECTION takes 4 to 6 hours, half of
which is paperwork.

THe rest of the stuff you mentioned (lubrication, greasing, and such) is
preventative MAINTENANCE, not inspection.

I'm not saying that you are wrong to do it, but to claim that an annual
inspection on (say) a 172 or 28-140 is more than 8 hours is not correct.

Jim



"Michael" wrote in message
oups.com...

The unpleasant reality is that the average annual on a simple
fixed-gear fixed-pitch 30 year old airplane is really about a 25 hour
process if you don't have to stop and fix anything significant.

On 2006-03-04, RST Engineering wrote:
No, the way YOU do an annual inspection (note clearly the word inspection)
takes about 25 hours. An annual INSPECTION takes 4 to 6 hours, half of
which is paperwork.

THe rest of the stuff you mentioned (lubrication, greasing, and such) is
preventative MAINTENANCE, not inspection.

On a point of pedantry (this being Usenet), he said annual, not annual
*inspection*. The inspection bit is just part of the annual (prior to
actual repairs).

--
Dylan Smith, Port St Mary, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Oolite-Linux: an Elite tribute: http://oolite-linux.berlios.de
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net

No, the way YOU do an annual inspection (note clearly the word inspection)
takes about 25 hours. An annual INSPECTION takes 4 to 6 hours, half of
which is paperwork.

If you want to be pedantic, two can play that game. Note clearly the
absence of the word inspection from my post. Annual inspection has a
regulatory meaning per 14CFR43. Annual is a commonly used aviation
term to denote the annual service cycle comprised of inspection,
preventive maintenance, and repairs as necessary. It includes the
process of opening up and cleaning so that these things can be done,
and closing everything up again. It is common usage and generally
understood. It's the reason that an A&P can do an annual - the IA need
only perform the actual inspection.

I agree, the inspection itself takes 2-3 hours once everything is
opened up and cleaned. The associated paperwork may take YOU 2-3 hours
- my process is far more streamlined that that on an airplane I've
worked on previously. I can complete the paperwork on my airplane and
have it ready for IA signature in under an hour. On a new-to-me
airplane, it can take much longer than 3 hours - if the airplane has no
AFM when one is required, or an equipment list that hasn't been updated
in decades, and the AD compliance report is a joke, it can take much
longer to research the records.

THe rest of the stuff you mentioned (lubrication, greasing, and such) is
preventative MAINTENANCE, not inspection.

You are correct, but it MUST be done, and realistically the time to do
it is at the time of inspection. Most private planes fly 100 hours a
year or less, so the annual is the reasonable time to take care of the
100-hour service checklist items and AD's. Sure, the owner can do most
of it himself, since it is mostly preventive maintenance, and any A&P
can do (or supervise) the rest - but if it doesn't get done, the
airplane starts turning into a piece of crap.

Michael