Just had the annual done. They started on Monday morning and by Wednesday around noon it was done. No significant findings and fixed a few minor things.
Timing was good. I got to attend a conference while it was in the shop.
Since I am a compulsive fixer with, it would seem, higher standards than a lot of others, I am in the terrible habit of pulling my aircraft apart for mods/improvements but because I didn’t build the aircraft myself I’m ALWAYS finding stuff that is not to my liking. So, last November I took it apart and anticipated spending three months to install a new scratch built panel, 430w and an AP and I finally got it airborne again in September. It still doesn’t have an AP!
The annual on the Meridian took 4.5 days last time.
An annual on an IFR SEP is about 30 man-hours, if no rectification is required. So it is 3-4 days for 2 people in practice, because one should always use the opportunity to do some extras like ACF50. That’s how long it takes me, and there are 2 of us doing the main bits.
A 50hr service is about 4 hours, again with two of us.
Nothing has ever taken longer in the 13 years I have had the TB20, but a lot of that is because we spot things which need doing when doing the 50hr services and order any parts before the next service so for example a cracked heater hose which takes 3 months to arrive is not a problem. I think a lot of planes don’t get serviced in a way which enables stuff to be anticipated. Maybe the 50hr services are done by the pilot and he doesn’t spot things and tell the maintenance company which does the Annual. This is one advantage of N-reg – you can do everything with a freelance A&P/IA even if over 1200kg.
The reason I asked the original Q was to find out where the multi-month Annuals really come from.
Sure one gets a better service if one is able to stick one’s nose through the door regularly. That’s true for all tradesmen. For example we are having a greenhouse put up sometime very soon and I am damn well going to be here watching them, all day if necessary. But if one gets a company which is less than helpful one often cannot get nasty with them because there is a fair chance they either run the airfield or are close to whoever does, and you will get kicked out of the hangar or even off the airfield. One prominent forum pilot got kicked out of one well known SE UK airfield after the resident avionics shop wired the GS backwards and he filed an MOR. My plane was once stuck for 8 weeks, between G and N registrations, and if I misjudged how to deal with it I would have definitely lost the hangar. Ultimately I got lucky and had hangarage there for another 10 years… So ultimately your ability to get stuff done is finite unless you own the whole place.
JasonC wrote:
The annual on the Meridian took 4.5 days last time.
So if say the shop rate is £75/hour then the labour bill was just £2700 ?
I would say it depends on how many people are working on it…
Peter wrote:
The reason I asked the original Q was to find out where the multi-month Annuals really come from.
It’s two main causes for our club:
Anything that needs fabrication seems lost on the maintenance companies. We also use a company in Sweden, a rather good one. But others have also discovered that one, which results in him getting swamped.
The whole idea of maintenance companies for GA/recreational aviation is bananas. It probably work with some level of efficiency in the densest part of Europe, and for aircraft with good factory support (Newer Cessna, Diamond, Cirrus). In Norway it is a disaster. I think Cirruses still have to fly to the Netherland/Germany to do maintenance, and Diamond got their first maintenance facility less than a year ago.
We very seldom get considerable downtime, unless weare in need of a really scarce spare part. Once waited over a year to find a right fuel pump for the 6A-350, following an AD. Other than that, downtime is a direct function of the availability of the mechanic.
When I look at the reasons for long downtime of planes, the majority seem to be bad maintenance planning and necessary exchange of parts due to unneccesary sloppy handling of the aircraft.
Then you get unscheduled downtime… is this statistically worse on old planes or does it really depend on attitudes to maintenance once the plane is past a certain age (say 25 years)?
In my experience, age means nothing in a general aviation aircraft. I know Cessnas from the early sixties with almost no downtime and those late 80s models spending more time in the shop than ready to fly. I even know a 2006 172 that had considerebla downtime because of careless maintenance and neglect. The question is, how much efford you put into planning the maintenance and how good you can listen to your aircraft. The (recent) maintenance history is much more important for the reliability of an airframe, than its age in hours or years.
Same goes for the design of an aircraftf, there won’t be any substantial break throughs in incompressible aerodynamics, and thus some old airframes can keep up pretty well in comparison to their “modern” successors. The trade offs and governing equations remain the same, after all. (Engines, human interface design and systems are a totally different thing, though.)
I never understoof why a Cirrus Service Center or a Diamond Service Center would be necessary for the maintenance of such a plane. The engine and its components are quite normal as to aviation standards (ok, maybe not Diamonds Diesels..), the avionics aren’t too uncommon, too, and the airframe is nothing special at all, just ask your local glider club about best practice for FRP maintenance. Even bigger repairs could be done by one of the many shops specialising in FRP glider repair, propably better than by the manufacturer in some cases. The only reason Icould think off is bad maintenance or repair documentation, but there are aviation standards for this.
Maybe someone could enlighten me in this question?
While a good Service Center can maintain a Cirrus some special know-how is necessary regarding the electrical system and the avionics (but what shop knows anything about avionics anyway?) and especially the CAPS system. Only a Cirrus SC can change the line cutters (6 year intervall) or the parachute (10 years).
Okay, so you would need a service center for the CAPS every six and ten years. But for an annual? What can possibly be so tricky about the cirrus electric system, that needs to be addressed at an annual, and that could not be documented in the maintenance manual?
