All this news of theft makes me start to appreciate the EASA1 / 8313-3 requirements that are coming into heavier requirement.
I was complaining (to myself, mainly) about not being able to import cheap components from the US and install them in my EASA aircraft, but the upside is that it is going to get harder and harder to sell stolen avionics w/o the proper documentation (In the Western World, anyway). Which is great.
Sorry you guys have to go through this. Terrible.
Thanks for sharing your stories.
The EASA-1 and 8130-3 form is a complete and total sham for anything that isn’t serially numbered, and it is a sham for anything that is serially numbered where the vendor can use photoshop – because the forms are just laser printouts so hacking the S/N is a 5 minute job. The industry widely uses photocopies of the forms, because if say the distributor buys 1000 screws and you bought 20, you get a photocopy of the form which the 1000 came with.
Nobody installing stuff audits the forms in the real world. They just accept them.
I did once query an 8130-3 (for a KC225 computer which I bought for $500, with recent Bendix/King overhaul paperwork but otherwise too good to be true) and it took months to get a fairly useless email back saying the form looks “OK”. Nobody actually confirmed they generated it. On another occasion I got an obviously multiple times photocopied (really bad quality) form from a now-defunct UK magneto overhaul shop; this is all normal.
Patrick – your comment about the carnival is not IMHO inappropriate at all. This was a major concern at Shoreham and the annual concert there, but they contain the concert in a 2-3m solid sheet fence and lay on loads of security, and AFAIK another entrance is provided so the customers don’t go near the airport buildings. It does surprise me how long it has taken for vandals to discover GA…
It is interesting that serial numbers are verified against a blacklist on a database update. Is this verified (so to speak)?
Peter, I’m not expert in these things but my understanding is that there are a few databases of stolen avionics serial numbers which shops check and that Garmin has one which makes updates unavailable for these serial numbers. Michael seems to know more than I as an FAA A&P/IA, my knowledge is second had from my shop and some internet research.
AF wrote:
Will it legitimately hurt anyone if such a thing occurs?
In my opinion no. With one exception and this would be creating paperwork for stolen items. And one other exception are units which work intermittently (the more complex the avionics, the more often this is the case – my favorite in this respect is the TCAS computer) and were pulled because they need to be serviced/overhauled. Creating paperwork for those and selling them on as serviceable – which they might be for one hour or ten – would be fraud and possibly dangerous for the pilot who relies on them to work.
Anyway, only recently I read in the newspaper that it has leaked that every laser printer and copier manufactured since the 1980ies prints an “invisible” watermark (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code) on every pages by which it can be identified. Therefore fake paperwork should easily be identifiable.
Creating paperwork for those and selling them on as serviceable – which they might be for one hour or ten – would be fraud and possibly dangerous for the pilot who relies on them to work.
That happens 100% legitimately when an item returned with an intermittent fault is bench tested by a 145 company. If it works on the bench, they have just two options:
Much of the King extended warranty pool is stuff like that…
That is a really interesting article, WN. I did know that colour lasers have for a long time had banknote detection, and banknotes carry patterns to make that work. But to print signatures on every page…?
Still, what audit (detection) route does this open? The company whose name appears on the form is hardly going to print off a specimen piece and send it to you so you can check. And what if they have multiple printers? Also many forms are years old and not many lasers last that long. Also a lot of forms are printed off by a company which never saw the overhauled item; it is a widespread practice in the 145 business especially in Europe where the approval is pricey so companies do “mutual laser printer sharing deals”. In theory there is a mutual audit option which is how the NAAs approve this “scheme”. I have a long email from one avionics shop describing it.
what_next wrote:
every laser printer and copier manufactured since the 1980ies prints an “invisible” watermark
I don’t think it would be well detected after the document has been scanned, copied, printed, and elsewise regurgitated 100 times like some of these forms have been… :)
Kind of like detecting the fingerprint of the thief on a public door…
Patrick_K wrote:
Michael seems to know more than I as an FAA A&P/IA,
Well, fortunately my experience with theft is extremely limited.
That said, I have spoken to Garmin Europe Support on multiple occasions and they do a good job of tracking all of their aviation units. Beyond that, I don’t think there’s reaaly much of anything else.
Ebay is your friend. When my building was trashed a few years back, my son went on the offensive. He developed interesting eBay scanning techniques including a method of displaying visual thumbnails of many items at a time with vague and mis-spelled descriptions. He identified several items. One of them had been photographed outdoors and in the back of the shot was an interesting looking electricity pylon. We had a rough idea of the location (you can get this from eBay) and a local policeman recognised the pylon type. We flew the line and picked up the remote building where the pic had been taken, careful not to loiter too long and give the game away. After all kinds of excuses, Police finally raided the place and recovered some items (about 1% of the theft).
Individual policemen were immensely helpful. Collectively, they could not be less helpful. The miscreant described above was released without charge because he had a ‘plausible’ alibi that he had bought the stuff at a car boot 100mi away, and co-incidentally brought it back to his location 10mi from the theft. A further individual, tracked down with the same method, had his home turned over in a very impressive raid but was again released without charge. At least we got another 1% back. (Officer to housewife: “Open this door”. Housewife: “No”. Officer: “OK I’ll kick it in then”. Door opens).
None of these raids and recoveries would have happened without our constantly pushing Police, hassling MP’s, councillors and chief constables, delivering photographs and map co-ordinates and generally being a nuisance to the extent that I was eventually advised to ‘back off’. And the stuff we really needed – irreplaceable bronze and brass fittings – never surfaced. Police in general will not tackle travellers and specifically, when the tyre marks off the land (they crossed 3 fields, breaking down fences and releasing livestock) turned right toward a well known traveller hotbed, a Police sergeant insisted that they had turned left toward the M6 and Manchester. The same officer would not photograph the unusual tyre marks because ‘they could not be used in evidence’.
So the moral is: if you want it back, look yourself because in the UK, the authorities would prefer to look the other way.
PS there’s still a Sensinich prop for a -161 out there somewhere!
Aveling, I hear you. The theft was a while ago now and I didn’t have any luck at the time. At this point the only reason to push for finding the stuff would be to get some satisfaction that the responsible parties were punished, which seems unlikely. I’m pushing forward with trying get the work moving on the plane and to get flying again. The bulk of what has happened is damage, not stolen stuff because the thieves were really incompetent… The only time we’ve had any satisfaction on anything related to property crime in the UK was when the burglar who robbed us confessed to the police as part of some larger plea agreement regarding a number of homes he had burgled, in order to get a reduced sentence, presumably on some bigger crime… we never really understood the details.
In the instance of violent crime, we were really impressed with how quickly the police responded to a 999 call when I guy tried to steal my wife’s watch off of wrist. There seemed to be a big distinction in the seriousness with which crimes including violence to people are treated versus thefts.
That’s a very good point Patrick. I was reprimanded by a Policeman for describing what happened to me as a ‘Robbery’. Apparently a robbery involves violence – all I had was a mere burglary, albiet involving at least 4 men, a woman with a dog as lookout and a vehicle able to transport 1/2 ton of stuff across ploughed fields. In a country where petty crime is rife – every rural barn in my part of the county has been attacked at least once – then these distinctions are important.
