wigglyamp wrote:
Would you expect Mercedes or BMW to give you unrestricted rights to their engine management software or their dealer-only maintenance manuals?MMs, yes. In fact, I believe that by EU regs, they are obliged to do so. Otherwise maintenance would in practise be restricted to dealers, which I know is prohibited in the EU.
wigglyamp wrote:
Would you expect Mercedes or BMW to give you unrestricted rights to their engine management software or their dealer-only maintenance manuals?
Absolutely, yes. When that is not possible, e.g. when spending my money on newer cars or Garmin avionics, it’s facing a sour ownership experience, and not something I do happily. In 1998 I bought my first electronically injected motorcycle and very rapidly became annoyed and disappointed at not having control over my own property. That felt a lot like being violated, and formed my views on this subject. Several years and a great deal of effort later a group of us worldwide had decoded the engine management firmware and developed tuning software, which I then used extensively. That felt like breaking out of prison. I don’t go to back to prison voluntarily 
On topic, I got a copy of the GTX345 dealer documentation from a friend who who does business with a Garmin dealer. That’s useful but I hate having to play games, and for that reason I’ll stay away from Garmin if somebody else comes out with a comparable product in the next few years.
wigglyamp wrote:
Would you expect Mercedes or BMW to give you unrestricted rights to their engine management software or their dealer-only maintenance manuals?
There is no such thing as dealer-only in the aviation world. Aircraft must be field serviceable, because there are lots of mechanical failures that would preclude them from flying, of course. Do I expect the source code to their software? No, but if I pay STC/PMA price I want it to work. If it doesn’t, I want my money back. If the OEM lies about why it doesn’t work, I want the FAA to take action against them (revoke certification). That’s not too much to ask in exchange for my fuel taxes.
wigglyamp wrote:
Incidentally, only those functions which form part of the Avionic equipment TSO need to be certified to an appropriate software design assurance level. Other non-TSO functions will often have level D/E software and is not subject to any regulatory verification.
Software is approved by the FAA. This software is broken. The regulatory system failed to catch the flaw(s) in it before it made it into the field last year (mid 2015 is the date on the most recent CX80/GNS480 software). The software, among other things, added support for this particular transponder on its serial ports.
There is no way for the parties involved to split hairs here. Garmin shipped flawed software with the FAA’s blessing and their PR rep is trying to lie about it and blame it on other avionics manufacturers. That is the whole story, period.
JasonC wrote:
What a wonderful manifesto to destroy the best aviation regulatory system in the world. Just what we need loads of frivolous lawsuits against the FAA….Just a tip, don’t move to Europe. If the FAA upsets you this much you don’t want to start dealing with EASA.
No one is owed legal immunity. Particularly those with government regulatory authority.
http://www.piperforum.com/showthread.php?t=511&page=3
The above details a fine example of why it’s a fine idea to give a local district court judge jurisdiction over the FAA and NTSB.
Summary:
The linked thread has a story from a Piper owner who landed in a store parking lot after a fuel system failure. His flight manual did not have restrictions on takeoff from tip tanks. Other year models did. The NTSB/FAA tried to blame him for the incident. He caught them in multiple lies during their ‘investigation’ (claiming that they had run the engine when the prop was embedded in the cowling and never removed, destruction of evidence related to the investigation, lying about chronological order of events in the investigation in an attempt to cover their tracks after called out on said lying, waiting until the expiration of time limits on information requests had run out to publish false findings, etc.)
In this pilot/owner’s case, it took a threat of investigation for criminal fraud and falsification of government documents from law enforcement to get the FAA/NTSB to back down from their intent to blame the pilot so that Piper wouldn’t have to fear any subrogation from the insurer.
The new law came about because the FAA tried to do the same thing to a Senator from the state that their home office lives in (!). In his case, he was cleared to land by an approach controller on a closed runway that had an asphalt maintenance crew working on it. The airport manager had filed the runway closure notice for the wrong day. The FAA refused to provide the Senator the air traffic control recording tapes, or any other evidence used against him in determining that it was his fault for landing on the runway.
In previous reform legislation aimed at the FAA the FAA has tried to avoid compliance with laws aimed specifically at them by demanding endless studies and research and refusing to implement forced changes. If anyone attempts to challenge them on that activity they claim that no one has jurisdiction over them and refuse to answer demands for documents. In this case the new law gives them one year to comply with all facets of the new law or lose regulatory authority over the civil aviation systems mentioned in the law.
So yes, it is a wonderful manifesto. Tear it all down, set it on fire, and piss on the ashes. Whatever regulatory brilliance the FAA had died in the 1980s. The only reason any aircraft, be it an A380 or a Cessna 172, is any safer now than it was in the 1970s can be summarized by the availability of computer-aided engineering. They are monopoly enforcers and price fixers at this point, nothing more.
BTW, speaking of, don’t be too comfy on the A380 or the 767 for that matter if it flies in the U.S. Because if it flies in the U.S. it’s serviced in El Salvador by unlicensed mechanics.
Wigglyamp wrote:
Would you expect Mercedes or BMW to give you unrestricted rights to their engine management software or their dealer-only maintenance manuals?
Absolutely, yes. VW wouldn’t have been able to cheat if it were a legal requirement that their engine management software be open source.
I won’t buy a car unless I can get a maintenance manual for it.
In any case avionics isn’t like a car, it’s more like an after market car radio. When you consider that probably well over half the new aircraft being made now are homebuilts (where the builder will be the avionics installer) it makes no sense not to publish the installation manual. I won’t buy any avionics that I can’t get the install manual for even if I’m not installing it myself.
Getting IMs is easy enough.
Getting MMs is hard. And many contain little useful information eg the GNS430 MM is mostly a board replacement authorisation…
The glory days of Bendix King manuals…..
BTW wasn’t the VW software cheat written by Bosch, who told VW they should not use it?
Peter wrote:
The glory days of Bendix King manuals…..
I really wish that they weren’t so inept at modern avionics. I’d have a whole airplane full of them if they weren’t, for that reason alone.
That, however, is partly a symptom of the times.
As equipment becomes more CPU (software) based and less analog, the scope of an MM is reduced to something which almost nobody can do in the field without complicated fixtures.
Whereas say a KX165A is packed with analog stuff. There is a CPU in there but that bit “will never go wrong”. That is a 1990s box. Newer stuff has even less analog content so even less to put into an MM.
Also avionics shop expertise has gradually diminished. Here in the UK, there is maybe one firm which can repair anything (Navcomm Avionics in Bournemouth), after the old guy at IAE (Cranfield) retired. So many people have come up against this recently. Some send stuff to the USA, some scrap it. Garmin (etc) must be aware of this which is why the business has moved to fixed repair charges… so we get the ridiculous $1000+ for fixing a broken knob 
Please, let’s not turn this into an anti FAA “crusade”. Nobody in aviation is perfect, and certification especially is running many years behind technology. The FAA is a lot better than what we have here in Europe – well, until very very recently, with EASA doing some sensible stuff.
It is interesting how with Cessna and the mustang i have access to all the maintenance manuals (for a subsciption to be fair).
I was going to move the manuals related posts to a new thread called something like “should aviation manuals be freely available” (because that is a good topic) but they are mostly tangled up too much right now, and I almost never edit postings.
@Jason – I have a feeling the manuals you refer to are basically the “ATP” manuals. This is the stuff which most GA manufacturers publish via ATP and then maintenance companies subscribe to it for c. $1000/year. Joe Public can buy that subscription too. Obviously it should include the aircraft wiring diagrams but I don’t think this will include IMs and especially not MMs for e.g. G1000 or its modules.
@Jason – I have a feeling the manuals you refer to are basically the “ATP” manuals. This is the stuff which most GA manufacturers publish via ATP and then maintenance companies subscribe to it for c. $1000/year. Joe Public can buy that subscription too. Obviously it should include the aircraft wiring diagrams but I don’t think this will include IMs and especially not MMs for e.g. G1000 or its modules.
Not sure what you mean. It has the lot.
