I’m taking delivery of my Mooney next week which is my first aircraft. There’s not much I can’t figure out with Google, but I’m still stumped on how to manage the mx after countless hours of reading.
Current status is that it’s on the F- reg, and maintenance has been handled by the current owner in France who owns a maintenance company and he also has it under CAMO.
It’s 1243 kg MTOW so too heavy for ELA 1. Beyond that I have no idea what to do. I’m going to leave it on the F- reg for the moment but I’m wondering if I should get the mx done here and leave the CAMO management where it is, or move the whole lot here. Also I might be missing other options. Is there a reasonable way for an ELA2 owner to manage maintenance without CAMO? If I can save money on paperwork I’d be OK with doing things myself.
Any advice most welcome. At least there’s nothing due to be done for 6 months or so.
Hate to break it to you, but you will still be stumped on how to do it after countless hours of doing it! 
There appear to be ways under ELA2 to avoid a CAMO (and thus opening the way to using a freelance engineer for everything i.e. avoiding the use of a “company” which is what GA maintenance issues result from) but few people seem to know how to arrange it, or post the details, and the ability to do so appears to be in practice country (i.e. national CAA) dependent.
Getting freelance maintenance on ELA2 will be great and the remaining obstacle will be the political one: finding a hangar where you and your engineer can work on the plane. But you have that same problem with an N-reg plane which in all other respects can be worked on totally “freelance” by an A&P / A&P/IA.
From here
ELA2 is now delayed to at least 2019. Sorry if it’s not what you wanted to hear, but you should consider moving it to N-reg. As WP said, you will likely never really get your head around all the EASA maintenance stuff and the various CAA’s interpretations amd implementations. With an N-reg, it is all very easy after all. Get an annual done once a year, check for ADs and all the rest is essentially as per your (and your mechanic’s) judgement. I love it. Gives me 100% flexibility.
I’ll go a different route and will try to get the Maintenance Program I developed with my shop get approved by the CAA. Let’s what they say.
However, getting your maintenance programme approved by the CAA is not at all the same thing as the really big thing in ELA2 which is to enable totally freelance EASA66 engineer maintenance with no company involvement, eliminating the CAMO system and saving € thousands a year and forcing the buck to stop right there and then with that one guy.
I don’t care about that, because I already have three jobs, and I am not interested in beeing an aircraft mechanic. I enjoy working on the plane with the boys and doing the stuff I am qualified for, but I am glad I have the CAMO that cares about all the paperwork and stuff, which I actually hate.
If the CAA accepts that I can run some more parts on condition that have stupid life limits now, then I am perfectly fine. The CAMO costs L 450/year.
Edit after reading Achimha’s post:
I am aware that I could go without the CAMO, but I’ll keep it for the above reasons.
Peter, you don’t need a CAMO today, you can do with a Part 66 engineer but need the CAA to issue the annual. In the UK this process is particularly straightforward.
Odd that almost nobody does it… hence I reckon there is much more to this story, otherwise every >1200kg owner with a hangar would be doing exactly that!
As said earlier, you don’t need a CAMO for non-commercial non-complex aircraft ops.
Just be advised that if you go the “no-CAMO” route, it requires a fair amount of owner involvement with the paperwork.
If you choose to go without a CAMO, I wouldn’t keep the aircraft F-reg unless you can : read / write / speak french.
The company mandated by the French CAA to supervise aircraft airworthiness has all it’s documents in french. Only few documents are translated into english.
If you choose to keep the aircraft F-reg under a CAMO, choose a CAMO in your country with airworthiness review privilege for your aircraft (aka “CAMO+” over here). Otherwise you will struggle to find a company to issue your ARC every 1 (or 3) year(s).
If you need some documents for the M20J, you can contact me.
