it is as much a shop attitude as an owner attitude problem.
As the old saying goes, we get the politicians we deserve, and same goes for maintenance companies. It’s all been written before 
Out of curiousity tried to find what is supposed to be done during an annual for PA-28, found this:
https://www.coyoteflight.com/resources/Service_Manuals/Inspection_Checklist_PA-28-180.pdf
Inspection_Checklist_PA_28_180_pdf
Does anyone know if that looks correct(-ish)?
Not to the last bolt and rivet, but as a whole…
Said before: it is as much a shop attitude as an owner attitude problem.
For the most part shops and mechanics are delivering what the owners, knowingly or not, are asking for.
The market tends to eventually keep “bad” owners apart from either their cash or good shops, depending on how much disposable of the former they have.
About maintenance in general, I feel like car and aircraft maintenance suffer from the same flaws. When you spend your day making oil changes, you don’t learn how to operate nor how to troubleshoot.
I recently started to work on my car and in two days of making this all day, my brain would be OFF forever.
So I think mechanics need to
It would be useful for shops to slowly focus on one common maker (Piper, Robin…), build slowly a stock of common parts, and look for value in what they do. Like annuals which may take more time but makes the owner enjoy the plane for the rest of the year.
They have a wealth of experience we will never have (in terms of the fleet they manage). Their job would be to use this wealth.
I say this because I look at what they do from outside.
From the inside, when you always saw your job as a race to make as many oil changes in a week as possible, you just can’t.
Just my 2 cents.
Yes, I think it is the first annual they make on this bird. Before that, they went to a shop closer to Chicago their base.
The following :
The complexity of a retractable gear is amazing.
Wleferrand, glad to know you found the right setup for the Azbee
Just watched the video posted by Jujupilote above.
It is great to see how the firm is working, keeping the customer up to date. I also reckon they have not worked on that exact plane before, otherwise the stuff found would not have been found; it would have come to light on a previous annual.
Re magneto tests, isn’t there an output voltage test also? Measuring the coil secondary resistance isn’t going to pick up a shorted turn, but a shorted turn will dramatically reduce the output.
@RobertL18C will do; I talked to him a few days ago and they are doing great in Kalispell!
@wleferrand please say hi to John at Diamondaire, he helped keep my Aztec in good shape with spare parts for ten years! Great aircraft, very good transporter and heavy hauler. Mine would carry nearly 2,000 lbs useful.
We just finished the annual inspection of the Aztec. It’s my 5th, all “owner assisted”; the first 2 in the US (9 weeks at DiamondAire in Montana over two years, best training experience ever), the other 3 here in France.
I’m super lucky to have two part 66 engineers here in France (and a FAA IA, and people I can email in the US with specific questions) that I can rely on to do the work with me and who are patient enough to actually refer to the actual technical (english written, major blocker) documentation when faced with something new and I still can’t believe the time each operation takes if you really want to do it properly. Not complex at all, but massively time consuming.
Maintaining old birds is definitely a labor of love .. it really has to be factored in the buy-in decision, at least for legacy aircraft. Thankfully, it is also a wonderful hobby … most of the time :-)
RobertL18C wrote:
Some shops I have had to ask for items that needed replacing, and basically some shops either do not have the experience, or shy away from some of the more irksome tasks. The body of knowledge on certain types will continue to decline with a lot of engineers in their golden age.
I think there are two ways that can be dealt with.
Firstly (and this is preferable) you have an old salt on the type who knows exactly what to look for and exactly what needs doing versus what doesn’t. As you say, this is probably declining.
Second option is they get methodical and follow the manufacturer’s instructions. This needs a clear scope of work agreeing, and also needs them to overcome a reluctance to look in the book and invest some time in discovering what to do. From a business perspective you can see why they are reluctant – with a queue of easy and familiar jobs, why would you want to take on a job that’ll require getting the books out?
I would hazard a guess that, in the UK at least, much ‘inspection’ work at annuals and 50hr checks is simply not done – or perhaps done but with no more than a cursory glance to check that the part in question is actually present. The same way that a modern car service is £250 or whatever for no more tangible action than an oil change. The task list for your car service in theory includes a long list of ‘inspection’ items, but most of this is really obvious noddy stuff like check tyre tread depth and check a/c is blowing cold – something that frankly the owner ought to monitor anyway and isn’t going to take the mechanic more than a few minutes to check the entire list, with no need to actually go through it methodically.
