Menu Sign In Contact FAQ
Banner
Welcome to our forums

France F-P reg. Experimental Questions

Hello all,

I am interested in a french F-P… registered experimental/homebuilt plane.

I have been told it is possible to own and keep it registered as non french EU Citizen, is this correct?

What are the maintenance and airworthiness requirements? Annual? ARC renewal?

What is the process for changes/repairs/modifications?

At last, if someone knows about wooden airplanes or has a local contact in the french scene who could help me put, I’d be very grateful.

always learning
LO__, Austria

@jojo and @vrh come to mind on this one.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

You don’t have to be a French citizen to own an F-P.
The next question is whether you have built it yourself or if you bought it ready built.
If you build it yourself you will have a bunch of documentation and photos to accompany the build. These will be used to set your maintenance programme, most of which you.will be able to do yourself.
If its already built and already F-P the seller should hand all this documentation to you. You then send the bill of sale off to the DGAC to have the ownership details changed. I don’t remember paying anything for this but if I did it was a very small amount.
You may have to visit an OSAC bureau to get your first CDNR and the documents check to approve the fact that you can do your own maintenance. It also makes sure that everything is as noted. On my Jodel there were 2 problems when it was bought. The owner had left a transponder to be serviced somewhere and he hadn’t got it back and 2nd the seller had at some stage fitted a scimitar prop. A lot of Jodel owners did this as it was reckoned to be more efficient(oops sorry @Silvaire gave better performance in their opinion). But it was never documented and approved. I simply sourced the prop type in the build documentation and tracked down the transponder.
After that I think you need (and this has changed since I had an F-P ) a check every year or every 3 years. I haven’t kept up with this. AFAIK this can be done either at an OSAC close to your aircraft’s location or by the Fédération RSA.
My advice would be to join the Fédération RSA. They have a large library of plans and other information plus can help you get in touch with other owners and people who provide services, parts, tools and advice for F-P aircraft. There are also F-P groups around France working on projects of all types. The one here at LFFK built an 3/4 scale version of a Mosquito bomber which exhibited (as a flying exhibit) all over Europe. It was beautiful (if you like that sort of thing). The school at nearby Cholet built an MCR4S and another school built an Oceanair. There are others who specialise more in classic aircraft like the Harvard etc.
Sorry, I diverge. My advice is to go on the RSA website and browse. If you have any specific questions don’t hesitate to ask. We have a lot of homebuilders, F-P owners, collectors around here and I’d be happy to put questions to them if I don’t know the answer myself, and get back to you.

France

Thanks a lot.

gallois wrote:

After that I think you need (and this has changed since I had an F-P ) a check every year or every 3 years. I haven’t kept up with this. AFAIK this can be done either at an OSAC close to your aircraft’s location or by the Fédération RSA.

Can you find out who needs to do this check? Can the owner do it and submit paperwork? Or some licensed mechanic only?

always learning
LO__, Austria

Since I am owning a FoxPapa plane aborad, I can address some of your questions:

Snoopy wrote:

Can you find out who needs to do this check? Can the owner do it and submit paperwork? Or some licensed mechanic only?

This inspection is carried out by someone from OSAC or RSA Nav. I warmly recommend the later service (through RSA membership as mentioned by gallois above) as their inspectors are, for most of them as well builders and provide a lot of excellent advice during the visits. They would usually travel to the home airfield of the plane and conduct the inspection (every year if you are a new owner, 3 years if you are the builder or have been maintaining your plane for 5 years). As you have to show the aircraft books (airframe + engine) that are supposed to remain in a safe place (i.e. not on the plane), you cannot travel to France for instance to get the inspection done.

BOD
LSGY, LFSP, LFHM, Switzerland

I think @BOD has answered the question, although I thought the regulationvhad changed so that airframe and engine documents could be held online/computer and therefore you could fly to France for the checks.

France
6 Posts
Sign in to add your message

Back to Top