Had an email last night from the hallowed inner sanctum of the group. Mavis is now fit to fly. It has taken 9 months to get her back in the air. It is what it is but I did wonder if this is the norm and if it is, how on earth do people do any meaningful flying on permit aircraft if the down time is so long. I guess in this case, changing brakes to the cleaveland thingy is a bigger job than I had in my head. I am also waiting for information from one of the members but he seemed to lose his manners the day I joined so wont hold my breath. 
Would I be correct in saying that to fit an encoder is just another maintenance term for fitting a transponder or am I barking up the wrong tree? I did google it but fell asleep. 
An encoder sends the standard altitude to a transponder. It’s like a remote altimeter that you can’t read. It’s needed for Mode C/S.
On my panel refit the avionics engineers found and removed four (!) blind encoders from my aircraft.
Had an email last night from the hallowed inner sanctum of the group. Mavis is now fit to fly. It has taken 9 months to get her back in the air. It is what it is but I did wonder if this is the norm and if it is, how on earth do people do any meaningful flying on permit aircraft if the down time is so long
Down time for what? We had our wings recovered, new windscreen/top/back screen put in, doors rebuilt and some minor non-structural wood repairs done a couple of years back and the aircraft was only out of action for about 6 weeks.
I too wonder why so many people’s planes spend months in the Annual or whatever. Especially in a syndicate. My guess at the reasons would be
The last five points are common in the “British builder” scenario too
I could throw in a few more controversial ones but as a mod I am going to get into hot water…
Our Permit Renewal is often done on a rolling basis, before the previous Permit runs out. Only if the Inspector found something safety-critical would he ground us immediately. Other jobs are done where possible on bad weather days. The longest down-time was a top-head overhaul in 2007. I flew today, then we did part of a 50 hour, including changing oil and filter. Weather permitting I’ll fly to Glenforsa tomorrow.
The LAA mod approval process is quite resource limited and there can be a lot of down time waiting for responses.
If you are going on the back of a previously approved mod, it should be a lot quicker.
Fitting an encoder shouldn’t need much paperwork or LAA HQ involvement. It’s a common task that should take no more than a few hours including the post installation checks.
My experience of some maintenance people who offer a low price is that there is no AOG sense of urgency and your job will be done when there is no other, more lucrative, work in the pipeline. I once had a Gipsy overhaul for a chippy where nothing was done for over 6 months and we ended up retrieving the dismantled engine, going to Vintech and having a good engine 2 weeks later. Moral was pay the extra to get the job done properly and quickly; after all we were still hangaring and insuring an ornamental DH glider.
