Ultralight maintenance

[Guest bazmay]

What I'm about to post here may raise the hackles on the necks of some but I believe it should be discussed. The topic? Maintenance.

 

There are a great many flyers out there that have changed over to RAA licences not only due to medical reasons but also to allow them to own and maintain their own aircraft unlike GA where it is expensive to own and have your aircraft maintained by a LAME.

 

The problem I can see arising in the future is that not all pilots are mechanically minded and the aircraft are becoming more and more sophisticated which worries me as the standard of maintenance on some aircraft will be of poor quality as they get older.

 

Perhaps we should follow the USA and introduce a " Repairmans' Certificate" which you gain by attending a short course on maintaining an aircraft. Personally, I believe this should apply to all owners who wish to maintain their own aircraft whether they built the aircraft or not.

 

An option would be to have a Level 2 perform your maintenance if you didn't want to do the course.

 

I would be very interested to hear what others think and if you want to throw rocks at me, thats O.K. too.

 

Baz

 

 

[hihosland]

Baz

 

I do agree with you here and would be happy with a repairman's certificate that is restricted to one particular type or even individual aircraft.

 

.

 

There is also the issue of purchasing an experimental aircraft that has in the past been been maintained by the builder but in the hands of the new owner must be maintained by a LAME ( if it remains on the VH register) .

 

I believe there is a case for the issuing of a repairman's certificate in the name of the new owner and restricted to that particular aircraft. Subject to completion of an appropriate training schedule

 

dem's my thoughts

 

Davidh

 

 

[old man emu]

I do not own my own plane yet, but would like to as soon as possible. My main concern is the maintenance of the a/c and if I can do it or not,

for I am not all that mechanically minded.

 

I would LOVE to do a course that would teach me the basics of maintaining my a/c, I would be definitely FOR IT. Anything that makes the industry safer, can only be a good thing!

Chris,

 

You would be the type of person for whom some sort of basic maintenance course would be extremely valuable. I say this on the basis of the words I highlighted in the quote.

 

It makes me wonder how effective a person's pre-flight is if they don't have the mechanical knowledge to spot what is out of the ordinary, and to be able to make the correct judgement of whether or not what is odd is a minor or major thing.

 

I don't think the average owner/pilot needs to be able to pull down and rebuild his motor, but should be capable of doing plugs and filters AND knowing how tighten them correctly and lockwire what has to be lock wired.

 

The same bod (politically correct term for bloke/sheila) should understand the plumbing for the pressure instruments so they don't blow them apart with high pressure air when clearing pitot blockages.

 

A course as suggested should encourage bods to know what the limits of their capabilities are and to have the courage to stop when those limits are reached and pass on the problem to a higher qualified person.

 

Old Man Emu

 

 

[Admin]

I'm a chicken - I won't touch anything on my aircraft and always get a LAME to do it - that way if I have a problem I can always blame someone else ;)

 

 

[old man emu]

Sorry, Chris. I did not mean to belittle you.

 

As in all things, there are degrees of mechanical mindedness. I misjudged your skill level.

 

I thought the idea of the suggested course was to teach people what was correct, and if something did not look correct, to give them the skill to decide whether a repair was needed immediately or could be put off, and allow them to decide if the repair was within their capabilities or not.

 

Old Man Emu

 

 

[Guest bazmay]

I'm glad this thread has raised some discussion. I am not for one minute suggesting that an owner would overhaul an engine without expert asssitance. It's more along the lines of things like how to check control cable tensions, inspect fuel lines, nuts for correct torque and all the other things that are done during the annual inspection. For instance how often have you seen swaged ends of cables with plastic covering ( looks nice, but a recipe for disaster ) on aircraft using cables as structual strength ?

 

What is the correct torque for spark plugs into alloy heads? What is the correct tension on control cables? Any pilot or owner is capable of doing stuff like oil changes, greasing pivot points, adjusting brakes and changing tyres and I'm not suggesting they should stop doing these things but the annual inspection is another thing altogether

 

I am pretty good with aluminium aircraft and not too bad with glass but I would never take on testing fabric or timber aircraft simply because I don't know enough. My message was that in time, some aircraft will become dangerous. Most owners are very sensible and know their limitations but some need to be protected from themselves.

 

Baz

 

 

[BigPete]

Well I recon that if you can learn to fly, you can certainly learn to change oil, plugs, filters and torque down a few bolts.

 

I think a maitenance certificate would be a good thing.

 

regards

 

 

[TechMan]

Interesting feedback and comments so far. As it is, there is a serious lack of education availability in the maintenance field for RA-Aus pilots, and yes I do agree that distinctions should be introduced. Someone with expert knowledge on rag and tube aircraft should not be signing out a composite beast if they know nothing about the material.

 

A basic airworthiness course with the GFA, which mainly gets you a replacement of components rating on the type of aircraft you worked on, is 10 solid days! And that is from 9am to 9pm every day.

 

I have tried to get TAFE to respond to the maintenance course that they have come up with and set some dates but don't receive any replies back.

 

The LSA repairmans course is being looked into, though once again it will come down to who is actually going to man the show and teach?

 

Something needs to happen, though how we tackle it is still the difficult bit.

 

Chris

 

 

[Yenn]

Bazmay. You haven't raised my hackles, but I have been around for long enough to know that any new regulations are not necessarily good for us.It may be a good idea, but in every walk of life there are people coming up with good ideas to make life safer and they nearly all reduce our freedom or cost us money, or even worse both.

 

Do we have any records to show how often poorly carried out maintenance is causing accidents. I know that RAAus require advice of all accidents or defects, so this data must be available, unless of course people are not complying. In which case would they comply with new regs.

 

 

[Thruster87]

A rather important note needs to be asked where do all these up and coming LAMEs' get calibrated testing equipment eg.Torque wrench? It takes a 4 yr apprenticeship just to do the basic Aircraft trade cert.and then you begin to learn the finer points after that.

 

 

[old man emu]

Where I work, the calibrated torque wrenches and other testing equipment that needs to be calibrated all belong to the business. I'll have a look tomorrow who does the calibrations, but I know they are due again in November 2007, and they weren't done last November, so the calibration certificates must last for at least 2 years.

 

Yep, 4 years to complete the trade certificate, then a lifetime of learning the finer details. Damn aircraft manufacturers keep moving the goal posts.

 

Old Man Emu

 

 

[pylon500]

This could turn into a complete can of worms if allowed to follow a natural course, just like it did in GA.

 

Although naive, when I first came across ultralights in the 80's, I was an aircraft technician in the RAAF and flying high performance sailplanes.

 

I was initially amazed that these people were still alive looking atthe machines they were flying.

 

It did however prove to me just what could fly, and I realised that most of these people had built their own machines, thereby learning a great deal about aircraft.

 

I also got the opinion that to be involved with ultralights, you should have to build it first.

 

I now realise that many people have the skills to operate things without having to be able to overhaul it as well, I'm using my computer now, and barely know how to plug it in!!

 

So, before we go off and reinvent GA, and all it's problems, we need to study just what is needed in the ultralight community with regards to maintaining our aircraft.

 

Those that just want to fly and then pay someone to maintain their plane, that's OK if they can afford it.

 

Those that are willing to learn how to maintain their own craft, should be able to do so via a range of means, that then only requires some form of approval or recognition of said training to allow them to take the responsibility of doing their own work.

 

I see this first stage of maintaining as being between the pilot certificate authorization (L-1), and L-2.

 

While it would be good to have some large organization like TAFE or similar run courses to achieve this status, or Level 2 or any other levels to come, trhis has been tried before and died due to lack of numbers to be viable for said training organization.

 

A concept I have thought of is really an 'apprentice' style of training, but done in the original ideal of an apprentice;

 

'A person learning under the tutalige of an experienced person'

 

I can see this type of system working from a Club Member point of view, we have around 40 odd members (well, some are a bit odd?!) with around 4 L-2's.

 

We do most of our own maintenance and often involve other club members in the work.

 

As many of the L-2's around are also instructors, they are in a position to teach (at least what they know) to student/apprentices, who could then keep log books of their training and eventually rely on a recommendation from this (and/or other) instructor for approaval to become a 'maintainer' or 'repairman'.

 

Type endorsements could be added as they progress to eventually end up as an L-2 instructor themselves one day.

 

This may all seem a slow process, but it avoids the need to write courses, find students, supply workshops and create tests, it would also be a lot cheaper than going to tech.

 

This would also encourage membership in clubs and help build our movements cohesiveness.

 

I know this concept needs a lot of 'debugging', but I think we have enough paid and volunteer maintainers now to keep us running till this got underway?

 

It's late!, but in a further rant, I want to know why we can't go back to the 'early' gliding days where clubs could build their trainers instead of having to buy off the shelf?

 

I can hear the gasps, but think about it, any club with sufficient membership to think they could build their own machine would also have enough knowhow and manpower within the club to make it work.

 

The added bonus would be that the members involved in the actual building would both learn and become elidgible to get the above maintainer's ticket.

 

Arthur

 

 

[barandbrew]

Well said Arthur

 

The only reason I am able to fly and own my own aircraft is the opperating costs are low because I can do most of the maintaince myself.

 

When I first started flying RAA I was also concerned the maintance could be done by "UNQUALIFIED" people however after assisting in three or four 100hr services I was confident ( and was told by the GA LAME concerned) that I had the ability to do these myself.

 

Bring in GA maintaince ,more regulations, more restrictions and we may as well all join GA.

 

I know the RAA has to evolve but lets not evolve into GA.

 

John

 

 

[Guest bazmay]

The thread of this topic proves the old saying that if enough people respond the original thought is lost.

 

God forbid we should go the way of GA. The original concern was that with time many aircraft will be poorly maintained if we do nothing about training for maintenance. John's comments about doing a few 100hr services with a LAME are very valid. You would learn enough from that and asking questions to do your own.

 

Perhaps the aircraft manufacturers or importers could offer a short maintenance course to any owner ( whether second hand or new ) on a cost only recovery basis, even if it was offered once a year. I would hate to see the maintenance taken away from the owner but if something was offered by the manufacturers or importers, owners might take it up ( not mandatory, ) which would be a good thing.

 

great to see so much discussion on this and obviously I'm not the only one thinking about it.

 

Baz

 

 

[facthunter]

Owner maintenance.

 

Self education is part of the original concept of our movement. eg The 51% rule..although this has a lot to do with liability.

 

If a pilot built the A/C he should know quite a lot about it, otherwise he should not have built it. He is certainly familiar with the layout.

 

Since it is the pilots neck that is involved he/she is highly motivated to do the inspection/maintenance correctly,& check up on the correct procedures. (this area may need a bit of looking at,ON THE INFORMATION SIDE)

 

There are a wide variety of constructional techniques/materials employed & I doubt if there are many (if any) persons who would be across the whole spectrum,& if he was, his knowledge would have to be subjected to continual updating to be effective.

 

Owners are not under time pressures when performing maintenance (unless they are self imposed), and can do a lot of double checking, without feeling that they are wasting time. If they are unsure of something that they have discovered, they can (& should) check with someone who can clarify the procedure for them before proceding.

 

Many LAME's have knowledge to an extent which the owner/pilot will never approach, but this does not guarantee absolute safety, or competency in some areas eg. 2-stroke engines.. The LAME may only work on RAAus type aircraft occasionally & regard them with distain.

 

Most of the rectification that is required on all aircraft to make them safer is only as a result of failure in service, or part failure detected by inspection (If you want to get your grey matter churning go to the CASA website & look over the bit on Aero Commander wing failures. N......