Day dreaming about airplanes.

[Slick Goodlin]

The first AME I called told me no one would ever inspect a Champ and basically blew me off.

That was the attitude I got from every shopI called to get a safety done on my Model T. Then I found out the president of the local hot rod club works at Canadian Tire doing safeties and he loved the thing, signed it off no problem.

I guess the moral is that it takes some looking to find someone with enough understanding and confidence to actually look at the unusual stuff.

[TwinOtterFan]

Now that you mention it I had the same problem with my '77 Cj and it's not even that old.

[Liquid_Charlie]

NWO has a few old timer wrenches left but they are dying off. Unfortunately the new generation engineer does not have the skills to deal with "old" aircraft. Look for a shop that will maintain a norseman and go from there - damn hard to do.

[Colonel]

The first AME I called told me no one would ever inspect a Champ

A lot of the kids these days don't know anything about tube & fabric or wooden
structure. And, they've already got enough work so why would they bother with
the antique stuff?

Champ is easy. Look at the wooden wing spars for cracks, and corrosion in
the lower longerons. I could write a book about fabric ...

PS Red is a cool guy. Met him in the 90's at Carp, I think. You need a guy with
some grey hair, if you want to look at tube & fabric.

PPS Fabric Pro Tip: always carry a roll of that red "Tuck Tape" used for vapor
barrier. When you are travelling and you blow off a chunk of paint, tape it over
with the red stuff. It will get you home, so you can repair it. MUCH better than
duct tape IMHO which you can use in a pinch like so:

Before:



After:



Eat your heart out, Red Green!

For a "repair" like that, check the aviation department of Canadian Tire and get
some "Gorilla Tape". Better glue.

[Colonel]

re: fabric

If I could teach you ONE THING about fabric, it would be to NOT MIX PROCESSES
unless you have a PhD in Chemistry and know what the fuck you are doing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Wittman

and his wife died because of that. He should have known better.

The cause was improper installation of the wing fabric, causing it to debond, resulting in aileron/wing flutter.

[TwinOtterFan]

Red is good people, definitely the type of AME I want to do pre buy inspection and follow up work if possible.

I have done a fair amount of reading about the fabric on aircraft and I have seen that mentioned many many times. Never mix processes. I would never try and guess at that. I'll leave I to the chemist who design it.

We shall see where I end up and what I end up time building in. I found an Avid Flyer MK IV that is AM registered instead of AULA. I still find it odd that I can time build in one but not the other just because of the registration.

[Colonel]

I still find it odd that I can time build in one but not the other just because of the registration.

There's an essential aviation meta-lesson in there.

Don't expect the paper to make sense.

When I was teaching new instructors, sometimes they would bristle at the
insanity of the paper that they had to learn, and abide by, and worse, teach
to the unsuspecting students. My motto for them was,

"We eat this sh1t with a spoon!"

Embrace the madness. Don't fight it. Anyone that's run an FTU or AMO will
smile, nod and understand. Or leave the country.

My favorite TC Inspector - really, he was a great guy - told me that doing a
good job in the government was like pissing yourself in a dark suit. It felt
good at first, but then you realized that no one noticed.

[TwinOtterFan]

Reminds me of the military, so much endless obsolete paperwork full of policy that make no sense at all...

But this particular policy is a win for me, I can build time with an aircraft that is cheaper to own and operate. The only thing I'm not keen on is that most of them are running the Rotax 582 which to my understanding does not have redundant ignitions. I have seen a few with O-200. But they are not as common.

The info on the 582 seems mixed. I have seen some pilots bash them and seen some other pilots take them clear across the country multiple times without issue.

[Colonel]

Two-strokes are a different kind of animal than four strokes. The "Challenger" ultralight
guys love them, and have lots of experience with them.

If you are a knowledgeable and skilled two-stroke mechanic, the 582 would probably
be a fine choice. I would not recommend one, to a pilot that didn't know the difference
between a two stroke and a four stroke engine.

I personally would prefer the O-200 but it's not perfect, either. I remember a former
student of mine had an exhaust valve stick on a buck fifty and landed on an artillery
range. When they were shooting. She ignored my advice to run car gas, because
that poor O-200 was never designed to run on 100LL, and you can't get 80/87 any
more.

It gets better. Heading home, she was aiming for Brampton but never learned to
use the nav equipment in the buck fifty. Hazy day in Toronto, and she was getting
vectored by the guy running the unicom at Brampton, and landed instead at Pearson,
on a runway under construction, running her tires over the heads of the workers who
were on the runway at the time.

I am not making this up. She was a great musician, but maybe not the best pilot.

[Big Pistons Forever]

Re home builds

Personally I won’t fly in one where I do not personally know the builder or have the builder vouched for by a (very small) group of guys I trust.

That being said the nicest airplane I have ever seen was a Glass Air grand champion at Oshkosh. The builder was an over the top OCD perfectionist. I got to talking to one of his buddies and he said the components of 2.5 other airplanes were built from the cast offs of this guy. He would build a part and if it was not absolutely perfect he would sell it and start over. There were fights over who got his cast off’s

On the other hand I saw another home built at Oshkosh that was so bad I was amazed that it made it all the way from Florida without crashing.

Finally TO fan, I don’t know how big you are but make sure you can fit comfortably in the airplane. Some home builts are tiny. I looked at buying a quite nice Thorp T18 once but decided its cockpit was just too cramped.