Well, that is enough for me. No more Pace events.

Your link though just reinforced my belief that working for the government
is stupid. I have witnessed too many things like that by little mafias that
resulted in ruined lives. If you work with scum in the private world, you
take your 401k and leave. In the government, they take your retirement,
through in you jail, and worse.



"Michael" wrote in message
om...
"Dude" wrote
Well, tell us the details. Inquiring mids want to know.

The details were as follows:

The airplane was equipped with an autopilot not installed at the
factory. It was a factory option for that make and model. The
inspector decided that this particular model of autopilot was not
correct for that serial number of airplane - the idea being if it was
not offered prior to a given serial number, it was not approved for
any earlier serial number, even if there was actually no change to the
airplane. That made the autopilot installation (which had been in the
plane for years and worked fine) unapproved, and the plane unsafe to
fly since the flight controls had been tampered with. The fact that a
form 337 had been filed for the installation, reviewed and accepted by
the FAA, and on file at OK City cut no ice. The plane was grounded.

Neither the aircraft manufacturer nor the original manufacturer of the
autopilot (the aircraft manufacturer never actually manufactured any
autopilots; they were private label products of other manufacturers)
were interested in offering any support for a field approval, and the
position of the FSDO was that no field approval would be granted. The
FSDO suggested the owner get an STC.

The owner was going to remove the autopilot, but an acquaintance
directed him towards a shop in another FSDO that would arrange for a
field approval. Basically, a local IA had a FSDO guy in his pocket.
The owner flew the plane away (without insurance coverage, since it
was still techinically grounded - on paper it was trucked over) and
paid to have the field approval and relevant logbook entries
generated. The whole adventure cost him several hundred dollars and
weeks of downtime.

The interesting part of this is that neither FAA inspector actually
looked at the installation to determine if it was sound (which it was)
- everything was based solely on the paperwork. The floor panels
covering the servo were never removed. One (presumably honest)
inspector grounded the plane, and another (presumably crooked) got it
flying again, but both were strictly paperwork exercises.

In case you belive these are isolated events and the FAA is basically
a sound organization, check this out:

http://www.avweb.com/pdf/brinell_report.pdf

Michael