On Friday, June 29, 2018 at 2:53:12 PM UTC-6, Martin Gregorie wrote:
On Fri, 29 Jun 2018 13:40:41 -0700, Bruce Hoult wrote:

On Friday, June 29, 2018 at 8:41:51 AM UTC-7, Martin Gregorie wrote:
On Fri, 29 Jun 2018 08:33:55 -0600, Dan Marotta wrote:

Things may have changed since I last flew in Australia back in the
mid-80s.Â* I was surprised when I said I would preflight my ship and
was told that I was not authorized to do that!Â* Only the "engineer"
could perform a preflight.Â* I've heard similar about the BGA, though
I've never been there.Â* And I'd suspect that process was only meant
for club,
not private, ships.

This applies to all gliders in BGA clubs. All have DI books which are
signed every day the glider is flown to show that known deferrable
faults have been fixed or deferred and visual inspection and positive
control checks have been done and the glider is passed as serviceable.
My Libelle is currently pegged down in its covers and will still get
the same preflight checks before its next flight that it got when it
was rigged yesterday.

Only an engineer can preflight a BGA glider? Seriously?

I was answering the last line of Dan's comment. All BGA gliders carry a DI
book which has an entry for each day a glider was flown that records the
results of inspection and PCCs and the signature of the person doing it.
Any solo pilot can carry out the DI.

In New Zealand it is normal practice for any solo-rated pilot to perform
the DI and sign the DI book.

In general there's a very close correspondance between BGA practised and
those in NZ, though the BGA's approach has gotten a little more
bureaucratic since EASA was invented. Read that as more paper rather than
anything else and, speaking as a private owner, I think the main changes
have been to annual inspections and workshop practises rather than day to
day operations.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

I found the DI Book to quit a good idea and I still have one in the pocket of my Kestrel. FWIW, I did find an unsecured castellated nut on a primary flight control on the club's K-7 during one morning pre-flight (1978). As I had previously pre-flighted the K-7, it was always a bit of a mystery to me how it came to be missing. I've always presumed someone had done an annual and missed replacing it. Otherwise, only minor notes made in the books of the various BGA reg gliders I've flown.

Frank Whiteley