Jimmy B. wrote:
: I guess that the alternator belt part number you would get in a
: automotive store has fewer layers of material in it than the one
: approved for aviation. The belts were the same dimensions, but there
: was an extra layer in the aviation belt, but they both had the same part
: numbers.

I call bull**** on this one. A part number from one manufacturer is a part
number. If its a different part, it's got a different number. Now, if someone says a
Wicks P/N-XYZPQ is the same as an Autolite P/N-XYZPQ, then I might believe it.

: I was going to ask him how do we know that we're getting approved parts
: from aviation houses if the manufacturers use identical part numbers for
: aviation approved and non approved parts. But by the end of this
: discussion, he was getting kind of ticked by all the questions, so I
: took a pass.

Sound about right. The FAA rules/regs sound ominous, and are written in
"airtight" legaleaze. If you try to corner someone on the details, however, the final
interpretation is done by the specific person you ask. The "ultimate authority" is
the *specific FAA person* at *YOUR* FSDO you asked at the time. They may be
right/wrong, but they're the one that interprets something as "legal." An immediate
corollary of this is that as soon as there's a problem, *SOMEONE* will find something
wrong, and since it's their interprettation, you are wrong.

: All preventative maintenance must be logged, including updating the
: database on your GPS unit. So, if you have updated your GPS database
: and did not log it, you're not airworthy. This one caught a lot of pilots.

Just remember that there isn't a single solitary aircraft currently flying
that's actually airworthy. I don't care if it just rolled off the manufacturer's lot.
The guy who pumped fuel into it last didn't clip the grounding lug on the 100LL truck
to the "approved ground," thus performing an illegal servicing of the craft and
rendering it unairworthy.

Running around crying "the sky is falling," tends to be a debilitating
proposition WRT flying. It's *IMPOSSIBLE* to keep an aircraft airworthy, because the
actual laws are subject to individual FAA interpretation. The GPS update may seem a
bit crazy, but in the highly unlikely case that an improper update causes a crash and
ensuing investigation, it will becoming immediately very important. A few bits I try
to remember when talking about issues like this:

- "Hi! We're the FAA and we're not happy until you're not happy"
- "Hi! We're the FAA. If you don't have a problem, we won't have any problems, but
if you have a problem, we'll find a problem."

I take that to mean that be smart WRT certified parts. Don't go to Ace
Hardware for your propeller bolts, but at the same time you don't need to buy nitrogen
to fill your struts directly from Piper, either.

-Cory (this $h*t really irritates me as it's still slowly killing GA)


************************************************** ***********************
* Cory Papenfuss *
* Electrical Engineering candidate Ph.D. graduate student *
* Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University *
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