Two green, no red, one in the mirror....(long)

Ended up on a flight path perpendicular to the left of the departing

runway, about 3/4's of the way down it, just outside the airport
proper.

So he did successfully lift off the runway. In that case, the vis
isn't relevant anyway - once you're in flight, you are totally on
instruments. Now I could now go into a long discussion about how
people put insufficient emphasis on instrument departures relative to
instrument approaches and about how badly instrument departures are
taught (talk about thread drift) but my point stands - the accident you
are talking about had NOTHING to do with the screwy maintenance history
of the airplane, it was all about pilot (and instructor) proficiency.
And that conforms to both the Nall Report and my own observations.

Can't honestly say it had a
major impact on my existing inspection procedures/standards, however.


Why would it have any impact? Like the vast majority of accidents, it
had nothing to do with maintenance.

Perhaps my view is skewed because I live/work in a primarily rural
area. The aforementioned scenario is one that I personally witnessed
(FWIW, it was a 250 Comanche). You might be surprised how hard a
couple of farmers (I can say that without prejudice, I grew up on a
farm) can/will work to get an aircraft back in its hangar without
anybody finding out.

No harder than the owners of a flight school. I've seen a few
incidents (the kind where nobody gets hurt but the plane gets dinged up
- what you're describing) where the cause was clearly 100% maintenance
related, and where all the maintenance is being done by rated A&P's.
I've seen more than a few that were pure pilot error. The flight
school took heroic measures to keep the FAA from finding out either
way.

I recall once standing by the side of the runway with a fire
extinguisher as a Cherokee that had the left main gear fall off landed.
Nobody got hurt, and the plane was towed to the maintenance hangar
within MINUTES of touchdown. However, I saw exactly the same reaction
when a student suffered from a case of rectocranial inversion and
stopped flying the airplane when it touched down. The plane wound up
in the ditch. Once again - it was off to the maintenance hangar as
soon as they could get a truck to pull it out.

So what I'm trying to tell you is that the factor of underreporting of
non-fatal, non-injury accidents is no different for maintenance related
than for non-maintenance related, and no different for owner-maintained
than for A&P maintained. No matter how you slice it, maintenance
simply isn't a big factor in the accident picture.

Heh. Quite awhile ago, might have come across a Lake Turbo Renegade
with the factory-installed Stormscope antenna mounted on top of the
fuselage in line with the prop. Didn't work so hot.

You know, there are actually situations where a top mount is proper.
But this is one of those areas where all the aviation experience that
does not deal with sferics devices won't help a bit - I don't care how
many GPS or ADF or autopilot installations you have have done, you
still don't know squat about Stormscopes. On the other hand, if you've
ever had to qualify a device for CE emissions (or done many other sorts
of instrument development work) you know just what to do. My FIRST
Stormscope installation was perfect, and I didn't even need to get
anyone's advice. Just another example of how non-aviation experience
transfers. Good thing I didn't go to the radio shop to get it
installed...

Yup. As an example if every, and I do mean EVERY Aztec (owner-flown
or
commercial) that I've allegedly ever worked on has at some point in
it's life ended up with cracked tubular steel spar-to-main gear
attach
supports, and the two you've seen (assuming you were an Aztec guy)
haven't, does that mean that your two will never crack?

No, of course not - but this does me NO good if I don't own an Aztec.
On the other hand, every TComanche I am aware of eventually develops a
lazy green light due to cracking of the structural solder (sic!) in the
down-and-locked switch assembly. How does you knowledge of the Aztec
help here?

When you look at 'professional' versus owner maintenance, you have a
whole gamut of operators.

At the top of the professional scale, there is someone with years of
experience (like you) who brings a breadth of knowledge to the table.
He's going to do a better job than the average owner. But that's not a
fair comparison, because the top of the owner maintenance scale is
someone like me - a long-time owner who does essentially all the
maintenance, actually owns the proper publications, and makes it a
point to stay in touch with those who have type-specific experience
greater than his (or just different). He's not going to have the same
breadth of experience, but he's likely to have just as much (if not
more) depth on the particular make and model he owns. He also brings
something else to the table - related experience. You bettter believe
I didn't learn a damn thing about avionics by working on airplanes - I
learned what I needed to know in my day job.

To some extent this would be a moot point if the FAA wasn't so bad
about allowing owners to become A&P's. When an owner gets to the level
I'm describing, passing the written, oral, and practical tests is a
non-event for him. The hard part is getting the bureaucrat at the FSDO
to sign off.

The average owner doing maintenance probably isn't anything to write
home about, but neither is the average 'professional.'

And as for the bottom of the scale - well, the absolute worst
maintenance I've seen was on the flight line of a local school. This
is literally the "two dozen rotting hulks in the back, I'll fix one
when I need it" variety. They do about as much credit to the
professional community as the guy who hasn't had a medical or an annual
in a week and crashes due to contaminated fuel because the plane hasn't
moved in over a year does for the owner maintenance community.

Again, I still feel that our general opinions on GA maintenance are
probably a lot closer to identical that most of the people scanning
this thread realize.

Maybe. I think our positions are influenced by experience. I've seen
how common it is to bend an airplane (or even hurt the occupants) due
to pilot incompetence, and how rare it is to even bend the airplane due
to maintenance issues. You on the other hand see all these planes with
all these mechanical discrepancies and can't believe they're not
falling out of the sky. Well, I think they would fall out of the sky
eventually - but usually an incompetent pilot brings them down first.

I also feel that you have been lucky enuff to
spend your time in GA around a more-rounded "average" pilot base than

what I have.

Maybe it was luck - and maybe it was a matter of selection bias. I
find that on average, pilots who do their own maintenance are better
pilots than those who just drop the keys and checkbook off. Further, I
think only part of that has to do with doing the actual maintenance. A
huge part of it has to do with hanging around the airport, with other
pilots, where knowledge is shared and issues are discussed - sort of
like they are here.

If I've offended you in any way in the course of this discussion I
apologize, that was not my intention.

Nor was it the effect. I think it's been a good discussion.

Michael