"certified' parts

Yesterday, I attended a FAA safety seminar where the topic was
maintenance issues. I walked away with a few surprising nuggets of
information. These issues have been discussed here in the past and some
of the information posited here disagreed with what the FAA said. So, I
thought it would be useful to list them here.

Now, before everyone flames me and tells me I'm an idiot, these are not
my opinions, they are the opinions of the Safety Inspectors at
Washington - Dulles FSDO.

Manuals:
You must have current service manuals to do any (including preventative)
maintenance on your bird. That includes all service letters. A few
pilots grumbled that certain companies will not send the service letters
to the owners. The Safety Inspector said that didn't matter. Missing a
service letter makes the manual out of date and unusable.

Parts:
You must buy the parts from an aviation source. Someone brought up that
landing lights can be bought cheaper at automotive supply stores than
from aviation outlets at a fraction of the cost. The FAA wouldn't hear
of it. It does not matter if the part is made by the same company with
an identical part number, if you didn't get it from an aviation source,
then it is not an airworthy part. The Safety Inspector gave three
examples, the light bulb above, an alternator belt, and an air filter.

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.

The air filter from some airplanes also fit some automobiles. Same Fram
part number. The Inspector used this as a uncertainty example. Are the
parts exactly the same, who knows?

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.

Logs:

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.

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 *
************************************************** ***********************

Jimmy B. wrote:

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.

You must be thinking panel mounted... There are lots of time line rules
in regards to IFR panels...

Darrel Toepfer wrote:
Jimmy B. wrote:

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.


You must be thinking panel mounted... There are lots of time line rules
in regards to IFR panels...
Yeah, sorry. This referred to panel mounted units only.

It was kind of interesting because the same question came up in the
seminar. Someone asked about a hand held GPS running on its own
batteries. Then about a hand held running off of the cigarette lighter.
Then about being Velcro mounted, Then bracket mounted. It was kind of
funny.

Jimmy B. wrote:
: It was kind of interesting because the same question came up in the
: seminar. Someone asked about a hand held GPS running on its own
: batteries. Then about a hand held running off of the cigarette lighter.
: Then about being Velcro mounted, Then bracket mounted. It was kind of
: funny.

See my previous rant about the rules sounding airtight.... until you try to
nail one down. Then you see that it's often open to interpretation.

-Cory

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

You must buy the parts from an aviation source. Someone
brought up that landing lights can be bought cheaper at
automotive supply stores than from aviation outlets at a
fraction of the cost. The FAA wouldn't hear of it.

Indeed. That's why the FAA doesn't hear of it, even though everyone
does it.

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.

An FAA guy has to say this. He can't go around saying that you don't
have to follow the rules. However, I'd be very surprised if you can
find anyone who has been busted for not logging database updates on
their GPS. (Someone will now pop-up and repeat the nonsence about how
not logging it will void your insurance...)

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.

However, you don't have to update your database to be legal. This is per a
briefing we received from the FAA last month.

What is true is that you must be able to verify the latitude and longitude
of any waypoint you use for navigation.

So, if you checked the latitude and longitude of your GPS nav fixes by hand
before flight, even if your database is out of date, you can still use the
GPS for navigation.

Paul Missman

Paul Missman wrote:
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.


However, you don't have to update your database to be legal. This is per a
briefing we received from the FAA last month.

What is true is that you must be able to verify the latitude and longitude
of any waypoint you use for navigation.

So, if you checked the latitude and longitude of your GPS nav fixes by hand
before flight, even if your database is out of date, you can still use the
GPS for navigation.

Some supplemental POHs require a current database for conducting a GPS
instrument approach. I'd be very surprised if that weren't considered a
violation of the airworthiness certificate if your supplemental POH has that
wording.

Maybe you intentionally made a distinction between approaches and "navigation"?

DGB

As Dave says, this depends on the GPS and the associated AFM
supplement.

ISTR that Garmin allows you to check the waypoints, whereas King does
not.

"Jimmy B." wrote in message
k.net...
Yesterday, I attended a FAA safety seminar where the topic was maintenance
issues. I walked away with a few surprising nuggets of information.
These issues have been discussed here in the past and some of the
information posited here disagreed with what the FAA said. So, I thought
it would be useful to list them here.

Now, before everyone flames me and tells me I'm an idiot, these are not my
opinions, they are the opinions of the Safety Inspectors at Washington -
Dulles FSDO.

Another in the list of excuses for mandating parts procurement from an
aviation supplier is the paper trail, a Fram filter from Autozone has no
paper trail to the source.

When confronting the FAA with the simple fact that anyone with a quality
printer can "create" a paper trail you'll be greeted with a shrug.