10,000 Hail Mary's and a pox on mechanics

Just to give another prospective -

I'm an A&P with IA, Flight Engineer, pilot and ex-owner. I have been
working in the aviation industry since 1972. Many years ago, I used
to work on small aircraft and now I only fly them for fun. There are
reasons.

I can bet you dollars to donuts that Piper taped that duct on when
they built that bare minimum airplane 40 years ago. If they had built
it like a Gulfstream, it would be too heavy to fly. The tape got old
and worked its way off at the first bump. I might be wrong in this
case, but they didn't build them like real airplanes. They were built
like cars that had a useful life of less than ten years. Just ask the
manufacturer some time if you don't believe me. With the recent AD on
Cessna twins, they said that the 400 series aircraft were built for a
10 year life.

The type of mechanic you are looking for is working on Gulfstream's
etc because he is able to earn a living wage. I just placed an
excellent one at $110K per year. I can guarantee you a mechanic
earning $35K per year is just as good as a pilot earning the same.
Probably either new to the field or a looser that can't go anywhere
else.

The going shop rate in a large service center is $90 per hour. How
loud would you bitch because it showed $540 on your invoice for the 6
hours it took to re-connect that duct? "What?"" $540 just to hook up
a duct!!!!""I'm not paying that." Things unfortunately can get
damaged working on other repairs and someone has to pay. Will you?
This kind of thing doesn't happen much in large aircraft because we
pay for that "second set of eyes". Will you pay for the second
inspector required to catch everything? Will you pay for the second
inspector required to catch everything? Maybe -maybe not.

I love aviation and small aircraft, but most people I know that own
old aircraft can barely afford them and are not willing to pay the
bill to keep them in tip-top shape. Old machines require much more
maintenance than new ones. That's why the airlines throw them away
when they hit their Aging Aircraft Inspection Program. Where do you
and your airplane fit in that equation?

This is America and you get what you pay for. Third level maintenance
shops are like third level charter companies. It's the bottom of the
aviation barrel and where owner's of old POS Pipers and Cessnas go to
get their work done and has-been pilots go to fly. Was this work at a
quality factory shop or did you go there because of price?

There is a serious shortage of good maintenance people and it's
getting worse. In my business, pilots are a dime a dozen, but no so
for technicians. There has been a huge migration away from small
airplanes and into the large ones because people will go to where the
money is. The answer is not bitching to the crowd here, but to find a
good maintenance tech and paying him well. If you don't want to, or
can't pay for skill and experience, junk or sell the airplane. The
answer to the technician shortage is to pay them what they are worth.
If there were enough good ones, the bad ones would be working on your
car.

Your plane is over 30 years past its expected useful life. Do you
rely on a 1965 car for reliable transportation? I submit to you that
it's a credit to all the mechanics that have worked on your aircraft
for those 40 years, that you aren't drinking beer out of it.

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Your plane is over 30 years past its expected useful life. Do you
rely on a 1965 car for reliable transportation? I submit to you that
it's a credit to all the mechanics that have worked on your aircraft
for those 40 years, that you aren't drinking beer out of it.

Amen, Don.

As much as I bitch about the mechanics who don't test things after
maintenance, and break things while fixing other things, I still must tip my
hat to all the guys who, over the last 31 years, have kept my Pathfinder in
outstanding condition.

Of course, if you were to add up the amount of money spent maintaining and
upgrading the original airframe, it would be dozens (hundreds?) of times
over what the plane cost in the first place -- so all the previous owners
must get a nod, too.

I'm convinced that competent light aircraft mechanics do it because they
love doing it. (Although my A&P *does* own the biggest yacht on the lake...
;-)
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"