Yes – same with builders etc. I always try hard to be around when they are working.
It’s human nature 
and it is worse in businesses which suffer from poor project management. This applies to most businesses that have a significant end user interface – because if you actually turn down a job (because you are too busy) the customer will go elsewhere and will probably never come back to you. When I asked one builder why does he not finish one job before starting the next one, he said if they did that they would go bust. Yet this builder (a sizeable firm) was not actually a bodger. So they do tricks like parking a mini digger on the next job’s site which makes it look like they are just about to start, and this keeps that customer “lubricated” for a few weeks, after which he will realise it was a trick and will start getting nasty again, so they will park a cement mixer there and get one guy started… etc.
You get the same in aircraft maintenance and especially a lot of avionics shops do this. One guy I know who used to work for one of UK’s two biggest shops said it was always like that… nothing happens and then in the last week or two it’s “panic stations”.
A lot of GA customers get seriously nasty in these situations (they rarely talk about it openly, obviously) which makes the firms hardened against threats (verbal or even legal) so getting nasty is unlikely to produce much of a result. And if you threaten them they will just close up. These firms are not strangers to getting into litigation, or very close.
So it’s better to just visit regularly and see how it is coming along.
It’s a difficult thing to get just right. My plane was grounded for about 2 months once, with a company which just left it because they could not be bothered (and because the A&P/IA they used was moonlighting from a full time job and didn’t turn up because he wanted to keep a low profile). It could not fly, and politically it was hard because I was hangared there, which is the absolutely worst over-the-barrel situation.
Well, this has prompted me to make a decision to take my Aerostar back from the broker in Alabama, because part of the problem is that I haven’t been able to visit the shop, and project manage as mentioned. I’ve been planeless for 6 months. Stockton is a 5hr car drive away one way, and I’d have to spend the night etc. With the Aerostar it’s a quick day visit. But one guy was ready to come buy it at the broker, he had check in hand and I had half accepted his lowball bid begrudgingly, but in the light of my need to have an aircraft to project manage the new one, I turned it down. The other option, to sell for lowball price, then pay 8% commission on that, then have to find some little Cessna 152 I could buy just to ride in, would be more expensive. I’ll still sell Aerostar, but at least if she’s here with me I can fly her in meantime.
I did send semi-nasty email telling the guru how disappointed in the progress I’ve been. But Peter is right, it’s a fine balance. If you’re too nasty, then it just seizes up. Plus I actually like they guy and his knowledge is invaluable. I just wish he would be organized and finish things. But hey, this pretty much true for any aviation related service, be it paint, interior, avionics, maintenance. They all take forever in my experience. It’s never been ready on the date they’ve initially said. Which is why smarter people than me wait for the right plane to come along – because they know not only will it be cheaper to get the panel you want already in there, but you’ll save months on the downtime it would have taken to install it.
AdamFrisch wrote:
but in the light of my need to have an aircraft to project manage the new one, I turned it down.
You’re not the first one. Airbus used a Boeing 337 Stratomaster derived Super Guppy for the logistics to build their first planes.
Here’s a short video of the takeoff from Montgomery Field in San Diego. Measured it on Google and it was about a 2000ft takeoff roll.
Just spoke to Stan yesterday as he’d found some old 680V manuals when he was clearing out the hangar that he wanted to send to me.
But that wasn’t the interesting part.
He’d taken his bird to a engine shop in Arkansas to figure out a problem he’d had with his power gauges. In any case, shop had done a full Lebow (sp?) test run and found out that they’d put the wrong NTS sensor on it as well as some sort of early temp sensor that was not kosher, making him run it in reality well below max temp. And like magic, he’d picked up another 120hp aside! That’s huge. He used to cruise along at 240-245kts and now his 681 does 260kts all day long. That’s pretty cool.
