I agree with Peter that you should be careful to rent out your plane to a school. Whether they shag it or not, the resale value of the aircraft suffers extra when a future buyer hears that it’s been used for training. Plus your aircraft will be down for maintenance regularly, scheduled and non-scheduled, which may interfere with your own use.
3000 indeed seems a lot for the CAMO service, but do find out what they do for that money. Usually what a CAMO does is to keep track of what maintenance needs to be done at which point in time, according to the approved maintenance program and any Mandatory Service Bulletins that pop up. They also take care of any updates to the maintenance manuals as directed by the manufacturer, Diamond. And take care of Airworthiness Review Certificates. I guess that 1500 should do for that kind of work.
As you may be aware, new maintenance rules are being introduced, and for ELA-2 aircraft (DA42) they are expected to be in place by the end of this year. AFAIUI no need to have a CAMO for Non-Commercial Ops (flight training is NCO). And you can write your own maintenance program, provided it conforms to certain minimum standards (MIP, Minimum Inspection Program), and provided it covers all ‘Airworthiness Limitations’ in the mnf Maintenance Manual and in any Mandatory SB’s. As an example, the engine TBR is not an Airworthiness Limitation, just a ‘strong recommendation’ by the manufacturer to throw them away after x hours. Especially in a twin you may want to disregard that recommendation and keep flying them :) In conclusion: investing some time in getting yourself up to speed with (various of the) above tasks and the ins and outs of what kind of maintenance really needs to be done is going to save you money, both in terms of CAMO expenses and in the actual maintenance tasks.
Insurance: Rough numbers: 1500 for third party insurance, hull insurance: 1.5% of agreed value. So total would be 6000 for a 300k aircraft. But usually that goes up if the aircraft is used for training.
provided it conforms to certain minimum standards (MIP, Minimum Inspection Program), and provided it covers all ‘Airworthiness Limitations’ in the mnf Maintenance Manual and in any Mandatory SB’s.
I don’t think compliance with "mandatory "SBs (as per the manufacturer) is needed in a self-declared maintenance program.
1.5% for hull insurance is too high.
Peter wrote:
You don’t need to pay 3k to somebody to keep track of what needs doing
Their might be the need to setup a maintenance program and a cardex, this might be included as well, and can be quite time consuming. Therefore it is needed to know what kind of work is done by the CAMO for that amount.
Just been watching some of Mike Busch’s videos and this great one on doing prebuys
has a comment of his under the video:
I thought this was highly relevant to so many similar discussions we have had here, on the likelihood of internal engine corrosion.
It’s a brilliant video anyway. Super comments especially around 22:00 on using somebody independent.
