Also, no parts traceability requirement – new or used parts installed with no paperwork, no issue.
Enough reasons not to buy a N-reg. aircraft… 
It isn’t quite that way.
An FAA A&P (the individual) has the authority to determine the airworthiness of a part. In the European system, the individual is generally not trusted, and the system relies on organisational approvals, whereby a paper form is generated and that certifies the part is genuine. Of course the part itself could be garbage, in either system, for any part which doesn’t have a serial number stamped on it (basically some 99% of aircraft parts) but the European system enables the buck to be passed, with nobody being personally responsible, whereas if an FAA A&P installs a part which came without paperwork, and there is a problem afterwards, he is personally responsible for his determination.
In the EASA Form 1 system there are various scams – many previous threads which generated a huge amount of heat and quite unwarranted personal attacks by people in the system – e.g. a non 145 outfit can effectively rent a 145 company’s Form 1 generation system. I’ve had a few of those and for sure the issuing 145 never went within 1000nm of the said item. We used to have a guy here who was heavily invested in this system (avionics repairs and installation) and he used to slag me off for mentioning this “scheme” and then he emailed me saying that’s exactly what he does himself, because he cannot afford his own 145!!!! He knew that I, being decent, would not publish an email in my defence, so he could just take the p1ss like this.
The principal EASA-reg maintenance (parts) cost inflator is that you must have either an EASA Form 1, or an FAA 8130-3 and then the part must be brand new. This is a nice restrictive practice, obviously, designed to feed business to organisations who pay fees for their approvals to their national CAA. You get this in almost every sphere of human activity… even nutritionists pay an annual fee to their “governing body” which licenses them. It rules you out of the huge market in used avionics in the US, etc. In contrast, the FAA accepts an EASA Form 1 for both new and used parts.
However, how many expensive parts you need depends on how old the plane is and on its history. Buy some old heap and you are in for loads of airframe parts which cost a fortune, always. I know of a C150 on which the Annuals came to 8k-10k, every year! That is the big lesson: but a cheap old heap and you pay, pay and pay. Buy quality and you should need very few parts.
That’s the longer answer…
Peter wrote:
In the EASA Form 1 system there are various scams e.g. a non 145 outfit can effectively rent a 145 company’s Form 1 generation system
People are endlessly resourceful and this is helpful, except for the added cost. The paper is in any case meaningless unless it’s a helicopter etc with life limited, serialized parts… as per your detailed description. The only issue here is the lack of direct accountability to the resourceful person.
Peter wrote:
In contrast, the FAA accepts an EASA Form 1 for both new and used parts
Except that that it isn’t typically required, because when applicable an FAA A&P will make an logbook entry noting that “used, serviceable” parts were installed, thereby making their prior history irrelevant, and removing any requirement for additional paperwork. Same for new parts except for the logbook entry wording.
Peter wrote:
Buy some old heap and you are in for loads of airframe parts which cost a fortune, always.
Not always. For example, in 1976 a friend of mine and his dad (an A&P) bought him his first plane, a 1946 Luscombe that the seller had pancaked in on landing, collapsing the gear and damaging the fuselage. It had been left to rot behind the hangar for a couple of years and was priced in hundreds, not thousands. The seller was apparently surprised when they flew it out after two days. He’s been flying it ever since, for 43 years and several thousand hours and has just completed the third rebuild, this time necessitated by a friend wrecking it in a crosswind landing 400 miles away, and it being U-Hauled home in pieces. Parts in every case were fabricated from raw materials (‘owner produced’) or used and almost free: 6000 Luscombes were built by the factory, only a fraction still fly but the parts are never thrown away. They instead stay in the rafters of hangars, waiting.
So no, parts and repairs are not always expensive even for an abused, crashed plane. In my friends case it didn’t hurt that his A&P dad was at the time employed in his real job designing repair schemes for Boeing, but for his son he worked for free 
They (and obviously many others like them) have continued with similar projects ever since. The father passed on at 90 a few years ago leaving the son (now also an A&P, but with a different real job) to figure out what to do with five planes… Job one was to rebuild a J-3 that had been disassembled for decades, using a set of wings bought from Barnstormers and then along with the rest rebuilt into a nice plane. It was subsequently sold for $28K and flown to a new home 1500 miles away.
Assuming FAA registration, I think the main issue with rebuilding and repairing old certified aircraft in Europe is finding parts in a place that does not have a history of thousands of privately owned light aircraft and engines being flown and retired. Raw materials are obviously not a problem. The internet helps a lot in the regard, along with for example the Barnstormers website – which incidentally employed my Luscombe friend’s wife part time doing data entry as it was first starting.
Silvaire wrote:
No maintenance plan
No ARC renewals ever
Many PMA and STC parts
No contact with CAA
A&P IAs are friendly individuals, typically fair, take untaxed cash payment and do not require any facility or organizational affiliation for anything.
5 reasons not to buy a N-reg can of worms.
Silvaire wrote:
My 21 year European based motorcycle is also US registered, for similar reasons: no periodic government inspections of any kind, no limitation to ‘approved’ tires, no approval required for any modifications etc.
If you followed that regime for a motorbike, you were doing it wrong.
Silvaire wrote:
For example, in 1976 a friend of mine and his dad (an A&P) bought him his first plane
I was also looking a lot cuter in 1976, what does it have to do with my 2019 state of affairs?
The facts are the FAA maintenance system is as safe, some day statistically safer, than systems used elsewhere on the relatively small GA fleet that operates on different registers. It was well developed by 1976 and functions well today – for the same reasons then and now. All of what I described can be done now, anywhere, on FAA register as per the two recent examples I provided. I think there is in most cases no reason to get mixed up with other registers anywhere in the world, regardless of your nationality or residence, unless it’s a certified aircraft with no FAA TC (e.g. Robin or Bölkow 207 etc) that is being operated outside the US (within the US, FAA Experimental Exhibition would work)
I have BTW never failed to reach my destination on any motorcycle ride I’ve ever taken worldwide since 1974, for any reason mechanical or accidental, over about 500,000 miles or 800,000 KM. My maintenance process seems to be working well for me… and I know exactly what I’m doing (intentionally) ‘wrong’ – whatever that was intended to mean. Regardless, I have probably 20-25 years of riding left in Europe and elsewhere and will try to continue the same way, and have as much fun, as I have over the last 45 years of riding and maintaining.
The more one knows the less one pays for the same thing and the lower one’s blood pressure is
The FAA community has the world’s best safety record.
Not for everyone, of course, due to European politics.
Arne wrote:
If you followed that regime for a motorbike, you were doing it wrong.
This seems to sort of sum up how I seem to find the difference between N reg aircraft owners and EASA types (again very much a generalisation and there will be exceptions). The idea that an individual owner of something may know how to look after it properly without heavy oversight from big brother.
EASA types seem to think that more paperwork and oversight especially by large companies or government is much safer.
N Reg individuals seem to be more interested in looking after their aeroplane properly and doing what is needed to fly safely. They seem generally to take more interest in them and the maintenance.
Certainly at the moment I would not consider anything other than N reg.
