The actual guidance (as opposed to the EAA press release) indicates that the policy is applicable to aircraft operated on a FAA type certificate issued before 1980, with the individual aircraft being built anytime. Given that the policy is supposedly directed at vintage aircraft, this being downplayed in the EAA press release is probably intentional, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth etc.
Reading the FAA guidance this appears procedurally to be the rough equivalent of an FAA FSDO Field Approval processed without DER involvement or what is termed Acceptable Data by FAA. That was a fairly common practice in the past, before the technical level of FSDO personnel sank to the point where it was no longer regular practice unless you stumbled across the right FSDO guy. Now the FAA solution is to shift the technical approval to the installing mechanic and aircraft certification office (ACO), which I think is probably OK for the limited and non-critical component scope covered.
I’ve changed the thread title.
