In reality, a well organised EASA shop will have a PC based system where they press a few buttons and it prints out about 200 pages of paper, the work pack and all, which gets filed. That’s what one shop I used used to do.
The actual work which gets performed on the aircraft may bear little relation to the work pack. The extent of it is subject to “negotiation”.
It’s like most implementations of ISO9000 
But to come back to the topic, if you have to use a company to look after your homebuilt, are they really going to work on it without generating at least some paperwork? They must do, even to protect themselves. No way will they do all the stuff “on the nod” / “off the books”. Maybe some of it. But let’s say they are told by the owner to put in a safety-critical part which came with no paperwork, they will IMHO be liable for it if the guy kills himself as a result. You can’t have a contract absolving you of a liability fro personal injury (Europe or USA). So, where is the saving?
By “significant work” I meant scheduled maintenance and upwards.
Silvaire wrote:
The issue of a mechanic having to process prodigious amounts of paperwork in association with working certified aircraft is largely solved by moving away from EASA controlled registers.
That’s a bold statement, as I found the FAA being much more paper-worshipping than EASA in some cases. The paperwork on a typical GA-Aircraft is’t that much.
I know some very good mechanics who won’t touch any experimental, because of liability and lack of procedures. They don’t trust the owners to trust them and they don’t trust the previous mechanic or builder not to impose a thread to their liabilities if they miss prior bad maintenance.
Am I missing the point here? Why are you asking what happens if you can’t do significant work on the aeroplane??
I don’t think the LAA differentiates between the builder and the subsequent owners. The whole point of the LAA is to encourage amateur construction and maintenance, and foster affordable flying.
Of course an Inspector is required to sign off the Permit, but most LAA aircraft I know about are maintained by their Owners under the supervision of an Inspector, who is an LAA member who does not charge much at all for his services. The LAA provide a generic maintenance programme.
This is an article about the advantages of the LAA regime.
This is a guide to LAA Ownership and Maintenance
I think the situation in the USA is different, as indeed it may be in countries other than the UK.
Neil wrote:
I think the situation in the USA is different, as indeed it may be in countries other than the UK.
There are currently much better countries to own and operate a homebuilt (than in the UK), e. g. The Netherlands, where you don’t need an organisation between the CAA and the owner (and you really don’t need it).
The LAA is not really between the owner and the CAA. The LAA has delegated authority to actually issue the Permit on behalf of the CAA, who have no involvement in the process.
mh wrote:
I found the FAA being much more paper-worshipping than EASA in some cases.
Since 2004 the only paperwork I’ve done on either of my certified aircraft that has involved FAA has been filing one Form 337 for an STC’d fuel flow meter installation. That required no approval, only mailing in a form. Annual inspections and any repairs and maintenance performed on my FAA certified aircraft have all required zero paperwork submissions, only log book entries. Hand written log book entries would have been fine, especially since nobody but me and the A&P has ever read them! So obviously paper worship is not a factor for me, or my FAA certified aircraft.
Many in European aviation seem to have an unbreakably embedded mindset that owning and maintaining a little aircraft (whether certified or not) exposes one to risky liability, must actively involve government or (e.g. LAA etc) equivalent systems, involves likely audits and potential retributions, requires manufacturer involvement and parts traceability, mandates paperwork and involves maintenance ‘organizations’, paid labor costs, fees, records and invoices. It seems an odd viewpoint when contrasted with the largely unstructured and cooperative environment in which I maintain my planes. We do stuff, and then we or a friend makes a logbook entry. Little money or paper changes hands. It’s legal.
It’s true that nothing goes to the FAA, and the FAA gets no licensing fees from engineers. Only Major mods (Form 337) go to the FAA.
With European reg homebuilts, that’s not quite the case. Even PH-regs have a periodic altimeter (etc?) check and a report goes back to their CAA. We did this here a while ago; I vaguely recall one owner telling me they now require a NL firm to do it, not just any EASA firm which was possible for a while. But also PH-regs can’t be legally based in many countries for very long… we did that here too 
That said, I can well see that the G-reg LAA system is seen as restrictive compared to most others.
Peter, I think in most European countries it would be easier to maintain an FAA registry certified aircraft than a locally registered homebuilt. That would certainly be true for the UK in my opinion. That’s the real choice of a European owner, and presumably why you fly a N-registered certified aircraft while creating this very interesting thread about maintaining locally registered homebuilts But it’s not an apples to apples comparison under the regulations of a given European country.
PS FAA A&Ps are mechanics, not engineers. FAA DERs are usually but not always engineers. I know you knew that
Silvaire wrote:
Peter, I think if I were based in Europe it would in most countries be easier to maintain and FAA registry certified aircraft than a locally registered homebuilt.
That’s far from the truth. Any non EASA aircraft is “easier” to maintain for private individuals than FAA, and in particular homebuilts and microlight. Things differ from place to place, but just getting out of the EASA regime with it’s maintenance organisations is a huge change.
Another thing. Found out this afternoon that “non certified” (non-ETSO) radios cannot be used in homebuilts anymore, at least it will be very unpractical and hard to get an approval, to the point it is easier to just get one with ETSO. This has little to do with EASA except in a very tangled fashion. It’s linked to 8.33 kHz frequency separation in a strange way also. I Finally got an answer from NKOM (The national bureau handling radio transmitters and stuff) about getting approved the MGL V6 radio. I used a long time understanding the answer, because I didn’t get the point. The engineer at NKOM could tell me that they had changed the way they approved radios. They no longer approve radios on a per unit check/test/investigation. They approve radios only by confirming to a standard, thus no real approving, the radio has to come with some kind of certification. They had already approved the MGL V6 a several years back, but only with 25 kHz separation.
From 2018 all new radios have to have 8.33 kHz separation (old ones as well, but that’s a different story with some modifications). He wrote that I don’t need a radio that is ETSO’ed, but I need a radio that conforms to the 8.33 kHz separation specifications for aviation radios. Also, I would need a radio that confirms to the environmental requirements in an airplane. What he could approve was a radio that confirms to EUROCAE ED14 / RTCA DO-160 (environmental standard for EMC in airplanes) and also, as a minimum, confirms to the the standard for ground based aviation radios regarding 8.33 kHz separation; ETSI EN 300 676-2 V2.1.0. When I asked MGL about this, he said the first one was no problem, but couldn’t understand the 676 “requirement”. MGL said the radio is designed and built according to the ETSO. With the change in the approval process this means nothing of course, when the radio is not actually ETSO’ed, because NKOM does not test it or investigate it or whatever they did before. Unless MGL comes up with some certification that it actually confirms to EUROCAE ED14 / RTCA DO-160 and as a inimum ETSI EN 300 676-2 V2.1.0, the radio cannot be used anymore. From 2018 it cannot be used for anything, not even as a ground based unit (not without ETSI EN 300 676), while ancient certified units with 25 kHz separation can still be used in aircraft.
For me this is kind of bad, because the V6 is the only radio short enough to fit on the panel. But Trig with their stand alone heads will be happy Trig is ETSO’ed
The same situation exists for mode S transponders also. There simply is no way to get mode S without ETSO, the same goes for all IFR GPS’es. It is a strange situation IMO. There are no requirements for a radio in a non-certified aircraft to be certified, but the performance specifications for 8.33 kHz separation together with changes in procedures demands the radio to be certified.
LeSving wrote:
Any non EASA aircraft is “easier” to maintain for private individuals than FAA, and in particular homebuilts and microlight. Things differ from place to place, but just getting out of the EASA regime with it’s maintenance organisations is a huge change.
Getting away from EASA and its operatives must surely be a worthy objective but I can’t see that non-certified aircraft are easy. The UK Permit renewal, with its periodic flight test protocol including dives to Vne and other similar (and slightly scary) nonsense is certainly something I’d want to avoid, even while realizing that most owners probably fake the whole thing. It is much easier for me to maintain my FAA certified aircraft: no preordained maintenance plan, no C of A renewal, no periodic contact with government or its local monopoly ‘club’, no fees, none of that.
I think the issue in Europe might be finding an FAA A&P who is reasonable and who would work with a reasonable owner. It appears to me many of them start to emulate the natives and become unreasonable, but Peter and others do it, so I’m led to believe it’s practical with the right guy. If necessary I’d fly one over. A local A&P IA acquaintance does that periodically for a UK guy with a Bonanza that he used to maintain in the US. The A&P is also a CFII and gives him a flight review when needed.
