On Wed, 28 May 2008 07:09:11 +1000, Snapper
y7mail.com.invalid> wrote:
>Stealth Pilot wrote...
>
>> in my case I cant get a suitably qualified LAME for the annual signoff
>> because the company he works for has banned all outside work. this is
>> because of the casa habit of cancelling all of a LAME's current
>> signoffs and reestablishing their validity one by one. (the hit to the
>> cashflow would bankrupt them)
>>
>> so this guy has done thousands of signoffs.
>
>Which guy? the one that was charged or the one that you want to do your
>aircraft's airworthy?
>
the qantas guy y' thick one. :-)
>At the risk of repetitiveness, why is it, again, that the LAME can't check out
>your aircraft?
there are just 50 LAME's in australia that have structural wood
tickets out of the 5,300 or so licenced practitioners. of that 50
there are not many in western australia.
of the 'not many' I havent found one who isnt indentured to employers
who fear bankruptcy in the extreme regime that casa tries to
implement.
so I am left in the situation that I have a perfectly airworthy
aircraft that I'm not supposed to fly because of casa paperwork that I
cant get signed out.
so after having the aircraft sitting in the hangar for 8 months while
I tried to sort this out I said F this nonsense and I completed an
annual on it myself and went flying.
The other absurdity in this affair is that the aircraft is a homebuilt
aircraft registered under the old 101.28 regulations. If I'd built the
aircraft myself I could reregister it as an experimental, legally
perform all the maintenance, sign it out myself and go flying.
Because I didnt build it, no matter that I've owned it 9 years now,
done fabric repairs, wood repairs, aluminium sheet repairs, retempered
the main undercarriage legs , completely built the tailwheel assembly,
machined and tempered the tailwheel spring, replaced nearly all the
glazing, repaired components of the engine, reshaped the propeller,
replaced all the pitot static system, I didnt build the aircraft so I
couldnt possibly be competent to maintain it. Even if I reregistered
it as experimental I'd still need a LAME to do the annual and sign it
out because I didnt build it.
...oh whoops that puts us back to the initial problem.
before we had to pay for what they pretend are casa services I applied
year after year for approval to maintain my own aircraft and they
refused. never a reason, they just refused.
I became the National Secretary of the Sport Aircraft Association and
campaigned long and hard for them to support owner maintenance. They
were too damn stupid to understand the significance.
No matter that the canadians in this time made owner maintenance
completely legal.
AOPA also couldnt understand the need.
The last straw for me was seeing Canadian owner maintainers refused
access to american airspace without the EAA ever bothering to take up
the cudgel in their defense.
I let my membership lapse in the SAAA because they were useless.
I never joined AOPA again because they were incompetent.
I let my membership lapse in the EAA because they couldnt be bothered
supporting the Canadians.
CASA are just plodding idiots.
> If he's licensed and does it, say on the weekend, what right does
>his employer have to ban him from performing this extra curricular activity?
>
no right as such except that casa in it's attempts to micro manage the
entire environment prohibit the use of independent licences without
record traces which must be held , effectively by the guy's daytime
employer.
the industry is in heavy decline, for the business owners it is just
the effort to gouge a few more dollars from the owners while
containing what they see as a liability.
>As for CASA and the QF LAME, yeah, it will be interesting. If nothing else, to
>maintain standards across the airline industry and to avoid hypocrisy...
I'm going to really piss off some people here.
do you know how our maintenance regulations were created???
it's a joke! but there is a glimmer of sunlight out of all this.
the gigantic wank act of the regulatory consultative review was
churning on as a permanent jobs for the boys act.
I'm told that the casa head honcho called the entire team together and
asked them to present the efforts of their work.
They presented him with 5,000 pages of draft maintenance legislation.
now 5,000 pages is 10 packets of photocopier paper stacked high. it is
just over half a metre high.
said honcho evidently dropped the entire pile in the rubbish and
advised the team that they were fired.
a very frantic plan b was hatched. 2 people from one organisation, 2
people from another organisation and one other of questionable motives
were assembled in secret with the brief to come up with workable
legislation compatible with the european standards. they had about 2
weeks.
right at this point we could have had owner maintenance introduced
mainstream ...except for the fact that the fifth guy is a bit of a
charlatan to the experimental movement, he has been crafting it to
give him a lifelong income. owner maintenance wasnt on his agenda and
it never had a chance.
the plan b legislation this little group of 5 came up with is now what
we have as australian law.
the glimmer of hope is that the casa head honcho had the balls to try
to sort casa out.
the rest of casa would have to be one of the slickest bullshit acts
ever slipped beneath the radar of the australian parliament.
so there you have it.
you may see why I get so frustrated at all of this.
so when I've finished this years maintenance I'm damn well going
flying!
Stealth Pilot
