Warbird Information Exchange

Did you ever express any concern to him about this?

I'm not sure what to think of it.

I am sure however that this is where they belong.

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Curtis Block

I've seen too many airplanes destroyed by the term "Static Restoration."

Hey Jeff Nelson, Great to see you on the Board!! If ANYONE needs an aircraft rewired, jeff is definitely your guy. I may have a T-6 for you this summer by the way. Anyway, my story is with a Baron-E55 I just finished. This plane had 19 hours since it's last annual. (should be easy right?) I looked at the logbooks and the annuals for the last five years consisted of the airworthiness statement, AD compliance and very little else. All five years were on one page in the logbook and I literally had to use a magnifying glass to read it. First, the three blade Mcauley props only had two deice boots on the left engine. The ELT, according to the logbook was good until Aug 07 but the one we pulled out expired in May 05. The logbook stated the the brake linings had been replaced at the last annual and the resevoir had been replenished. WRONG!! The linings were shot and the resevoir was EMPTY. All of the rockerbox gaskets leaked. The prop spinner support shim on the left engine crumbled into my hand when I removed the spinner. The Phenolic shims on the brake calipers were missing. I guess they just removed the shims rather than put in new linings. The left elevator outboard hinge bolt was worn to nothing as was the trim actuating jackscrew on that elevator. I could go on but the owner of the plane got an a** chewing by me. I told him that he needs to learn more about the mechanical aspect of his planes and to recognize when something is suspicious, especially when very little is written up in the logs. Everytime he steps in the plane, he takes his life and anyone else in the plane lives in his hands

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The more I learn about aircraft, the more I realize I still have to learn.

I was removing some skins on a Douglas A-24 center section, and found a complete, NOS, access panel rattling around on the inside. I also found a row of rivets in the fuselage skin attaching nothing to the aircraft... they were just rivets mounted through one layer of skin. The workmanship on this aircraft was truly terrible, which was a surprise... lots of rivets with smilies in them, and dinged into the actual airframe structure. Scary!

Cheers,
Richard

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Richard Mallory Allnutt - Photography - http://www.rmallnutt.com

The first plane I owned (with a motor that is . . .) was an old Mooney that had lived on my field for a long time. It was owned by an A&P who did all the maintenance himself and had my friend with an IA sign off the annuals. My friend was selling it for him and thought it would make a good plane for me. (There's at least 3 lessons in there already, but what did I know?) My friend did an annual on it and deemed it airworthy. My first surprise came when I filled up the tanks – the left tank was leaking only slightly slower than the rate at which I was pumping it in.
I needed a checkout and a tank reseal. Another friend had just opened a shop and wanted the work, so we did our six hour insurance checkride on the way over to his field, about 10 minutes away. About six months later (!) he had the tanks done. We did a shuttle trip between airports to get me the plane and him home. On the way back to his field I commented on the fact that the fuel pressure gauge was acting funny. I switched tanks and it went to normal. When we landed I opened the cap on the suspect tank, we were met with a big Whoosh! He had inadvertantly sealed the vent shut. He turned kind of white, because he had flown over to me with only fuel in that tank, and had obviously come close to a forced landing.
Cut another 6 months ahead and it's annual time again. I decided to do owner assisted with him. It took days to get all the inspection covers off because most of the screws were frozen as if they hadn't been touched in years. Imagine that. After I finally got it all opened up my friend came out and casually looked it over, then said okay button it up. I realized if it was going to be inspected I needed to do it. So I started in and imagine my surprise when looking at the enginemount noticed that 1 tube was completely broken! It was easy to see, but sure there if you looked. Now I was the one turning white. Turns out there is an AD for this and the whole time I was outside struggling with the screws he was doing an AD compliance check. I also found a major crack in the rear spar, also the subject of an AD. I learned a lot of lessons there.

I'm on a tear here . . .
So after I find all this stuff wrong after he told me to button it up I start to have a whole different attitude toward this annual. I have to pull the engine to get the mount repaired and by now he's moved me out of the hangar and into the dirt. Literally. And it's July. Nasty work and I'm pretty much unsupervised the whole time. Finally I get the engine re-hung and everything put back together. I do a few runups and everything seems good. He gives me some last minute advice and I'm ready to fly the thing out. This airport isn't very forging, short, down in a hole with big trees at the ends. I do another runup, and then onto the runway. About the time I'm ready to rotate I notice the fuel pressure drop to zero. Uh, now what? Abort! I taxi back in and tell him, and he suggests that it is probably just the gauge, and we'll go fly together when he gets back later. No way. I pull the fuel line and put the end into a bottle and turn on the boost pump. The fuel trickles out. I stick some safety wire in there and its all plugged up with what looks like mud. A freakin mud dauber built a nest while the plane was sitting engineless in the dirt! I was furious at myself now because I know better than that. My dad always taught me to plug a line and somehow because I was working *supervised* I let myself become a drone – at least I finally wised up at the end at didn't try and fly it until I found the problem – it would have been an UGLY outcome when the engine stopped at 100 feet. After that I did a lot of studying and continued to do owner assisted annual with another A&P and got the plane sorted out. She was really nice when I sold - it a far cry from the dog I was working on in the dirt.

Good stuff Skybolt. The major lesson there is that just because the logbook says something was done, don't assume it was and even if it was done, it may not have been done right. You did what I feel like EVERY aircraft owner should do whether or not they are an A&P. Take the time to get to know every nut and bolt on your plane. Find out what the AD's are and check for yourself if they have been done. Most of my experience is on warbirds but I have found that general aviation aircraft for some reason seem to have more bar room signoffs than you could believe.

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The more I learn about aircraft, the more I realize I still have to learn.

It was interesting to go through the logs once I owned it (as opposed to when I was buying it and inspecting it)
The radios in the logs bore no resemblance at all to what stared out at me from the panel. It had a very heavy left wing. I noted several log entries regarding adjusting rigging, flaps etc. I bought the maintenance manuals for it and read them at bedtime. Mooneys are a little different from some other light planes especially in regard to rigging. Of course, according to FAR's you can't do any maintenance on a plane without specific manufacturers manuals- as you all know - but everyone I talked to said things like, drop a flap, adjust an aileron down etc to pick up a heavy wing. Doesn't work on a Mooney with all push/pull tube control system. There was an aileron control AD which had to be done and took the service manual instructions for rigging the ailerons from a to z. Starting at leveling the control wheels and working down through the entire control system. A individual of questionable judgement could have done it according to the book, but as I went through it, all the errors introduced by god knows how many well intentioned, but ill informed mechs just added up to a massive out of rig situation. I just zeroed it all out and flew it. It was perfect. Hands off. No flap dropping, aileron bending. Going by the book.

Washed the oil off an engine with 100LL??????? Hope you weren't smoking a cigarette while you were doing it. First thing dad (an A&P) taught me was never clean parts or get near open containers of gasoline. I've repesented some people in the past who have been burned like that. The degree they were burned to would scare you to death..........

HOWEVER it does remind me of a visit to an A&P School where there was another C421B parked for some work in the hangar. For some unknown reason the gas cap on one of the tip tanks was off. For an even MORE UNKNOWN reason, there was a bench grinder about 2' away from the open fuel cap. There was a student there grinding away (with his instructor looking over his shoulder) on a part with a STREAM OF SPARKS going towards that open fuel tank with sparks going inside. I didn't see any need for me to stay and I LEFT THE AREA (outside right now).

Play safe or you get to meet me.

Mark H

Washed the oil off an engine with 100LL??????? Hope you weren't smoking a cigarette while you were doing it. First thing dad (an A&P) taught me was never clean parts or get near open containers of gasoline. I've repesented some people in the past who have been burned like that. The degree they were burned to would scare you to death..........

HOWEVER it does remind me of a visit to an A&P School where there was another C421B parked for some work in the hangar. For some unknown reason the gas cap on one of the tip tanks was off. For an even MORE UNKNOWN reason, there was a bench grinder about 2' away from the open fuel cap. There was a student there grinding away (with his instructor looking over his shoulder) on a part with a STREAM OF SPARKS going towards that open fuel tank with sparks going inside. I didn't see any need for me to stay and I LEFT THE AREA (outside right now).

Play safe or you get to meet me.

Mark H

I'm going to have to call it "blue safty solvent" next time.

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Curtis Block

I've seen too many airplanes destroyed by the term "Static Restoration."

When I was in aviation maintenance back in my Army Aviation daze, we didn't do anything on a bird unless we had the current maint manual right there, handy, like open to the page of the component we were working on. We also had painted on the wall of the hangar, RTFB which is defined as "Read the F***ing Book"...seemed to work out good for us.

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Kind Regards,
Gary Lewis
J.A.F.O.

While working @ RSTOL in Nooawlunz back in the 70's, we did a mod to an older, three window 182. Part of the rigging was to set the final elevator 'up' cable tension/location in flight. This required me to lay half in the tailcone and slide the cable clamps forward or aft as our pilot added flaps and slowed down, this setting assured that the aircraft would pitch 'positive' at full flaps as indicating zero for airspeed made your attention drift around somewhat.
Anyway, we're out over Lake Bourne at about 3500 AGL and Bill starts to add flaps, the system was working correctly so I'm sort of gazing around the tail cone when I realize that I'm looking through the bottom of the aircraft at the lake below!!!
I shouted at Bill to 'turn this thing around like it's made out of peanut brittle and get us home, NOW!' After landing we found that the belly skin was corroded through lke grannys lace tablecloth just aft of the tailcone to cabin join seam for a distance of about 13 inches.
We knew the airplane lived on Padre Island (wonderful! 100% salt air environment). My boss called the owner who gave the whole thing a big South Texas wave off 'yeah, I know sumpin' bout that, but I ain't too worried'.
The customer came and picked up his airplane, and since all we had done was the mod, all we could sign off on was the mod work.

While working @ BF GOODRICH as an inspector, we had several cases of opening up rudder acess panels on a fleet customers 767's on their first 'C' check and discovering that Boeing was kind enough to provide us with wrenches, hammers, and lots of standards to aid us in our work, how thoughtful.
The feds jumped on this like a cheap suit and had every 767 rudder world wide opened and inspected, over the fleet several more were found to have this particular flyaway kit installed! Needless to say, Boeings QC tightened up a significant amount.

We also worked on an ex-PAN AM 737-200 advanced that had spent most of it's life flying into and out of Berlin around Europe. This was supposed to be a transition check for a South American carrier (now long gone).
When we opened up the interior, there were areas of skin around the windows that were so corroded that you could flip out 50 cent sized pieces with your fingernails, the underlying metal when exposed was white it was so far gone. The customer wanted the aft galley rebuilt in place because they didn't want to know what the lower half of the aft pressure dome looked like-the company politely stopped work on the aircraft, and advised the customer to remove it from our facility, since it was already foreign registered I understand the feds were advised but could do nothing. I had a recurring nightmare for months afterward of someone tanning on the fore deck of their boat in the Gulf of Mexico and seeing two contrails that ended in a big cloud and it then raining luggage.

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Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-

I'm not an A&P but a retired airline pilot with a few rigging memories.

(1) Years ago on a DC-3 when I checked the elevator control for full travel after the elevator block was removed, it hung up a little aft of half way. Pulling a little harder released it with a jerk. Contract maintenence was called and when the aisle floor boards were pulled, it was found the elevator cable had enough slack that a turnbuckle was hanging up on a fuselage ring. Company maintenence advised the mech to cut a notch in the ring so the turnbuckle would clear and they would re-rig it when it got to the home base (in scheduled service, not on a ferry permit).

(2) A few years later after a merger, in a CV-580 (ex CV-340) and while in the pattern to land at OMA, we noticed that the aileron control hung up when applying quite a bit of control movement. Landed safely and ailerons were normal on the ground. This time maintenence came out to OMA and found the ailerons badly out of rig (no tension) and a turnbuckle hanging up. This particular airplane was not a favorite because of unusually heavy aileron control forces (CV-580 control forces were normally heavy anyway) but after this re-rig it flew very nicely.

(3) In the early 80's I sponsored and started flying a B-25 with the CAF. I had flown B-25s in pilot training about 30 years before and remembered them as easy and a delight to fly. This one took both hands on the wheel to manuever and lots of elevator trim for landing. On walk-around one day I noticed the elevator trim tab was displaced up. When I checked the tab indicator in the cockpit, it was zeroed. I had been trying to get someone in maintenence to check the rigging but with no success until I got out the Maint. Manuals and told them that I would rig it and they could supervise me and sign it off or they could do it themselves. They told me to leave it alone. I did and went home early. They re-rigged it (it was really badly screwed up) and the next time I flew it, it flew just as nice as I remembered them flying in Cadets. The other pilots couldn't believe how much better it flew and the Crew Chief was elated.

(4) Our airline acquired a few early model MD-80s from Hawaiian to add to the fleet we already had. When the rigging was checked on one of the maintenence checks, cable tension was found to be nil. The story was that the cable that Douglas used wasn't pre stretched on the shorter DC-9s and it wasn't a problem but it became a problem on the looooooong MD-80 and a re-rigging of elevator and rudder cadles was required on the older birds. New production used pre-stretched cable. Another problem was one of the aircraft's pitch control became very erratic in light turbulence when on autopilot. After much investigating, some rigging, parts changing and test-hopping, it was cured by replacing and tightening the bolts holding the shelf that the vertical gyro was mounted on!

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It's what you learn after you think you know it all, that counts.

This exact situation caused a crash of a skydiving DC-3 back in 1978. I had a front row seat as the a/c cartwheeled down the runway after a departure stall. The pilot was flying that particular a/c for the first time and trimmed the elev tab to a position that it had never been in before. He hauled back to break ground and then attempted to pushed the nose back down to accelerate in ground effect..... but the elevator was jammed.

http://www.ntsb.gov/NTSB/brief.asp?ev_id=40565&key=0

This is why God invented Trichlorethylene... darn that stuff smells good...cough cough.

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"There are old pilots and bold pilots but few old, bold pilots."