Shadrach

It's entirely possible that I am conflating key sets from different aircraft from my past.

I was assuming that my baggage and door locks were Medeco because the keys are identical to my Bendix ignition all are cut differently. Some of my key say Medeco some are unbranded but they all slide perfectly in tall all of the locks/ignition. I know because I have an unlabeled set and If I use them it almost always takes three tries to get the right one no matter what I’m trying to do. The locks both look like a simple cabinet lock as @kortopates mentions above.

The door window is secured with 18 machine screws and lock nuts that hold down 9 rectangular aluminum plates that sandwich the window against at least 1" of of overlapping door skin to which it is glued. I'm not saying you could not break it, but it is not going to be easy, mostly because it will flex, distributing and absorbing the energy from a kick

Why? I can envision no scenario where a latched baggage door "unlatches". It has striker plates and latch pins on the fore and aft sides of the opening with a full length piano hinge at the top. It's far more robust than it needs to be (look at a Cessna baggage door sometime). In order to open, the over center mechanism in the latch would need to defy physics and then in addition push the flat latch actuator forward and out into the slipstream. If all that takes place, I am pretty sure whatever super natural force that wants the door open can work around the Medeco lock.

It’s pretty robust as I think the strike plate is anchored to the roll cage. It’s likely doable for someone with a fairly substantial build, but would take multiple blows. The Pilots side window might be a better bet as it’s already structurally compromised by the small window. Again prying the trim off baggage door with screwdriver will give access to the latch mechanism. I never fly with the baggage door locked as that would take it out of the equation as an emergency exit.

Unfortunately, this is a bug with the Medeco door locks. It has happened in our plane a few times to different operators. It has always occurred on a flight that followed the unlocking of a locked door. Apparently if the Medeco locks are not rotated to the stop in the unlock position, they can back off just enough to prevent the door latch for moving. It happened to me once after landing after hours at drome away from home. Took several passes before I could get security to stops and pass him the key through the pilot’s window. I sat there thinking how grateful I was to not be on fire. I fashioned a cable release for the baggage door shortly there after. Even without a baggage door cable, I am pretty sure that I could pry the inner trim off the baggage door and actuate the latch pretty quickly…but I would not want to do that in an emergency.

It’s funny to me how what qualifies as busy and polluted varies from one part of the country to the next… That looks like a fairly peaceful stretch of highway. I’m sure it gets busy but given all of your concerns, maybe this place isn’t for you. The threshold of our longest runway is less than 800’ from I81 my hangar is 2500’ from the highway. At Broadriver, you would be much closer. I don’t think air pollution will be an issue. Noise pollution? Probably during peak hours. 3000’X40’ (per Airnav) should be a walk in the park for most any competently piloted Mooney as long as operating weight is <3000lbs, above that the margins are less than what I would consider conservative.

Not a lot of return for fraud and felony charges. Just a cascade of legal issues. Plus the buyers of the parts will have no legal claim to them as they did not belong to the seller. So perhaps additional lawsuits beyond the lender.

Exactly. You can wholesale a repossessed automobile in days if not hours.

They are against policy at both of the fields local to me yet they are an open secret. It’s part of the reason the waiting lists move so slowly. Hangars that should be surrendered are “temporarily” filled while the lease holder looks for a new plane (for three years)…

I’ve not heard of any of this favoritism taking place at any of the airports I’ve been associated with. The FBO’s are tenants to the same landlords as the hangar tenants. The difference being that FBO is paying a long-term lease and responsible for their own improvements and upkeep. Our local FBO has way bigger fish to fry than involving themselves in the politics/influence of the airport board. We too have a long wait list. If you don’t possess or are not in the process of procuring a plane when you’re called, you don’t get a hangar. Similar situation at other fields I’m local to. Plenty of airport politics but don’t see it drifting into the waiting list. Now, if we’re talking about who gets away with illegal sublets, that’s another story.

I don’t know the thinking or utility behind using slotted screws for most applications. I’m used to it working on vintage British motorcycles, but almost always swapped them out for Allen or Phillips unless keeping the bike all original is a concern. This was supposedly a new mag with just 2XXhrs. Why they’re still being built with slotted, cheese head, machine screws I cannot say.

Did not look that way to anyone involved including the local grey beard IA who was able to quickly remedy the problem utilizing the existing hardware. The most difficult part of the job was breaking the two heavily (overly) torque sealed, slotted screws loose with a stubby little screwdriver in a tight space.

So it's riveted through an existing hole? That seems less ominous.

Cool. I’ve never seen a set up like that. I wonder what year it was implemented. It’s a challenge in the older birds to find a suitable hard mount that does not interfere with cabin utilization. I imagine that retrofitting that set up to an earlier machine would require DER approval.

I’m thinking this was a pencil whip. I doubt seriously that Nigel saw the corrosion that’s in those pictures. Seems more likely he’s had a run of trading his signature for money and was was bitten by negligence and complacency.

Is it physically riveted to the spar? As in the spar was drilled and the bracket riveted in place at the factory?

Ya think?…though the prevalence of ADSB data is making it much harder to BS performance numbers.

It’s enough to prove the condition of the aircraft upon arriving at the FBO. One would need a subsequent pic of the damage before departing FBO property to substantiate that the damage occurred while being moved by FBO personnel.

Totally agree. However, what percentage of the work requires truly skilled labor? It’s part of the reason repair stations employ a hierarchy of skilled/credentialed labor. I’ve personally spent some time at the bottom of that repair station hierarchy though years before TAA was a thing. I learned to buck rivets not because I displayed some great aptitude with a bucking bar, but because no one further up the hierarchy felt that laying in a confined fuselage…in August…warranted their high level of skill/experience. The system serves two goals. It provides a path for increased experience for newbies and helps to right size labor costs. I’m not saying that it’s a bad thing, but I am saying that spending 50K to upgrade the panel in a $70k airplane that will then be a $90k airplane when finished is why there are a lot of planes flying around with legacy equipment. Then there are the occasional bugs. Though they are rare, we have had folks on this board with very expensive panel upgrades that have found themselves staring at 60K worth of red X’s while in IMC.

I’m not saying it was unreasonable for AOPA to publish it. Only that it was written from the perspective of an advocacy group that stands to gain from trying to minimize the scope of the work that independent mechanics can perform. The author(s) did not take a lot of care to disguise their interests/bias. I would put more stock in an article like that if authored by an aviation attorney specializing in FAR case law over an advocacy group.

There is an alternative, but it involves spending lots and lots of money relative to the value of the aircraft. That will in most cases guarantee thorough repair station log book entries. In terms of the quality of the work completed, it’s still a faith based endeavor. I’ve had some excellent work performed by local repair stations. I have also paid dearly for lousy work from both repair stations and independent IAs. One of the bigger challenges in my area is that I reside close to DC. Many of the regional repair stations are performing work down stream of government contracts. The market forces that control costs are severely diminished when there’s a federal procurement contract at the top of the of the transaction. There are at least 3 government contractors on my field. All of them have in-house MX departments, but sub out a substantial amount of maintenance to other companies. Why fight to be competitive in the GA world when there are companies with multiple fleets of contractor C208s and KA200s that will pay 200k a piece to have a 12 year old Garmin panel upgraded or 40k to have 15 year old paint replaced. It’s why many folks in my area fly 100s of miles to find more competitive service providers. There are exceptions for simple airframe and power plant repairs, but specialty work has been impacted by an almost unrestricted flow of taxpayer funds and corporate turbine money whose expenditures are a means of reducing taxable corporate profits. It’s a double edged sword. GA enjoys an infrastructure that is largely financed by turbine operations but is also being squeezed by that same market.

Maybe, I’ve not seen any data to substantiate that. It may prove true down the road, but I can remember when the vintage birds could be had for half of what they are bringing now and it was not that long ago.

Tend to agree from a performance perspective. Richard Collins (Flying Magazine) once said (I’m paraphrasing) that any speed below 100kts was unacceptable in a GA plane used for cross country. There have been only a handful of occasions where I found myself hunting for an altitude that would allow me to maintain triple digit ground speeds, but when it has happened, I alway remind myself how much worse it could be.

Yea. As I was reading that article I noticed some very interesting implications but not outright interpretations of the regs. It made me wonder who wrote it, so I skipped to the end to see before finishing. As it turns out, no one put their name on it because it was submitted to AOPA by the Aircraft Electronics Association I found a number of statements made in the article to be disingenuous. It reads like an industry rep trying to regulate installations out of the hands of independent maintenance professionals. These two paragraphs are protectionist garbage… So, an A&P mechanic can install and/or supervise the installation of avionics equipment, provided that he or she meets all of the same requirements that a technician at a repair station does for the same job. If he or she does not meet the same personal and professional requirements of an avionics technician, it is the responsibility of the avionics industry to document the unqualified work and report it to your local FAA office. Keep in mind that the FAA can only monitor the individual A&P while the mechanic is performing maintenance; they do not operate from a repair station, so there is no business to audit like there is for a repair station. Your help in identifying these un-safe actions is required. In what way is it a repair stations job to make judgement calls about another credentialed mechanics personal and professional requirements? If the airworthiness of an installation is physically questionable, then by all means it should be flagged. Encouraging repair stations to try to sick the FSDO on an IA because they installed a transponder and said repair station does not believes that said IA meets the requirements is not grounded in regulatory reality. How does the repair station know? The really put heir money where their mouth is at the end of this unsigned piece AEA offers this column in order to foster greater understanding of the Federal Aviation Regulations and the rules that govern the industry. AEA strives to make them as accurate as possible at the time they are written, but rules change so you should verify the information. AEA disclaims any warranty for the accuracy of the information provided. This information is not meant to serve as legal advice.