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A&P and Transition Training

Beejer

Member
Looking at pulling the trigger on an RV8A down in Louisiana, and I want to line up my ducks to make sure I get everything sorted correctly with the plane.

First things first, looking for someone to teach me how to keep the wheels side down on landings and such. I’m located in Brooklyn, NY but I’d be willing to travel to someplace fun to fly.

Second person I think I would love to find is an A&P that can walk me through a conditional inspection. Ideally this person would be in the Louisiana area. Airplane needs a conditional before end of August and I’d like to use the conditional as a final inspection of the plane before the purchase is finalized.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. New to the community and excited to almost be a part of it!
 
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Join an EAA Chapter

Beejer,

I really can’t help you with finding an A & P in the Louisiana area, but once you get the plane up north, I’d recommend you join a local EAA chapter. Most members are extremely knowledgeable and enjoy sharing their love of aviation. I belong to EAA chapter 643 based at Sky Manor airport (N40) in Pittstown, NJ. We have a lot of RV’S based there and it’s a great bunch of pilots with many, many years of experience.

Jim
 
Looking at pulling the trigger on an RV8A down in Louisiana, and I want to line up my ducks to make sure I get everything sorted correctly with the plane.

First things first, looking for someone to teach me how to keep the wheels side down on landings and such. I’m located in Brooklyn, NY but I’d be willing to travel to someplace fun to fly.

Second person I think I would love to find is an A&P that can walk me through a conditional inspection. Ideally this person would be in the Louisiana area. Airplane needs a conditional before end of August and I’d like to use the conditional as a final inspection of the plane before the purchase is finalized.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. New to the community and excited to almost be a part of it!

You should consider carefully your desire to combine a condition inspection with an acceptance inspection. It's a worthy goal but fraught with opportunities for failure and frustration. If you decide to go that route, use a professional shop and let them manage the entire thing soup-nuts. Let them identify any airworthiness issues and have an agreement in writing that requires the seller to either fix them at the seller's costs or allows you to back out of the deal without penalty.
 
Beejer,

I really can’t help you with finding an A & P in the Louisiana area, but once you get the plane up north, I’d recommend you join a local EAA chapter. Most members are extremely knowledgeable and enjoy sharing their love of aviation. I belong to EAA chapter 643 based at Sky Manor airport (N40) in Pittstown, NJ. We have a lot of RV’S based there and it’s a great bunch of pilots with many, many years of experience.

Jim

Note that getting transition training in your new-to-you RV-8a may be a challenge. Unless there is a complete set of flight controls in the back seat (including full authority rudders and brakes), you may have a hard time convincing a CFI to train you in the plane. I would not. Most insurance companies will allow you to get transition training in a side-by-side (RV-6, 7) to satisfy their requirements for the RV-8(a).
 
Feeling very welcomed…

Big thanks to Jim and Randy for the advice. Certainly some things in there I had not considered.

I will definitely be including something to the effect that stuff needs to be fixed or accounted for in the price in the purchase inspection. Really good idea there.

I’ll also be joining that a local EAA chapter. Planning on parking the plane at Morristown or Essex County. If nothing else I can always fly over for events or meetings. Any excuse to fly and talk airplanes!

I think I found my guy for transition training. Gonna be training in a RV7A. Side by side so that he can take my hands off the controls before I really do something dumb. Any really different characteristics I should prepare my mind for between an 8 and a 7? Is there any benefit to requesting that I should fly in the right seat (hands being correct)?

Again thanks for the warm welcome.
 
Couple of things:

  • I'd separate out the the pre-buy inspection from the Condition Inspection. They are not necessarily the same thing.
  • Not all AP/IA's are qualified to do a good pre-buy inspection, or even a Condition Inspection, of a Van's RV
  • An AP/IA can walk you through a Condition Inspection and show you how to do it, but you can't actually do one and sign off on it unless you yourself are an AP/IA
  • The best and most helpful pre-buy inspections might well be from someone who is NOT an AP/IA
  • Not all EAA chapters will be helpful to you as a maintenance resource for your RV. They come with widely varying levels of knowledge of specific experimental aircraft lines.

I would (did) focus on finding someone VERY knowledgeable in RVs for the pre-buy. Someone like Vic Syracuse, for example.
 
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SNIP…Any really different characteristics I should prepare my mind for between an 8 and a 7? Is there any benefit to requesting that I should fly in the right seat (hands being correct)?

The main difference between the 8 and 7 will be the CG shift when flying the 8 with a passenger. As this would be down the road for you, you should find the two planes very similar.

Do not worry about left/right hand sticks. I alternated between and 8A and a 10 for a few years. No issue at all.

The real question is what are you flying now? If you are doing the standard old school Cessna you will have many bad habits to break - the biggest one being to not land on the nose gear. The nose gear is there for taxi only. Ride the mains as best you can on takeoff and landing. The next will be getting too slow on approach and using bottom rudder to correct for mistakes. This is how you end up upside down very close to the ground. Discuss this with your instructor and get some hard rules put down for how you manage speed. After you gain experience you can refine.

Where in Louisiana is the 8A located?

Carl
 
Small correction

Couple of things:

[*]An AP/IA can walk you through a Condition Inspection and show you how to do it, but you can't actually do one and sign off on it unless you yourself are an AP/IA
.

For an EAB, the condition inspection can be signed off by (1) an original builder with a limited repairman certificate, or (2) an A&P. An IA is not required.
 
Looking at pulling the trigger on an RV8A down in Louisiana, and I want to line up my ducks to make sure I get everything sorted correctly with the plane.

First things first, looking for someone to teach me how to keep the wheels side down on landings and such. I’m located in Brooklyn, NY but I’d be willing to travel to someplace fun to fly.

Before you go to Louisiana to pick up your new pride and joy (and perhaps while the inspections are underway) proceed directly to 81D in Angelton TX (just south of Houston). There you will find one Bruce Bohannon who can teach you all you need, and far more, about flying the RV8. He has a specimen with full controls in the rear and will safely and confidently guide you to proficiency.

You can contact Bruce at (281) 88 niner-8078. Many positive testimonials available on VAF using search.

Good luck, be safe, and enjoy!
Peter
 
where in LA?

where is it in Louisiana? I may can help get you hooked up with an A&P if its in the northern end of the state. PM me if you prefer.
 
For an EAB, the condition inspection can be signed off by (1) an original builder with a limited repairman certificate, or (2) an A&P. An IA is not required.

The point being...since he didn't build the plane, he can't sign off on his own annual Condition Inspection unless he's an A&P.
 
This is a flood of information and I thank you all for it.

The upside down due to rudder is a habit I’ve been trying to break for myself on the simulator ever since I got my license. I may have over done it during the COVID period and now I don’t think I use enough. I barely touch the pedals except during taxi and any kind of crosswind landing. May have to relearn that skill a bit. I really think there is some kind of disconnect in my butt as I was a good soccer player and my batting average was decently high but I just can’t make the legs and arms talk. Beyond getting my tail wheel are there things in the sim I can do to help this skill become solid?

As to the conditional inspection, my thought there being that I could walk through the plane with the A&P so I could see what they were looking for and get a good grasp of the inside of my new plane. Not necessarily to do the conditional the next year (I’m lazy, I can pay a professional who’s MUCH more knowledgeable than me to do it) but I’m decently mechanical and it would help me see the problem areas and where the strengths and weaknesses (as any system has) are in the plane. So what would be the main differences between a conditional inspection and a pre-buy inspection? Which is more involved and has a better chance of seeing issues? Or is it just a mindset where one is trying to find problems and one is trying to make a plane fly?

Again super excited about this info (thanks again) and getting into this community. I love adventures…
 
Well that clears that up…

Great article on Pre-Buy vs Conditional Inspection. Really makes the difference clear. I took away that ideally you would just do a conditional inspection as you bought the plane, fixing the squawks and negotiating them on the price. Is this how people feel or did I read all this wrong? A pre-buy of course makes sense too as it will get you to about the same place, minus a completely repaired plane.

That’s a nice conditional inspection checklist too. I can’t decide if I’m sad or happy that I’ll never be able to turn a wrench on this aircraft. I do love fixing things but there is no side of the road in the air. On that topic, what can you do to an experimental that you can’t do in GA? My flight instructor basically told me if it wasn’t air or liquid then it was something to take to the shop. Are you allowed to modify experimentals? Can I add a dial or screen to my panel? Can I swap out the seats? Stick? Engine? Make it a VTOL electric? I joke but how far can you go before someone says, hey that’s not the same aircraft?

It was asked where the aircraft was based at the moment and I totally dropped the ball. It’s in DeQuincy Airpark, 5R8. Now don’t be running down there and yanking this one out from under me. I’m pretty serious about this one and I have the temporarily non-pilot in the house on board (she’ll get her license, no way she’s letting a less effective pilot fly her around permanently!). That was a long uphill battle.
 
You can perform any mechanical or avionics work that you desire on your E-AB. The only thing you can't do is sign off on the annual Condition Inspection. You can wrench on it to your heart's content if you're confident that your airplane mechanical skills are good enough that you would trust your life and the life of your passengers to them. For my part...I'm not that confident. I'm a pretty good auto mechanic but on my airplane I do almost nothing forward of the firewall, and generally have any other work that I do reviewed by my AP/IA. I know how to do routine maintenance like oil/filter/plug changes, but usually have my AP/IA do those things because of time constraints, and it's just easier to fit into my schedule. For each CI so far, I have generally spent time removing the interior, fairings, baggage bulkhead, wheel pants, and all inspection panels so that I'm not paying my A&P to do that grunt work. My condition inspections thus far have been (relatively) cheap...all have been less than 1 AMU. (AMU = Aviation Monetary Unit...$1000). With some help from a friend, I've added a G5 to the panel as HSI backup, and replaced/upgraded my entire EFIS to the most current version, added AoA to the glass panel. That was hard for me...glad I had help. Fascinating learning experience.

When I bought my airplane it was airworthy with a current Condition Inspection so I saw no reason to repeat that. Instead, I focused on a pre-buy inspection by someone with demonstrated knowledge and expertise with RV's (not an A&P). I didn't want to start fixing things by an unknown A&P at a foreign and distant airport unless it was something that would make for an unsafe ferry flight back home...unlikely since it had been inspected within a year. I, or my pre-buy guy, talked directly with the AP/AI that had done the last CI as well as the AP/AI that had done all the previous CI's. Both remembered the plane, were very forthcoming and helpful. I assumed that the person doing the pre-buy inspection for me would identify and apprise me of anything that needed to be fixed before the flight home and assure me of safety of flight. All the more confident of that because he was my transition CFI and was flying back with me, so he had skin in that game.
 
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Cart before the horse

I know how exciting the idea of buying an airplane can be. But you owe it to yourself to make an educated decision before putting down many tens of thousands of dollars. There is no substitute for, and the faa expects, you to know the rules for EAB aircraft. Yes, you may work on it. ‘Major’ work may require a return to phase 1 operating limits. You will have to have an A&P do a once a year ‘condition’ inspection. Currently it is not legal to pay or otherwise compensate a cfi for instructing you in your EAB plane. But the FAA will give you a waiver, all done by email (search ‘LODA’). You know you cannot currently fly this plane to Mexico? You may absolutely not rent it to a non-owner, but part-owners (partnerships) are allowed? Don’t get me wrong, I love my RV. But you don’t want to find any unpleasant surprises, after the sale. BTW, insurance for a new owner might be expensive, depending on your pilot experience. I recommend a call to Jenny at Gallagher agency (a VAF advertiser) to talk insurance. The call is free.
 
Slowing down...

I was getting too excited and ahead of myself. Realized I just missed that feeling of flying and I really have to slow down and dot all my T's and cross... something...

This thread has been great and I've found so much helpful information. I can't thank you all enough. Already talked to some amazing people because of it, and thanks to all of you, hopefully, you've protected me from myself.

I'm sure there will be more questions and I know there will be answers out there now.

Thanks.
 
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