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drone_pilot

Well Known Member
I started building my RV-7A in 2004. I started by keeping a builders log in a notebook. At some point, the notebook turned up missing so I hand coded a website using my service providers server. The provider at that time closed up shop and so I put the website to CD. Somewhere in that process I decided to go with Kitlog Pro. It was going great then crashed one day. Tried to restore from backup and could not get the backup to restore. Gave up. Started writing dates of when I completed steps on the instructions themselves. Reinstalled Kitlog and then lost my hard disk after several months! Geesh! Now my build log is on a yellow paper tablets.

The delemna.......My airplane is nearing completion and my build log is scattered across all kinds of media in all different formats. I do have all pictures from the start though. How big of a deal is this build log during the final inspection? How should I deal with this issue?
 
Ask your DAR or FAA inspector before they come out. When mine heard/saw that I had hundred's of pictures on a portable computer that's all he wanted to see.
 
All I presented to the FAA inspector was approx 24 pictures that were printed 4 to a page on plain printer paper and that was sufficient. I was only in the pictures of the empennage construction. The rest of the pictures were just different stages of the build.
 
I had most pictures in a phone that went T/U. I kept a paper log where I had a one or two sentence entry for each significant task completed, with date. I never showed the FAA inspector a single picture and he barely looked at the book once he saw the depth and quantity of entries. They want to know that you did the work (for repairman's cert any way) and that it was done by an amateur. By the time I handed him the book, he was already convinced that I built it and knew what I was doing based upon the dialog we had and stories that I told him about the construction process.

All that said, this depends greatly on the individual person that does your inspection. People are different. Remember, pictures are recommended, but not technically required by my interpretation of the FAA docs. They are just a good aid for the inspector to get comfortable the you did what you said you did, but there are other ways to achieve that.

Larry
 
Thanks everyone for your replies. That is helpful/encouraging to know. I have built everything except riveting/pro sealing the tanks and have tons of pictures. On top of that, I know this airplane and I can show the inspector the places where I had "challenges". I don't think it will be hard to convince him/her that I built this thing. On top of that, I have lots of notes, just scattered out all over the different mediums. I may chisel some notes in some rock and then I should have all mediums covered! :D

Thanks again!
 
Ben, that hard drive that crashed can be put in another computer as a second drive and you can still pull the data off it.

Tim
 
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