Want to get my Private Pilot's License but wife is scared Ill get killed

[GCSTroop]

Originally Posted by sunsprit

I have no basis to doubt what you saw looking at the aircraft that you did ...

But I've looked under the dash and poked around at least several hundred GA aircraft over the last 30 years ... between pre-purchase inspections and poking around at other aircraft in shops that were opened up for annual inspections, or nosing around other aircraft at fly-ins where proud owners were showing off their planes ....

And I'd disagree with you that many GA aircraft look so poorly crafted. The original equipment in some, later avionics shops mods ... even many owner installed harnesses/wiring using supplied aircraft quality harnesses from GA targeted avionics retailers ... has looked pretty good to me.

The avionics shops that assisted with the upgrades in my own aircraft were experts in doing work properly and did very neat and safe installs in my bird. There was a lot of pride in the workmanship and these guys do this level of work everyday. I recently looked at a year model twin to my aircraft that was being parted out by a shop (after being totall'ed out from a hard nose gear landing which crumpled the firewall, trashed the prop/engine, and tore up the gearbox, wing tips, portions of the fueslage) ... and the gorgeous instrument panel IFR certified GPS and electronic panel was spectacularly done by a regional avionics shop to superb workmanship levels ... was in excellent condition. Unfortunately, they wanted more for the panel and an install in my plane than my plane is worth, so we couldn't reach a deal.

I know that my IA's wouldn't sign off anything like you described as being airworthy and they get pretty persnickity about these airworthiness and proper workmanship details. Their liability exposure is too great to miss such details.

Of all the GA aircraft I've looked at, only two in all those years were totally trashed in the avionics/electrical systems ... both early C180's, both planes assembled from multiple scrapped donor aircraft and put together very haphazardly (and likely illegally considering the mismatch of components from various models that didn't fit properly; whoever signed these off as airworthy after any of the repair stages should have his IA ticket pulled). It wasn't just the avionics that were junk, it was virtually every aspect of the aircraft that were blatantly wrong and not functioning properly. IMO, there were many obvious problems with these aircraft and the avionics/electronics were merely another manifestation of the overall attitude/concept/execution of these birds ... not some hidden feature rendering them unairworthy or cause to do an annual to discover the problems of this area.

Perhaps this is a regional issue, and in your area folk are less than stringent about compliance ... so you saw a high % of poorly maintained/altered aircraft. I know that folk around me take a high degree of pride in their aircraft ... and especially with flight hours being reduced in the last few years due to increased fuel/operating costs ... that there are a lot more hours spent on maintenance and keeping the aging aircraft in tip-top shape. Folk have the time and interest to see that everything is tickety-boo in their aircraft these days .... and take a lot of pride in showing off just how well maintained and proper everything is on their pride and joy. I can't even stop for fuel without somebody wanting to show off their aircraft these days.

Like you, I wouldn't just jump into anybody's GA aircraft without wanting to look around a bit and satisfy myself that it's airworthy ... but I believe I can get a pretty good impression of how a plane is maintained without having to do an annual on it to know. My concern here is that you're suggesting to a prospective wanna-be pilot that the state of the GA fleet is pretty poor, likely unairworthy, and that avionics installations are found with rat's nests and BIC lighter soldered connections. I haven't found that to be the case ... and I've never seen anything that looked like a cigarette lighter soldered connection.

These are all very good points, sunspirit. As I had mentioned in my previous post, I have worked almost exclusively military or civilian "heavies" for most of my career. Though this was a few years ago (maybe 4 or 5?), I do remember my buddy calling me because, to him, he had the "perfect storm" of messed up airplanes and he needed some serious avionics help. I didn't ask many of the details as to what his emergency was, I just remember there being a lot of airplanes that all seemed to hit his place at once and every one of them I checked had very subpar avionics work done on them.

I am familiar with the newer avionics installations that you're talking about and, indeed, they do have some mighty fine craftsmanship behind them. I guess it's hard to explain but if your first real taste of General Aviation was 10-12 aircraft whose wiring jobs looked like the gnarled mess you get when your weedeater head breaks apart, the only impression one could have is "Is this really what GA is all about?!"

My experience was anecdotal and my argument should not have cast a wide blanket over all of GA - especially when I honestly don't have the experience in that arena other than the 10-12 aircraft I worked that weekend.

I do remember looking behind the panels of many of them and being blown away by what I saw but, as bad as it sounds, I probably fixed half of them by re-crimping a pin or re-soldering something. I do know I brought up the state of the remainder of the wiring and that's when he told me it was up to the owner/operator to spend the money to repair it. So, most of the problems were caused by fairly insignificant repairs BUT they truly were symptoms of a larger problem. That's kind of what made my head spin and why I had such serious ethical concerns over it.

[GregW]

OP - Your wife should worry more THE HOUSEHOLD BUDGET than your getting killed in an accident. You can buy life insurance but that will not cover the hourly flying costs.