Originally Posted by
Rod1
The CAA are supporting a proposal to extend the range of aircraft eligible for an LAA permit to include aircraft up to 2000kg, 300mph, 450hp and 5 seats! This would include things like the Yak 52. Aircraft with a c of a will have to stay, for now at least, but CAA permit types will be able to transfer.
Rod1
Without wanting to wee on anyone's parade, I would caution against breaking open the champagne and celebrating the fact that Yak-52 maintenance costs will drop to those of, say a Pitts S1, if this change of circumstances occurs.
Having until recently been part of both an LAA Permit Pitts S1 syndicate, and a Yak-52 syndicate - getting on for 5 and 6 years respectively - I have a modicum of insight into the engineering requirements of each. I sold my share in the Pitts partly - only partly - because it became clear that when the 50 hour checks and annual came around, it was largely muggins who spent a day or so rolling around on the floor in a Waltham hangar before and after the event spannering the bloody thing. I grant you that the major reason for selling the Pitts was that as a result of the excellent cuisine at Waltham, the most stressful part of any flight was getting in and out of it. I remain a member of the Yak syndicate - the seating arrangements are more than ample.
Regardless - a Pitts, RV, Cub or any of the other airframes currently operating on LAA Permits are a far cry from a Yak-52, which possesses some complex, arcane and downright odd systems, the spannering of which I personally would not undertake in a month of Sundays. A look at the toolkit which comes with a Yak-52 should be evidence enough - I can identify the purpose of about 10% of the contents of ours - the set of weapons-grade spanners and the great-big-sod-off hammer. The rest of the implements, frankly frightening pieces of metal worthy of Torquemada himself, have no clearly identifiable purpose, but the fact the Soviets decided they'd be a good thing to have in a field toolkit - they weren't given to whimsy in these affairs - is another indication that there are things in a Yak-52 the fertling with of which is best left to those qualified in the appropriate fertling art, and those wise in the ways of such fertling are thin on the ground.
Obviously, some relaxation of the frankly ludicrously short mandated official lifetimes of some components would be more than welcome, as would a migration to paperwork oversight by the LAA - because they're nice people at the end of the day, and understand we're just operating the aircraft for fun, a concept which the CAA Permit-to-Fly infrastructure has never really understood.
Whatever changes occur, I suspect the same people who spanner Yaks today will be those who maintain them after the change of arrangements, and they'll be paid to do it - and I have, generally, no problem with that.