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Old 9th Jun 2013, 10:24
  #47 (permalink)  
Pilot DAR
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Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Ontario, Canada
Age: 63
Posts: 5,624
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Can't see the weight schedule being wrong
I will objectively state that weight and balance records for GA aircraft are for my personal experience (and in this case, that lots) the most screwed up and untrustworthy documents I encounter in my work.

My Transport Canada advisers have many times told me to pay extra attention to this, as they have been made aware that not every Cessna was actually weighed before leaving the factory. Some had optimistic weight and balance documents prepared based upon similarity.

When I am doing approval work for which the W&B is critical, I witness the weighing. My experience has been to see it done right first time about 20% of the time. It would not have been redone had I not squawked. Imagine my client's surprise in my insisting that I travel from Toronto to Vancouver to witness a weighing, to find that indeed, it was more than 150 pounds optimistic in its first attempt.

I ask the shops who weigh aircraft for the approvals I do the weigh them three times, changing the scales under the wheels each time. You'd be amazed at the surprised looks on their faces when they have trouble getting within 1% each of the three times, and we end up weighing even more times to actually determine the weight.

Be suspicious in the extreme if an aircraft has a W&B which seems optimistically light, or less than factory or previous weights. It is very rare for aircraft to get lighter with age, unless lots of equipment is removed, and not at all replaced. The weight of a full IFR suite of avionics is rarely more than 15 pounds in a GA aircraft, and there's not much else which gets removed and replaced.

Remember that if the weight is not correct, and C of G position probably is not either, and that could affect the aircraft handling even more dramatically than a wrong weight.
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