Cockney Steve
Being now well into the second Cessna 152 SID's check I find myself thinking that the program is not such a bad thing but the introduction could have been a bit more user friendly and introduced more slowly.
I have always maintained my aircraft to a reasonable standard and for me parts of the SID's were a compleat waist of time however there are some things that had gone unnoticed that needed looking at, these have mainly been reliability issues....... I have not found anything that would have resulted in a safety critical situation within the next 1000 hours.
What it has done is given me an aircraft that all my customers say flys much better, I would guess because the control rigging is now perfect and a large number of control pulleys are new giving a very low friction control curcuit. From my point of view it has given me an aircraft that I have not touched all summer apart from scheduled maintenance.
What is clear is that aircraft that have had no corrosion control program and live outside will be very expensive to put through the SID's and I have no doubt that these are the aircraft that Cessna want to take out of the air.
I now know that will have two aircraft that will be reliable for the next few years and that can operate reliably at a reasonable cost and are so insured that whatever happens I will recover my investment and should a pilot be unfortunate enough to wreck one of them he will not have me presenting him with a bill for more than the £500 insurance excess.
It remains to be seen if anyone manages to continue operating under insured old wrecks after the SID's deadline next year, personally I think it will be much harder to do so but on the whole the SID's will have been worth doing in terms of future reliability, safety and customer satisfaction.