private ops only....
the aviation paperwork mania can be traced back to a maintenance incident in england in WW1.
an aircraft was in for a repair. this involved making or repairing a new mainspar.
in the gluing of the ply webs one slipped and glued out of position.
the crew assembled it in the aircraft, completed the repairs and returned the aircraft to service.
one of the young upper class chappies took it out flying and was killed in a midair structural failure.
the english establishment was incensed that one of their lords had been killed "in what was so obviously a sabotage". despite an intensive investigation they could pin the blame on no one. So in response the english created an elaborate system of signing for work so that it could never occur again unpunished.
as far as I can tell aviation paperwork spiralled off from there.
when I was building my Turbulent I gained an interesting insight as to what may really have occurred.
Turbulent fuselages are built as two flat sides which are then erected with cross members into the curved sided fuselage.
The curve of the front is notoriously hard to bend into place.
So I built the framework as an easier to construct 3D frame then glued on the ply.
I jigged the first fuselage side horizontal and glued on a large side panel.
this was all weighted down and I sat and watched that it didn't move until the glue in the pot was well and truly setting off. I then walked up to the house for a cup of tea.
on return I was horrified to see that the panel had slid off the glue area as per the english WW1 experience. I was able to break the glue bond and rescued the job.
why did it move when for the 2 hours previously it had shown no inclination to do?
I came to the conclusion that my footsteps out of the workshop set up a vibration that upset the positioning of the weighted panel.
....and I would conclude that that was what happened in the original WW1 incident. i.e. the poms got it wrong. no one actually sabotaged anything.
the guys probably just had a tea break in the middle of the work and the panel vibrated off position.
in any case we now have an insane system of paperwork that some see as more important than the actual aircraft.