Question for A&P's / IA's

[NazgulAir]

What would be a sensible way for a private aircraft owner (with another day job) to gain technical experience in the GA field?
We are the "Owner" part of "Owner assisted maintenance" -- we assist a qualified technician in doing maintenance on our own aircraft (a complex single) -- but if it is possible to gain an FAA-A&P qualification ourselves as well. Not in order to undercut the people who have done excellent work for us, but to be able to deal with any technical problems on long journeys and play an active part in the preventative maintenance process.
In addition to the practical side, what study material would you recommend?

[muduckace]

Practical study material or study material that will help you pas a written exam? As far as the exam goes just study the answers to the test (i think there are about 3000 possible q&a's).

As for the rest of it you could save money looking for an A&P that wants to trade his experience for yours, doccument every task you perform and have him sign the doccument. Try to cover all ATA's and get with a FSDO, I forgot how much experience in years you need to get a fed to sign you off to take the test's. That would be the least painless and least expensive process in my oppinion.

[piggybank]

My memory may not be correct, I did my A&P in 1975 and I think you needed 36 months experience (provable/documented) for the FAA to let you take the exams.

[good spark]

naz
iirc the caa used to publish a list called pilot maintenance, this was a list of pretty standard defects- stuff like landing lamps or nav lamps burnt out that pilots could rectify without any special certification, quite what the situation is now i dont know but i`m sure someone else can advise


gs

[NazgulAir]

muduckace
We are not located in the USA and we are already doing what you suggest, performing part of our own maintenance under supervision of our A&P and have them sign off on it. But
(a) unfortunately this does not count as experience towards gaining a license
(b) it would take too many years to do it this way, since our plane is hopefully not spending its life in the workshop
(c) not all possible jobs are done on it, so this kind of training would be patchy and incomplete
(d) most of what we've done is a once-only kind of thing. You need to do things many times to gain a useful skill.
I've already applied for a position of apprentice tech, but organizations are not overly keen to employ a part-time elderly person no matter how much other experience I may be able to bring in.
Are there any books you can recommend for the theory? Service manuals do tell a lot, but they're not everything.

piggybank
36 months, wow, would that be some 5000 documented hours? Provable/documented how and by whom?

good spark
I'm not sure if ten years of LAMS owner-maintenance on an AA5 would count for much. Most of what was in LAMS has been made part of EASA's approved owner-maintenance actions list and yes, we've done most of what is on that list and that can be done without requiring expensive special tooling. In addition, we've done and are doing other work under supervision, just like a trainee would do... except that we're not getting study credits for this work. I am looking for a sensible way to increase our knowledge and our qualification to do things. It will help us because qualified technicians knowledgeable on our aircraft type are rare.

Thanks for taking the trouble to respond to my question.

[piggybank]

Nazgul air Yes I wrote iit all down and for anything new I still do, I have over twenty years of worksheets, right down to part numbers, serials and what the job involved and why. In 1975 the lady at the FAA was entertaining when she looked through my military work on Hueys. The bullet holes and blade repairs got a passing comment, but the 'manufacture' of a T53 fuel control from two with damaged cases got the 'you won't do this on civilian aircraft' retort from her.

[NazgulAir]

piggybank

Is there something like a downloadable sample worksheet that I can start using from now on?
Will it be enough when the work detailed is signed by the A&P that supervised the work?
I spend quite some time on the administrative/logistics side, which means sorting out/tracing/ordering parts, maintaining logs, keeping logs and AD compliance lists, etc. It hasn't been a day job of course, but this is stuff done to make the work for the technicians easy. Is it possible to get credits for this kind of work?
Would the unsupervised owner maintenance count for anything, if it is logged properly in a worksheet? We keep track of everything we do.LOL some of the military work would be unusual for a civilian! Still they could be useful skills.

Thanks, Naz

[piggybank]

Ref down loadable worksheets, I bet there are. Most of my stuff is just neatly written or typed. Make sure the aircraft type is separated from different types. On this kind of sheet you obviously cannot separate the jobs into ATA categories, and in my experience no one has questioned this. CASA have special SOEs book but they accepted my experience sheets probably because they were clear and distinct in each job done.

Experience required is on the tools, stores supply has no use in the experience sheets.

[NazgulAir]

Experience required is on the tools, stores supply has no use in the experience sheets.Ah, thanks for setting me right on that one.
As for the worksheets, I'll ask around. I suppose I can make my own, as long as I know what it must contain to be accepted evidence.
Still, I wish I'd known about worksheets fifteen years ago; that would have saved me some time now.

[piggybank]

Make sure your experience sheets have the same entry as the maintenance log. Refer to the page number and date of the tech log, what the job was and why it was done. Refer to the maintenance manual and page paragraph etc that you did the maintenance to.

[NazgulAir]

Which maintenance log? The aircraft logbooks, the supervisor's log, the log of the maintenance organization (which won't list me because I am not a paid employee)? Ideally, every one of these... lol

[NutLoose]

This is the EASA logbook for recording experience, can be downloaded and printed,

CAP 741: Aircraft Maintenance Engineers Log Book | Publications | CAA (http://www.caa.co.uk/application.aspx?catid=33&pagetype=65&appid=11&mode=detail&id=1309)

may be of help.

FAA info here on licences

Licenses & Certificates (http://www.faa.gov/licenses_certificates/)

He means although you are not certifying anything the experience you list needs to correspond to the workpack or log book entry for that task, so if you say put down spark plugs serviced 12 7 10... you would expect the work pack for the job in question to reflect that on that date, or the logbook entry..... that way it is checkable to ensure the work details you submit have substance...cannot see why if you are supervised that you cannot sign the work packs in the mechs slot as you are supervised with the LAE oversigning you as the inspector, if the FAA ones work like the EASA ones that is.

[NazgulAir]

Nutloose -- thanks for the CAP number. If I add the ATA category to this and also keep an electronic log, it can be sorted into categories for easy reference and presented in that way as well.
I've studied the FAA data in detail already. The process is pretty clear and it looks as if realistically it's going to take some 5 years for me to get to the interview stage given that the effort is not a full-time occupation and I am dependent on the goodwill of my mentors. It's certainly doable though.

piggybank -- yes, I figured that cross-verification is a requirement, just like the way a pilot logbook entry must be verifyable in ATC logs and aircraft logbooks. This is no problem as all the supervised work done has been officially recorded and signed.
The unsupervised LAMS stuff is different, though, in that the only logged entry is the aircraft logbook and no A&P signoff has been required.

Thanks guys (edit: or girls), you've been a real help in getting me to rise off my butt and take a wobbly first step.

[NazgulAir]

Update: Hurray! My supervising technicians agreed to sign off the logged work I've done under their supervision this last year. It's a beginning...