Then there's also the preparation of the new battery. Read up what you are supposed to do, and if you're fitting a new battery in 19 minutes you are not doing it properly.
You'd be the first one in for a whinge if there was some problem with the new battery, too! And you'd be jumping all over the place if you found that the ginger beer hadn't fitted your new battery properly!!! (Like, if he did it in 19 minutes)

Perhaps that too!....not all are like that though ;)

Businesses aren't allowed to put a margin on their parts now? Why should they supply the battery at cost and then charge you 19mins labour ($26.91 on a $85 hourly rate). That type of business model wouldn't allow them to turn the power on so they could print the invoice! Just because aviation is your hobby doesn't mean it's everyone else's:ugh:

If the battery was a dry charged gill lead acid type the activation and initial charging instructions start in chapter 5.2 of the below linked manual
This would take Substantially longer than 19 mins.

http://www.gillbatteries.com/pdfs/Fl...ice_Manual.pdf

Hmmm....the regulatory burden.
Wonder how long till we see NZ maintenance only workshops in Australia?
Sensible regulations, half the maintenace costs aint rocket science!

So activating, charging and installing the battery in accordance with the manufacturers instructions to ensure that optimum performance and service life are achieved is due to "regulatory burden"

Anyone know of any NZ-approved maintenance outfits on the east coast?

Serious question

Q) Why is it that the United States is the only country in the world where a mechanic can work on a private aircraft on his/her own WITHOUT an approved maintenance organisation ?

The United States invented the aircraft Boeing/Douglas/Lockheed/Martin also internet, telephone, electricity, lightbulb went to moon and still has by far the largest numbers of aircraft no 121 air carrier crashed for a few years 7100 flights cancelled due ice snow ONE DAY last week.

Did the Europeans bring in all these rules ?

Q2) Why does Australia have a love/hate relationship with USA ?

On one hand bloody yanks are dodgy look at the 1500 United Airlines/Delta Jets not as good as Qantas ( car full of engineers to sign the tech log) , the other oh in the US you can do this this and this ???? :confused:

To recap a bit. Our twin 100 hourly's cost generally &5k - $8k with the price of a 100 hourly with no remedial work being around the $5k mark. The LAME we use is the cheapest / best of 4 I have direct experience with. He's at a regional airport where his hangar rent is relatively low.

When I speak with other twin owners they seem to support that $5 k is pretty much as good as it gets.

I became curious and started looking at US costs. This is where I got the figures of 32 hours / $2800 + parts ( or about $3,000 total). I also searched some forums ( notably Beechtalk) where I found some good, authoritative and recent posts where twin owners were reporting actual billed costs in line the prices I found advertised - so they seem real.

So, there seems to be about a $2k ( exchange rate adjusted) gap between US prices and Australian prices.

Why?

One reason is the typical hourly shop rare in the uS is $85 vs the Australian $100. This is I suspect mainly about higher hangar rental, insurance, electricity, etc.

But 32 hours x $100 = $3200 + $300 for oil & filters & music consumables and there is still a fair gap to typical US prices.

Why does it seem to take more labour hours to do the same job in Australia? Bearing in mind we are working on Americam built aircraft with American specified maintenance schedules. In fact we use the CASA schedule 5 which is reputed to be easier / less thorough / cheaper than the manufacturer schedules.

The argument that it takes longer to service these old aircraft because of calendar airframe age us patent nonsense. Except for the commercially used twins ( eg Chieftan) most twins are below 5,000 hours total time and are more commonly hangar end than singles. Our aircraft is a low time, over maintained, babied thing compared with any car, boat, or other similar mechanical device.

If there are CASA imposed work practices that slow down productivity, then we should be trying to push back against it. There is a strong argument that high maintenance costs are detrimental to safety. The higher the cost of a basic inspection, the more likely an owner is likely to not do additional preventative maintenance.

The reason it's expensive isn't just the aviation regulations. It's regulations in general and the box-ticking, paper-war, arse-covering mentality that our society has embraced. All of this stuff has to be paid for somehow and the guys that do this stuff won't wait 90 or 180 days to be paid.

We had a box-ticker come visit our factory unit (strata titled) to do the 3-monthly "fire safety check". He's paid by someone (everyone?) to swan around checking lights, doors, extinguishers, ticking boxes on his special iPad application and collecting signatures, just because some lawyer types decided it was a very necessary thing, irrespective of the cost-benefit.

What happened to personal responsibility? It's the cheapest way of dealing with the problem, usually. Insurance premiums are also a great motivator!

This is just one example of our follow-the-rules-based culture that we have to fund somehow. Of course the government loves it because it's all part of the make-work, full employment mantra. To hell with efficiency and the meaning of life.

4 Holer, perhaps you should familiarise yourself with the following CASA publication... Schedule 8 of CAR 1988.

http://www.casa.gov.au/wcmswr/_asset...rth/42zc_1.pdf

Here are a few gems from this document detailing what a PILOT can do.

Replacement of side windows in an unpressurised aircraft
Replacement of seat belts or harnesses.
Replacement of bulbs, reflectors, glasses, lenses or lights.
Replacement, cleaning, or setting gaps of spark plugs.
Replacement of batteries.
Changing oil filters or air filters.
Changing or replenishing engine oil or fuel.

why do hangars have lockable doors?

so that an owner can do maintenance undisturbed :E

I so wish there was a " like" button

VH-XXX, so your system allows a pilot to do some maintenance change/adjust spark plugs, change oil and oil filters BUT THE ENGINEER IS NOT ALLOWED to do it. The engineer MUST be working under a companies maintenance approval.

As they say in Texas " YOU CANNOT FIX STUPID" :ok:

Hi Mr 4 holer,
I understand under the current rules an engineer can fix defects without a company approval, he cannot however issue a maintenance release and fully jack an aircraft off the ground. He can perform an engine change without an approval.
This will probably change when CASA understands the new regs.

I might be dead by then

Add to that, an owner who thinks his toy is worth way way more than realistic market value and who can't really be bothered with you when you contact him.

The value of an aeroplane in Australia is the same as it would cost to buy and import a similar model from the US, no more, certainly not double!

Bob :ok:

Post Of The Year contender there mate :D

Simple formula, (((Price in USD x Exchange rate) + Ferry/Freight) + GST) + approx $15k to get it on the register.

Just a bit more on "mark-ups" here.....

Suppose you've just fitted a battery that you sold to your favourite customer. You paid $300 for it, and sold it to your favourite customer for $300 - because he's such a good bloke! And because your such a champion engineer, and such a good bloke too, you charge 19 minutes of your time, for the work.

Next week he's back. There's something wrong with the battery you just sold him. The aircraft wont start! Quick - you must drop whatever you're doing and save the situation.

So you dump your second favourite customer, (whose aircraft you were working on right then) and run off to do what you can to help your mate, who's by then threatening legal action.

You find that the new battery is faulty. You did a great job, but the battery you just sold was a dud when it left the factory. The bloke who sold it to you says "No worries, just bring it back and we'll sell you another one. When we send the one we sold last week back to the bloke we bought it from, and he checks it out and confirms it's a dud, we'll give you a credit for it. That should only take three months or so. You'll have to pick up the tab for the freight, though, and there's some forms to fill out."

So you pull the dud out, get another new one, and fit it. It all took a couple of hours, and cost you another $300. At least your customers aircraft is going again, but he's not happy, and reminds you that he'll expect a fair discount on his next 100 hourly, because he's been jerked around. Well, at least that's better than getting sued, like his lawyer wanted, because he missed that charter. Yeah, he's a real good bloke.

Then you go back to your hangar, and your second favourite customer is waiting around to pick up the aircraft you'd promised an hour ago, and he's not happy......

You did nothing wrong, but didn't make wages for the day, because last week you were a good bloke!

This scenario might not happen all the time, but it does happen. A reasonable mark-up, allows the MRO to smooth out a few bumps so it can provide a better service.

DB Cooper, I think you misread UITA's post. He was not complaining about being charged 19 minutes for fitting. Nor was he complaining about a margin on the battery. He was complaining about being charged 3 hours to fit a replacement battery which was fully charged, ready to go in the hangar with the aircraft. At Aussie labour rates, I'm guessing this more than equalled the cost of the battery.

Pretty much the only use for dry charged batteries now is Aviation. They were phased out in automotive use nearly 40 years ago. The main reason they were phased out is that there was a very high warranty rate on them because workshops sold them after filling with acid but not charging before fitting them. Just fill with acid, put them in the car and take the money.

Dry batteries are made by assembling "formed" plates. That is plates that are put in a sulphuric acid bath and charged under the normal regime then dried. They restore a significant amount of charge immediately upon activation and will function immediately. However, alternators never fully charge a battery, so they will never fully restore in service and suffer premature failure.

The recommended retail price of the battery includes acid which is shipped separately in bottles and an allowance for the retailer to fill the acid and bench charge the battery.

In the old days, the most common cause of warranty was broken inter-cell welds. Improved manufacturing equipment eliminated this in the late eighties. That leaves the two major causes of warranty as sulphation from storage of wet batteries too long (lead acid batteries in storage require charging every 10 weeks) or in the case of dry batteries cutting corners in the activation process. Real manufacturing warranty issues on lead-acid batteries is below 1%.

All of this is, of course, being eclipsed by valve regulated lead-acid batteries which are sometimes called sealed lead-acid batteries. These use a very different manufacturing technology which the Japanese & Taiwanese manufacturers led the development to bring them to mass markets in the eighties & nineties. These batteries are much better for aircraft applications.

The third category are the spiral wound batteries (eg Optima & Orbital batteries). The development of these is routed in the old Australian Pulsar batteries developed by Pacific Dunlop. They are wet lead acid batteries (but sealed) and would be really excellent in aircraft, but no-one is interested in the cost of certifying them.

This is a long winded answer, but it illustrates that there is just a lot of nonsense talked to justify excessive labour charges. There should be enough margin in the battery price to cover filling & activation. The labour charged to fit the battery should be the reasonable time it takes to fit it and if you feel the need to add additional costs to cover warranty, then I'd suggest that you might need to take a look in the mirror because 3/4 of "warranty"claims on modern lead-acid batteries lie with the practices of the reseller / fitter.