Procedures
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Livin de island life
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GA aircraft, especially elderly ones, are all individual; you rarely find two with exactly the same fit and layout. In these situations I find a “custom” checklist totally reasonable. My own, 1960 aircraft, has a glass cockpit. I started with the manufacturer’s checklist, added the checklists for each added bit of gizmo, then sorted into a “flow” and sensible sections. Nothing is missed put that should be there and the new bits are in places that make sense.
Once things get bigger the layouts are similar, if not identical, and a standard checklist makes total sense with multiple crews who may each work with other people at any time. For a private owner, single pilot, you can make it work for YOU.
Once things get bigger the layouts are similar, if not identical, and a standard checklist makes total sense with multiple crews who may each work with other people at any time. For a private owner, single pilot, you can make it work for YOU.
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My own, 1960 aircraft, has a glass cockpit.
Sure, in some cases, there is no change to one or two of those (at least one will be affected, or why are you changing the aircraft?), but yes, some changes are transparent to the maintainer or pilot, so no ICA or supplement are required. In accordance with the criteria for "major modification", if one or more factors are significantly changed, an STC, or other approved data will be required, and those factors should be considered and dispositioned with a document as above.
Now we find that the very worthy legacy aircraft are attracting many mods, as owners update them, and this is great. And, these updates create mods on mods. The problem is that A mod may have a lower effect on the aircraft. A second low effect mod in installed, and now it combines with the first low effect mod, and the effect is not low any more. But neither STC suggests that it could combine with another mod to be higher effect, and certainly the original aircraft manufacturer (and certification basis) have no way of considering this. For this reason, every STC certificate includes the words:
.... Prior to incorporating this repair or modification, the installer shall establish that the interrelationship between this repair and any other modification(s) incorporated will not adversely affect the airworthiness of the modified product.
So I get that there may be a genuine need to amend a checklist to consider a new or changed system, that the 1960's manufacturer did not consider, and that may fall to the pilot/owner. Better something than nothing. And, if that amended checklist works well for the pilot/owner, that's helpful. But exercise caution, if a less familiar pilot flies the aircraft, and does not have the underlying familiarity or experience, a gap or flow discontinuity in the home made checklist could create a bigger safety deficiency. There is no one size fits all solution for this, and the more mods which go on legacy aircraft, the more complex the situation becomes. To add to the complexity, the newer private pilot, updating their newly purchased legacy aircraft may be creating a plane which even their instructor never knew, so they were never trained to handle correctly. I can assure readers that the 182 amphib with 27 STC'd mods, handed to the couple of hundred hour total experience PPL owner,
required quite a lot of additional training. I flew about 100 hours with this new pilot, who delightfully learned like a sponge. He would have had difficulty finding a flying school instructor who could have comprehensively trained him on that aircraft.
Awareness of the need for documented, disciplined procedures, which hopefully have been through a qualified evaluation for content and flow is a good idea.....
