Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Tom Sullivan on December 14, 2016 at 9:57pm

Hi, Richard,  As far as I know, you can annual your aircraft at any time and it resets the calendar for the next 12 months. Tom

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Permalink Reply by John Austin on December 14, 2016 at 10:09pm

Sure, you can annual it "early" if you want.  I got my airworthiness certificate in July 2012, so I've done some of my annuals late in the 12th month and signed it off the 1st of the following month, the last one being signed-off in October of this year. I wanted to move it back into more pleasant weather when it is not so darned hot in the hangar!  I'm going to leave it in October now - don't want to move the annual into cold weather!

John

N750A

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Permalink Reply by Phil Smith on December 15, 2016 at 12:40pm

Richard,

There are some items in your question of "annual" for your plane.  I assume it is a EAB  registration therefore several things apply that are not the same as a normally certified aircraft.  This is easily confused as the normal conversation always refers to an " annual inspection".

1. First of all; the inspection is called a "condition inspection" and is defined in several places in the FAA and EAA information and should be done to a checklist for your type aircraft - there are also generic "condition inspection" checklists that would be acceptable. Also the wording you put in the log books is very different than that of an "annual inspection"
2. Did you build the aircraft and do you have a repairman's certificate for that aircraft and registration number? If not you must have the aircraft inspected by a mechanic with at least an A & P rating.
3. I think that the 12 calendar month information is correct - you would just reset the clock.
4. If you built and had the airplane signed off you might be advised to re-contact your DAR for guidance of verbiage and the inspection process.
5. Or in the case that you bought the airplane try to contact the DAR that signed it off or go to your friendly FSDO for advice.

Bottom line it should all be very clear and easily understood if you do a little research.  Don't mean to pontificate but IMHO it's better to have it all done right in case of problems on down the road or when you want to sell the plane.

Phil Smith, A&P

Buhl ID

CH - 701

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Permalink Reply by Rodney Hall on December 16, 2016 at 11:42am

The sign offs should be in the operating limitations.

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Permalink Reply by Bob Pustell on December 18, 2016 at 8:08pm

Another thing to ask is --- Have you obtained a Repairman's Certificate? When you are the person who built the plane you can indeed do your own Condition Inspection as well as sign off major modifications and stuff. Basically you can do anything to your plane that an Inspection rated A&P/AI can do to a certified plane. But, in order to do that you need to have the FAA issue you what is basically a limited A&P Certificate with the limitation being that you are only approved to work on that one plane that you built, specified by serial number on the limited Certificate. Without that FAA issued Certificate you are NOT legal to sign off your annual Condition Inspection, you need the actual certificate, being the builder does not alone give you the right.

I would expect you knew that tid-bit already but just in case, I thought I should mention it. The job is not done until the paperwork is correct.

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