Q - How a Flying Club Works for an Owner

[arnoha]

Oof!

One difference between a club plane and a solely owned plane is that a private pilot owner is permitted to do this as preventative maintenance under Part 43.

BTW, was this battery lithium? Or was it alkaline?

O-ring was all labor. And a guess on my part...it was done with a bunch of squawks and wasn't broken out. So I just doled out dollars to everything to make it add up. My totals add up, but there's some guessing on individual items.

I'm allowed to do preventative mx, too. Club allows it, but the odds that I'm there and available at the moment it's needed is low. When your plane flies nearly every day, it can't be waiting days for me to find time to do it.

TBH, I don't know. The battery was $45, and that includes the club's markup on parts (20%, I think?). The rest is labor. So I'm thinking alkaline. I was just incensed that they spent crazy money fixing a 121.5 MHz ELT that failed when I could have used that money to replace it with a 406 MHz that will actually do some good in an accident. Yeah, a new ELT would have been 3X the price, but it would have been a good upgrade, instead of throwing good money after bad.

This happens sometimes: they get lazy and just order the Cessna part overnight without checking if there is some better way to fix it. I had the same issue with the fuel senders. That ended up being surprise replaced with more Cessna garbage before I finally took it in hand and handled the CiES upgrade myself. On the other hand, if I was involved in every decision, my plane would be down all the time waiting on my input. It's a balance.

 

[asicer]

I was just incensed that they spent crazy money fixing a 121.5 MHz ELT that failed when I could have used that money to replace it with a 406 MHz that will actually do some good in an accident. Yeah, a new ELT would have been 3X the price, but it would have been a good upgrade, instead of throwing good money after bad.

And a newer ELT with its lithium batteries will return a couple pounds to your useful load and has a 6 year replacement interval.

Oops, didn't mean to make you more mad.

 

[arnoha]

Oof!

One difference between a club plane and a solely owned plane is that a private pilot owner is permitted to do this as preventative maintenance under Part 43.

BTW, was this battery lithium? Or was it alkaline?

Here's the actual listed work from that invoice:

#61857-Replace dipstick o-ring.
#61914-Troubleshoot for issues with no issues found. Works as
advertised
#61990- Inspected with no flat spots found.
#61912- Cleaned up sharp edge.
Serviced nose strut with nitrogen.

The total was $391.10, which was 3.25 hours labor only. The number on the left are renter squawk numbers.

 

[arnoha]

And a newer ELT with its lithium batteries will return a couple pounds to your useful load and has a 6 year replacement interval.

Oops, didn't mean to make you more mad.

Yeah, too late now. With the new battery in place and the switch fixed, I can't bring myself to spend 2 AMU to now throw it out and replace with a 406. Ask me again in a couple years. They refunded me the markup on the work to placate me, so I ended up getting things at their cost. (It was outside labor, was sent to an avionics shop. That's marked up like parts.) Not completely happy, but dropping the matter for now.

 

[arnoha]

Here's the actual listed work from that invoice:

#61857-Replace dipstick o-ring.
#61914-Troubleshoot for issues with no issues found. Works as
advertised
#61990- Inspected with no flat spots found.
#61912- Cleaned up sharp edge.
Serviced nose strut with nitrogen.

The total was $391.10, which was 3.25 hours labor only. The number on the left are renter squawk numbers.

@Shane C this reminds me...another thing to get used to is paying for labor for nothing. There's two items on the list that ended up being nothing. Renters don't really understand the implications of squawking things. But the club needs to do real work to chase each one. The lawsuits from not doing so, should something happen, would be big. FAA would shut you down, too, as they do audits. Just part of the process, so you budget for it.