Richard Collins P210

[USMCmech]

Collins owned a P210 for almost 30 years and put almost 9000 hours on the airplane before parking it. He recounted his long history with the airplane in this blog post.

http://airfactsjournal.com/2014/09/logbooks-long-wonderful-flight-beginning-turbulence/

One thing that sticks out to me is how unreliable certified airplanes can be, particularly new ones. The teething problems with one of the first pressurized singles would have been bad enough, but the P210 problems seemed particularly bad.

I will start building a RV-7 next year, and one common response I get from pilots is that they wouldn't dare set foot in an airplane that isn't certified by the FAA. They then blithely climb into a flight school rental that looks like a death trap.

 

[MercFE]

Plan on starting my RV build once I'm settled into the new house, as well.

I agree that there is some humor that pilots will trust a manufacturer of a "certified" plane over their own knowledge of the aircraft they could be building. However, the cost savings alone are what is driving me to build.

That, and my stepson that is planning on attending a 2 year Associates degree A&P course... Figure he's cheap labor!

 

[Itchy]

Anytime you have piston + pressurization, your gonna have a problem. Pnav, Duke, etc. All miserable in their own right. I have a hunk of time in the Pnav, there was rarely a complete non-issue trip.

 

[jynxyjoe]

Collins owned a P210 for almost 30 years and put almost 9000 hours on the airplane before parking it. He recounted his long history with the airplane in this blog post.

http://airfactsjournal.com/2014/09/logbooks-long-wonderful-flight-beginning-turbulence/

One thing that sticks out to me is how unreliable certified airplanes can be, particularly new ones. The teething problems with one of the first pressurized singles would have been bad enough, but the P210 problems seemed particularly bad.

I will start building a RV-7 next year, and one common response I get from pilots is that they wouldn't dare set foot in an airplane that isn't certified by the FAA. They then blithely climb into a flight school rental that looks like a death trap.

Lol. I'm probably one of the guys you complain about. I'm pretty sure Sam Waltons kid had a beautiful Long-EZ, and I'm sure it sparkled when it took that nose dive. While the C150 next door had more bugs than paint, it will continue to fly for the next 20 years with reg maintenance, and be more reliable than the day it came off the assembly line.

The certification process is a very good process because it's a continuing process that seeks to improve the initial design. Some pilots believe in the experimental cliche of "tried and true design", sounds great, but I've yet to see a plane come off the line perfect. You need a continuing mx process including documentation, and an investigative group who seeks trends and improves safety... well I think you need it. It's expensive, and I don't have a good cliche for what it provides the pilot.

Most experimentals begin looking for certification and a production cert for final assembly, however they never get there so they go experimental, and usually blame it on costs for FAA delays and regulation that makes many buyers nod their head like a lemming. Regulation is a four letter word for lemmings. The real story is, most startups can't get their act together and don't have the collective brain power and collective finances to complete an end to end reproduceable and repeatable product. It takes 150 design engineers sometimes for these little guys to innovate AND keep up with paperwork and tracking for years and decades later when a couple start falling out of the sky. It happened to Bill Lear on the Learjet, and he was brighter on his own than a 150 person engineer core.

The FAA is very realistic, companies mean well and design well but bad designs make it through (vtails on Beech) and years later someone has to correlated the accidents over a geographic area of 3.7 million square miles. The NTSB has authority to investigate on every crash, but can delegate when the aircraft is below 12500lbs and often does. Now I'm no NTSB expert, others on here are and can correct me if I'm off the mark. The NTSB hasnt made investigation a point but i might have decade old experience. The FAA and manufacturers end up relying on yearly mx paperwork and IAs who will find reoccuring problems through documentation which leads to fixes, but experimentals can exclude themselves from that loop.

RV does their damnest to be proactive, at one time they were trying to mimic the cert process but theyll never have anything as robust as the FAA. You make your own decisions and operate as safely as you can, but don't fall into the RV sales literature and believe it. I have 15 or 20 hours in two RVs. I'd fly one around I had inspected if I had one, but I wouldn't be taking it hard IFR.

Also please read the following attachments. Your p210 example sounds a little informed when you try to use that example to make a case for experimentals.

http://www.ntsb.gov/doclib/reports/2012/SS1201.pdf

 

[Itchy]

After reading the whole thing, I wish he expounded on the salvage vs sell question. What was the financial consideration of each? It was obviously airworthy for its final flight. Someone would buy it. Is he so wealthy that any concerns of liability selling it airworthy overrode financial considerations? Is there a history of estates suing prior owners? I know a lot of times, like old jets, the parts are worth more than the whole, but I doubt that to be true in a Cessna single. I may be quite wrong though.

This is where he flew it to on that final flight:
http://atlantaairrecovery.com/
Interesting slide show.

 

[killbilly]

I've given a great deal of thought to the idea of buying a very used certificated airplane vs. a kit build like an RV-4 something similar. To me, it seems like you get a tremendous amount of performance in a kit build vs. a certificated aircraft for the same amount of money.

I wouldn't trust myself to build one, but I would certainly consider buying one which had been flown a decent amount and was maintained correctly with ample documentation and some serious time with a CFI who was quite familiar with the aircraft.

But that's a lot of wistfulness talking, too. Because, for my purposes, all I would need is a cheap-to-operate taildragger or a C-150/152 to build time in - and you can't get a ready-to-fly Vans airplane for under $25K. I have to be realistic.

 

[USMCmech]

In my experience, the rental fleet ranges from mechanically perfect, to obvious death trap, and everything in between. Even factory new planes are not immune to serious safety defects. I saw two brand new airplanes get delivered from the factory last year. Not only were they painted the wrong color, but the mechanics found a page worth of squawks that ranged from cosmetic to flight controls that were not safety wired. I used to work at a MRO where several major airlines did some of their heavy Mx. I saw many cases where poorly trained and loosely supervised workers did more damage than they fixed. In one case, a worker pulled several borescope plugs out of a CFM-56 that were not required for the inspection. A nother worker replaced all the ones that were typically used, and an inspector checked the work. Meanwhile the two extra plugs were never reinstalled and disappeared. The problem was not found until the plane was back in service. I am a firm believer that a brand new or freshly overhauled airplane is far more dangerous than one that has been flying for a long time.

So to are experimentals, some look like they were assembled by a bunch of drunken cavemen, while others are absolute mechanical works of art. I disagree with the premise that many experimentals are the result of failed certification. In most cases, such as the RV series, the airplane would have easily met certification requirements, but the kitbuilder had no desire to manufacture finished airplanes, or in the case of the Glasaire the designers are deliberatly accepting parameters outside the certification rules ( stall speed above 61KIAS) to achieve their design goals. I don't think either example is a reason to avoid flying an experimental. Careful research and evaluation is key here.

EAB crashes happen for the same two basic reasons that certified planes crash, defects in the build and/or heavy mx and pilots who are not familiar with the airplane they are flying. The test flight hours where EAB crashes are significantly worse than certified airplanes combine these two risk factors.

 

[jynxyjoe]

[1] In my experience, the rental fleet ranges from mechanically perfect, to obvious death trap, and everything in between. [2]Even factory new planes are not immune to serious safety defects. I saw two brand new airplanes get delivered from the factory last year. N... Cool Story Bro... flying for a long time.

[3]So to are experimentals, some look like they were assembled by a bunch of drunken cavemen, while others are absolute mechanical works of art.

It's weird, you say you don't agree with me, but you put in three good reasons why we HAVE the cert and continuing cert process. Bolded Above. One section of the industry participates fully, the other does not. While I believe it reasonable there may be examples where FBO's are creatively passing the 152 on their annuals, I think you're just using a little hyperbole to make a point. If there's a deluge of them, by all means, call the FAA because you're negligent if you don't.

Maybe one of many reasons why experimentals have a disproportionate number of accident in GA, is because they do their best to duck the IA. To be fair, I'm sure there's a number of reasons that have nothing to do with the obvious ones, that's how this stuff goes. It's why we need a robust system of regulation to keep on top of the safety critical areas. Purposefully, when things roll off the assembly line on a certified aircraft (like eclipse as a fun example), there's a number of thing that have to be maintained and followed up on to reinforce the continuing safety margin that the FAA has decided on. The goal is, after a product runs off the assembly line, there is a continual process to improve the design (I'd list airplanes or manufacturers but it's all of them and it'd be stupid to copy/paste wiki for aircraft manufacturers in the USA). Maybe not you, but some readers are seeing what I just typed and saying... what? For them I ask: Beech V tails, better now or before the cuffs? Of course they are better now. Yup, that got off the assembly line and it wasn't until a decade or so later (after private owners screamed to the FAA from mountaintops and Beech ignored them) the NTSB and FAA finally put together what was happening and said, "oh crap, of course those tails are coming off... DOH!" Cuffs for everyone! Next question, Cessna 310, better before or after the 92lbs of pressure (or whatever the hell it is) requirement? -OH BETTER, right... once you kill the fed with everyone watching you have to change the certification perimeters. In fairness to Cessna, it may have been the Piper Apache that story goes with, idk... idc. The reg is there now. The reg process never stops and that's a good thing.

While the process isn't perfect, most reasonable adults don't choose to flush a good system down the toilet. In some experimental enthusiasts circles it is flushed, but that's because the sticker price is exorbitant for their wallet, and they want what they want, and that's the end of it. That's fine, we have that available to you, it's the experimental market. I hope you've taken the time to read the report from the NTSB I put above, they do a better job explaining the disaster safety record that is the experimental market.

I disagree with the premise that many experimentals are the result of failed certification. In most cases, such as the RV series, the airplane would have easily met certification requirements, but the kitbuilder had no desire to manufacture finished airplanes, or in the case of the Glasaire

OK.. stop stop stop, real quick. Don't lump those in together. RV might have never wanted to be a certified airplane in the beginning, I wasn't around in '73. You're wrong if you think they haven't put out feelers regularly at every iteration to get one certified (more later). Glasair started with experimentals and when they put the revenue together the glass 3, it was going to be certified, I don't think it ever got done, the Glastar was going to be certified but I don't think that was ever accomplished either. Maybe when the new guys in alaska bought it they did something with it, idk. Long story short, 38 GlasIII flying around and 6 were complete losses after as many months (someone can check my math) and the reason? Wait for it... wait for it... complete incompetence during construction by the customer. Anyway, you were going on about the majority experimentals not ever wanting to certify.

the designers are deliberatly accepting parameters outside the certification rules ( stall speed above 61KIAS) to achieve their design goals. I don't think either example is a reason to avoid flying an experimental.

I don't think voluntarily increasing the stall speed means anything your saying it does. Certification is a WIDE area. I took paper airplanes and made them real, and I was one small (specialized) slice of a VERY big pie. Stall speeds is an order of magnitude smaller portion of that pie. After the plane becomes real, keeping it in cert is a very real thing too, but I dealt with that only during STCs (as far as I remember, it was a while ago).

This is kind of how startups work everyone. Revenue is everything, don't think costs, don't talk about costs, just hush, revenue is your only goal in life. When we move to phase 2, cost becomes real. You've got this business plan and you can sell the airplane at 50k or you can sell it at 200k if it goes through certification. Everyone with half a brain says, "look, we are building a certified airplane." Once they hire some engineers and find out what the costs are, they wheedle and wane until they say "screw it, RV does fine, we'll just grab market share there!" The list of experimental guys is achingly long who wanted to certify first, and ran when the going got tough. At some point, they guffaw and scream "WELL CESSNA AND PIPER DIDN'T HAVE TO DO THIS WHEN THEY STARTED!" Sure, valid point, but then they killed a bunch of people and now we have this system. It isn't like it can't be done, Cirrus, Columbia, Diamond (God Diamond was a good group) and others got it done. Some guys can't, for them, there's the experimental world. Enjoy.

EAB crashes happen for the same two basic reasons that certified planes crash, defects in the build and/or heavy mx and pilots who are not familiar with the airplane they are flying.

Sure, but when you buy something certified, it's improbable there's something inherently wrong, because it goes through the entire cert process. The number of crashes resultant is LESS because of the cert process. To pretend otherwise is fine, but that relies on opinions and not facts. This isn't "The View", opinions don't count as facts. Factually speaking, EAB's are not the same (apples to apples) as the theoretical worst thing that comes off a certified assembly line. The NTSB says so, the FAA says so, the experimental manufacturers say so (sans sales staff), it is fact.

The test flight hours where EAB crashes are significantly worse than certified airplanes combine these two risk factors.

I don't know what this means.

 

[USMCmech]

My basic point is that, no matter if an airplane design has been certified by the FAA it can easily be (and often is) an unairworthy accident waiting to happen. I have seen many cases where piss poor manufacturing/maintenance was overseen by the FAA who "monitored" pt 23, 141, 145, 121, and 135 programs. For example, Cessna nosewheels are not supposed to shimmy violently on landing rollout but so many of them do that not even the FSDO inspector paid any attention. I have personally observed serious safety of flight squawks on aircraft fresh from the factory. I have seen a flight school where the flight students did most of the maintaince work unsupervised. I worked for a MRO that cause as much damage as it fixed, and spoke to pilots at a 135 operator who had a "_ _ _ Air survivors" facebook group because they had so many near misses fatal accidents.

Having said all that, when you climb into a Cessna you know what to expect. Generally speaking if the school is making an honest effort to keep their planes maintained, the airplane will fly safely and get you home.


Experimental airplanes OTOH must be taken on a case by case basis. Some are completely conventional designs that are nearly identical to certified designs (RVs), while others are clearly unconventional designs that will obviously pose challenges to a pilot (LongEZ). Regardless of what the kit designer intended, the individual builders often modify their airplanes from the original design, sometimes drastically and without much guidance (I am tracking the progress on facebook of a guy who is putting a radial engine on an RV-8).

Any pilot who is flying a homebuilt airplane needs to do his homework and have the airplane inspected very carefully by someone who has experiance in that type. The pilot also needs to be trained by an experienced CFI in the new type of airplane as well. It's handeling characteristics can often be very different.

 

[jynxyjoe]

it can easily be (and often is) an unairworthy accident waiting to happen. I have seen many cases where piss poor manufacturing/maintenance was overseen by the FAA who "monitored" pt 23, 141, 145, 121, and 135 programs. t.

Well I've just been walking through the raindrops flying in part 23 certified aircraft And working for 141 135 121 operations. Since you've seen all these operations (as you attest that you see this often)and conclusively say that, youve reported them to the FAA and theyve been shut down because they've agreed with your findings?Since that's true, there can't be many left now that your on the case.

I tip my hat to you for increasing the level of safety across the board in your one man traveling band bouncing around all 19000 airports in the contigous and alaska and Hawaii. There won't be many left since your on the case.

 

[MercFE]

I think what @USMCmech was getting at is the guise of FAA oversight does not guarantee a safe and fly able aircraft. Shoddy maintenance and management practices are possible, even amongst certified airframes.

The idea that experimental aircraft are less safe because of the lack of oversight may be true from the lack of forced improvement in a general fleet sense. However, I would guess that those that build the planes and, subsequently, strap their behind into them take a much closer look into the upkeep of their aircraft.

As a FE on my aircraft in the Navy, I was responsible for maintenance when we were deployed away from home station. Every trip, I made it a point to fix a gripe that the ground pounders would write off as being negligible or too hard to fix.

One time, I had a jet that was written up that in the event of a stall, to ignore the PLI as it was incorrect and the aircraft had to be flown up to 10 degrees above it in order to recover. All because they didn't want to change out an AOA probe.

Another flight had an engine mechanic telling me that the stream of oil pissing on the deck after engine start would eventually stop and that we should go flying. Add to it that the oil quantity gauge for that engine showed zero at all times, I was seriously pondering why I ever flew on these aircraft.

My favorite pastime was whenever we took maintainers on board as passengers. Always loved the look on their faces when you turn to them in the jump seat and ask, "what did you work on on this plane this week?"

 

[KKochan]

Experimental airplanes allow for progress. They are also built by anyone who feels like building one; and a lot of those folks have no business even maintaining an aircraft. I think that's why we see a disproportionate amount of accidents.

Small certificated airplanes are expensive to own, expensive to maintain, and for the most part, perform horribly (compared to similar experimentals) due to their extremely outdated designs. Their reliability comes down to the airplane being properly maintained. Certification doesn't force that.

 

[trafficinsight]

Some experimentals are dangerous because freedom, some certified are dangerous because shady owners.

I helped install the engine on an RV for someone but bailed on the project when he started re-doing things I had done "Because his friend who built one said this was better."

Also there were several times on the airframe where I said "You should re-do that" and he said "nah, it's fine, I want to get the airplane done!"

I think Van's estimates 24 months for quickbuild, he did it in 18 and this is the first airplane he's ever built.

The plane has been flying for a few years now, I have declined any rides in it. The truth is you can get away with a lot, but how much and for how long is the $64,000 question.

 

[drunkenbeagle]

I wouldn't trust myself to build one, but I would certainly consider buying one which had been flown a decent amount and was maintained correctly with ample documentation and some serious time with a CFI who was quite familiar with the aircraft.

You would probably be much safer in one that you built yourself. Builders tend to have an accident rate very similar to the rest of the GA fleet, purchased experimentals seem to fare much worse. The attitudes of builders vs. buyers I have seen tend to be polar opposites, at least from a safety view.

 

[drunkenbeagle]

I will start building a RV-7 next year, and one common response I get from pilots is that they wouldn't dare set foot in an airplane that isn't certified by the FAA. They then blithely climb into a flight school rental that looks like a death trap.

For the last year, I thought that I wanted to build a Cozy-IV. But after doing a bunch a research, and building sample glass parts, and seeing how few end up flying, the RV seems like a project that might actually get finished.

 

[Autothrust Blue]

Some experimentals are dangerous because freedom, some certified are dangerous because shady owners.

I helped install the engine on an RV for someone but bailed on the project when he started re-doing things I had done "Because his friend who built one said this was better."

Also there were several times on the airframe where I said "You should re-do that" and he said "nah, it's fine, I want to get the airplane done!"

I think Van's estimates 24 months for quickbuild, he did it in 18 and this is the first airplane he's ever built.

The plane has been flying for a few years now, I have declined any rides in it. The truth is you can get away with a lot, but how much and for how long is the $64,000 question.

National Airplane Parts Association

 

[trafficinsight]

You laugh.

All the fuel lines.

 

[z987k]

You laugh.

All the fuel lines.

Well and in fairness, the alternator belt with part number 012345 is the same as the alternator belt with part number 012345 and come off the same assembly line. One costs 5x more and one isn't blessed with holy water.

 

[trafficinsight]

Well and in fairness, the alternator belt with part number 012345 is the same as the alternator belt with part number 012345 and come off the same assembly line. One costs 5x more and one isn't blessed with holy water.

It is known.

But alternator belts and fuel lines are two very different things in this case.