Flying after maintenance

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evapilotaz

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So my rental will be out of 100 hr maintenance and I will be the first to fly after maintence. Should I'm be nervous about being the first to fly?
 
evapilotaz said:
So my rental will be out of 100 hr maintenance and I will be the first to fly after maintence. Should I'm be nervous about being the first to fly?
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Nervous? Only if you cannot recognize mistakes that could kill you. Think flight controls free and CORRECT.
 
Fuel valve on (mechanics often turn them off)
Do a good walk-around looking for open latches, fasteners.
Do a careful run-up.
 
evapilotaz said:
So my rental will be out of 100 hr maintenance and I will be the first to fly after maintence. Should I'm be nervous about being the first to fly?
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As an owner, I treat the first flight after maintenance as a test flight. After a THOROUGH pre-flight, I don't go anywhere, I fly in circles above the airport, always within glide distance of a runway, putting the engine and controls through their paces. Then I land and do a thorough post-flight, checking under the plane for leaks.

The place I used to rent from, and the flying club I used to belong to, treated post-maintenance the same way. Renters and ordinary members never did the first flight after maintenance. In the club, the maint VP did the test flight. At the FBO, it was a CFI who test flew it, or the owner.

If your FBO is going to charge you the full Hobbs rate to be a test pilot, I'd find another FBO to rent from.
 
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I do exactly what Azure said above. There are shops out there that just don't have attention to detail and it's ultimately up to you to catch their mistakes.

I've gotten my plane out of annual with screws so loose you could undo them with your finger. I've gotten the plane out of annual with the nose wheel tension not set and it was flipping back and forth like a shopping cart wheel. Prop O-ring split and oil spraying on the windscreen. Washers, screws, zip ties laying in the bottom of the cowling. You name it, it can happen.
 
20 years ago I was renting a 172 from a FBO in SD. They complied with an AD on the tail and released the plane for flight. I found a cotter pin missing on one of the stabilator control cables. I informed the mechanic and he installed the cotter pin, gave it another look and released it for flight.

I did fly that day and everything went smooth. I was happy I found the missing cotter pin, my flight that day could have turned out very differently.
 
Zeldman said:
Ask the person that did the work to ride with you.
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That


Also check everything, look for saftey wires, cotter pins, tools, etc.

Check all fuel, o2 valves, check all switches, etc.

Take your time on your run up, taxi in a circle after and check for and new drips on the ramp.

Full control check, run the trims all the way up and down, check flight controls with the trim all the way up and down, same with the flaps up and down.

Verify autopilot operations and disconnect on the ground.

Verify fuel with a stick, check all electronics and lights

I like to climb in a closed pattern over the airport, max performance takeoff, stay within gliding distance while you take the plane through the paces, watch all your instruments and make sure they are not only "in the green" but where they normally are for that phase of flight.
 
James331 said:
I like to climb in a closed pattern over the airport, max performance takeoff, stay within gliding distance while you take the plane through the paces, watch all your instruments and make sure they are not only "in the green" but where they normally are for that phase of flight.
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Exactly but... my impression was the OP scheduled the plane to go flying. Maybe I'm weird, but I wouldn't pay for the privilege of test flying someone else's airplane.

I'd tell the FBO that I'll go fly it after they do a return to service flight. For an FBO to let a customer fly the plane immediately after maintenance strikes me as somewhat unprofessional.

Unless they've already done that, and the OP's flight would be the first flight after the RTS flight. In that case, just do what you ordinarily do, assuming you trust them.
 
evapilotaz said:
So my rental will be out of 100 hr maintenance and I will be the first to fly after maintence. Should I'm be nervous about being the first to fly?
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Not nervous, but pay particular attention to detail on your preflight, look in the cowling and see if there are any tools in sight, baffling all looks straight and you can't see a bunch of light where it doesn't belong, screws missing from fairings, fairing edge seals not quite in place that can start slapping... just little stuff that gets overlooked. Typically you don't run into anything major out of maint that you wouldn't run into anyway.
 
AKBill said:
20 years ago I was renting a 172 from a FBO in SD. They complied with an AD on the tail and released the plane for flight. I found a cotter pin missing on one of the stabilator control cables. I informed the mechanic and he installed the cotter pin, gave it another look and released it for flight.

I did fly that day and everything went smooth. I was happy I found the missing cotter pin, my flight that day could have turned out very differently.
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Finding a stabilator on a 172 would be reason enough to ground the flight! :):)
 
All good advice. Especially for a good and thorough preflight. You'd be surprised at what silly stuff you find post-mx that the mechanic(s) overlooked.

Nervous? If you don't own the plane or don't oversee the maintenance, you BET you should be nervous. Or morelike paranoid. Remember, you will be a test pilot. If you are okay with that, enjoy the flight.

Though try to have the mx fly with you the first few circles around the airport. If he refuses, I personally would walk away. (had a few good mechanics fly with me before with no qualms)
 
Do an annual along with the mechanic. Very eye opening on what to look for.

I found a shop light blocking the right passenger rudder peddle and keeping me from turning right. Good thing I didn't have to make a left hand turn to the runway. Nice shop light too, I use it in my garage all the time.
 
evapilotaz said:
So my rental will be out of 100 hr maintenance and I will be the first to fly after maintence. Should I'm be nervous about being the first to fly?
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I don't rent aircraft out after maintenance until I've personally flown them. Call me paranoid. I want to be the guy in the airplane if there is a problem, not the rental pilot that rarely ever does any flying.

The type and amount of flying I do before making it available to the public again varies depending on the maintenance that was done.
 
jesse said:
I don't rent aircraft out after maintenance until I've personally flown them. Call me paranoid. I want to be the guy in the airplane if there is a problem, not the rental pilot that rarely ever does any flying.
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I wouldn't call it paranoid, more like professional. :thumbsup:
 
20 plus years as Maintenance Test Pilot in the Army...or at least in charge of the shop few things really need a test flight...Out of Annual or 100 hour I am going to do a good preflight and run-up I guess and maybe a trip around the pattern and shut down and look for leaks our anything obvious...generally when something is wrong it gives you some warning...rentals seem to me to be more of an issue. With your own or familiar aircraft you tend to know something is not right prior to it manifesting itself in a catastrophic way. A perfect example is an OH-58 I was ferrying home after a bad oil analysis started to make the wrong noise and making a quick landing close to the only house for miles the transmission seized when power was removed...it allowed me to get it on the ground safely with power. Chip lights never came on in this case, but were functional.
 
AKBill said:
20 years ago I was renting a 172 from a FBO in SD. They complied with an AD on the tail and released the plane for flight. I found a cotter pin missing on one of the stabilator control cables. I informed the mechanic and he installed the cotter pin, gave it another look and released it for flight.

I did fly that day and everything went smooth. I was happy I found the missing cotter pin, my flight that day could have turned out very differently.
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Don't listen to them...I knew what you meant.
 
azure said:
...Maybe I'm weird, but I wouldn't pay for the privilege of test flying someone else's airplane.
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^^True this!

azure said:
... For an FBO to let a customer fly the plane immediately after maintenance strikes me as somewhat unprofessional.
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Yup. If the flight controls are disconnected, fuel system opened up, prop and or engine removed and replaced, I would think it'd make sense to do a PMCF.

azure said:
assuming you trust them.
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Trust but verify! There was a big story up here about a bird coming out of the shop with the pitch trim controls reversed. It didn't end well.

That being said, isn't a 100hr or annual inspection fairly minimally invasive ( I mean, short of any critical discrepancies being found)?
 
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One of my personal guidelines is not to fly a rental out of maintenance. I'll wait until it has been scheduled a few times before I'll fly it again.

If you recall, I started a thread about flying a Mooney for the first time. Unbeknownst to me that plane was just out of maintenance and we ended up with a pool of oil under the plane (see 2nd page):

http://www.pilotsofamerica.com/forum/showthread.php?t=81998&highlight=mooney+flight
 
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azure said:
As an owner, I treat the first flight after maintenance as a test flight. After a THOROUGH pre-flight, I don't go anywhere, I fly in circles above the airport, always within glide distance of a runway, putting the engine and controls through their paces. Then I land and do a thorough post-flight, checking under the plane for leaks.



The place I used to rent from, and the flying club I used to belong to, treated post-maintenance the same way. Renters and ordinary members never did the first flight after maintenance. In the club, the maint VP did the test flight. At the FBO, it was a CFI who test flew it, or the owner.



If your FBO is going to charge you the full Hobbs rate to be a test pilot, I'd find another FBO to rent from.
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Agree completely.
 
wilkersk said:
Trust but verify! There was a big story up here about a bird coming out of the shop with the pitch trim controls reversed. It didn't end well.
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Yup, always verify! I just meant that if they did a normal return to service flight AND I trust the FBO, I wouldn't do anything much different from any other situation, renting from the same FBO. ALWAYS pre-flight, but my index of suspicion would be at most just a teensy bit higher than normal. In other words, I wouldn't be afraid to go somewhere with it.
That being said, isn't a 100hr or annual inspection fairly minimally invasive ( I mean, short of any critical discrepancies being found)?
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Not sure ANY maintenance is "minimally" invasive. ;)

I mean, compared to disassembling an engine or pulling off the wings, maybe... but then again, short of examining the logs, for all you know, they might have found a lot of discrepancies and ended up doing major surgery.
 
Stewartb said:
Do a careful run-up.
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Bingo. I took Piper Archer freshly after its maintenance and run-up did not go well, I got weird RPM drops switching between mags. We were ready do depart Friday afternoon for a 4-th of July trip to Grand Canyon and my passengers were ready to go, some questioned whether my decision to abandon takeoff was justified, there was another PPL sitting next to me and he had doubts if I weren't too picky. I taxied back and a mechanic (thanks God there was one available) found one unconnected spark plug wire.
 
wilkersk said:
You missed my point. There's a big difference between an "inspection" and a repair.
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I don't think I did. Maybe you missed *my* point, which was that from a renter's POV, it won't be obvious whether the maintenance done was indeed a "routine" annual/100 hr inspection, or involved extensive repair. He'll have to ask for the logs to be sure,

And I'm not sure that an annual really is that "minimal" or routine, as far as the risk of something being put together wrong during reassembly. My Cardinal RG is down for annual right now, and they're finding issues they'd never be able to find without taking a lot of stuff apart.

The annual is being done about 50 miles from home base, and there is NO way I'll be just getting in that plane and flying it home, without a good test flight above the airport. I'd ask the mechanic to come along too, but I'm one landing short of passenger carrying currency at the moment.
 
azure said:
I don't think I did. Maybe you missed *my* point, which was that from a renter's POV, it won't be obvious whether the maintenance done was indeed a "routine" annual/100 hr inspection, or involved extensive repair. He'll have to ask for the logs to be sure,

And I'm not sure that an annual really is that "minimal" or routine, as far as the risk of something being put together wrong during reassembly. My Cardinal RG is down for annual right now, and they're finding issues they'd never be able to find without taking a lot of stuff apart.

The annual is being done about 50 miles from home base, and there is NO way I'll be just getting in that plane and flying it home, without a good test flight above the airport. I'd ask the mechanic to come along too, but I'm one landing short of passenger carrying currency at the moment.
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Your sig line says you're an "IA" so I'll defer to your expertise. I guess post 100 hour inspections must have a return to service check flight even if the flight controls aren't disconnected, fuel system opened up or engine/prop components aren't removed/replaced. I was wrong.
 
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wilkersk said:
Your sig line says you're an "IA" so I'll defer to your expertise. I guess post 100 hour inspections must have a return to service check flight even if the flight controls aren't disconnected, fuel system opened up or engine/prop components aren't removed/replaced. I was wrong.
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I'm not a mechanic - IA means Instrument Airplane. Sorry to have given the wrong impression there.

But I am an owner and I've been through several annuals (and I'm assuming that 100 hour inspections are similar). The flight controls are checked thoroughly, which I believe requires them to be disconnected. The fuel system is definitely opened up - I'm getting a new fuel shutoff valve this year as a result of that inspection. I'm pretty sure you're right about prop and engine components not being removed as that would be a huge job.

But just to give you an idea of what can go wrong, last annual, my mechanic forgot to reconnect my cowl flaps. I discovered the problem during the test flight, though it should have been caught during pre-flight (mea culpa). Also, I remember another Cardinal where the cowl was put back on incorrectly leading to an airflow problem and high CHTs. That would have been harder to detect without flying it.

Personally, I do an RTS flight even after an oil change. You never know if your mechanic had a brain fart when doing the safety wiring (unless you do your own oil changes).
 
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