Sunday, October 01, 2006

Too Much Time On My Hands

Aircraft ownership at times is as much about juggling paperwork as it is anything else. When you are in a partnership, effective communication about maintenance and upkeep of the airplane is critical to keeping the partnership on an even keel.

For a while in 78S, the IFR Pilot kept a page in the front of the time/usage log that tracked various vital statistics such as when the next oil change was due, when the last VOR check was done, etc. Reprinting that on a regular basis, however, was more trouble than it was worth, so the idea was quickly abandoned.

With Mike Hotel, I decided to take a page out of the maintenance hangar and make a white board with all the pertinent details. That way, MS and I could both easily update it. So, a few bucks at Wally Wal-Mart for a white board and some markers and we had a decent set-up.

But it irritated me. I have crummy handwriting. The lines weren't straight. Precision was needed. After all, we demand precision in our flying right? Why have anything less in the hangar?

So, instead of going back to the office Friday after the Angel Flight, the IFR Pilot did this:


Now that's more like it!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

You left out the part where your wonderful girlfriend got to sit and watch you meticulously put it together :)

Greybeard said...

Transponder check?
D'oh! Back to the drawing board!

Darrell said...

Dammit. OK, forget tire pressure. We're changing that category to "Transponder" tonight.

Thanks, greybeard!

Anonymous said...

Regarding your VOR check. You are still required to document where you checked it, how much error, who checked it, etc.

Darrell said...

The VOR checks are properly recorded in the logbook to satisfy the requirements of FAR 91.171. The board is merely there to remind us if it's time to perform another check.