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Although the writing had been on the wall for some time it took me a while to digest its unpalatable message: It has become just too expensive for me as a sole owner of modest means to run a C of A aircraft. My trusty little Robin was stuck in her hangar eager for some new adventure but grounded by irresistible officialdom and my lack of cash.
The truth is I should have known better when I bought the Robin with its Dutch C of A but enthusiasm had triumphed over common sense yet again. I had been looking for a Jodel 1050 to replace my Emeraude that had become one seat too small with the arrival of my daughter. Nothing had turned up and I had grown impatient.
Up to that point the Emeraude had been an excellent fine-handling aircraft operated under the equally excellent PFA scheme, now the LAA. With its dedicated volunteer inspectors, this scheme had made me forget earlier C of A nightmares. I highly recommend it to any pilot who might enjoy looking after their aircraft better and saving dosh at the same time.
At the time, one of the minor drawbacks with the PFA scheme was that it catered mainly for two seaters. In other respects the PFA was very family-oriented but in this regard it was constrained by its parent, the CAA, who took the view that one passenger seat was ok but any more needed their own grown-up protection.
Times have moved on somewhat and there are now a few new homebuilt kit designs with more than 2 seats and some older designs, no longer commercially manufactured, which have been adopted under the LAA scheme.
The difficulty for me was that I had decided to flee the rat race and move my family to France to live so the LAA route was not really an option and, in any event, I had not been able to find a suitable aircraft even after some months searching.
A Dutch-registered Robin DR400-120 2+2 turned up on the market at a good price. It flew well and looked nice so I snapped it up without regard for my previous painful experience of the high cost of running an aircraft with any type of C of A. The spar directive was already on the cards but I had a couple of years to comply at a known cost. Little did I know!
Following the Apex bankruptcy and the consequent unavailability of the spar repair kit, I had plenty of time to reflect on my failure to learn from past experience. The annual trek to Holland had paled from an adventure to a bit of a chore. The flying was fine but two rail trips through three countries each way was less fun and not at all cheap.
Dutch maintenance organisations had proved to be the equal of some of their British counterparts in terms of greed and inefficiency. While visiting Minorca I removed the cowlings to find a plastic tray stuffed with oil-drenched hand wipes still wedged under the mags following a 2000 plus Euro annual. The previous year they had thought it a good idea to replace the pilot seat over, rather than in, its runners and to arrange the throttle linkage to foul the alticoder mount so that minimum revs were now 1500.
The Dutch CAA had also added to my financial woes. They had been keen to adopt an expensive mode S requirement at the first opportunity. Now GA traffic is often asked to turn off mode S as Amsterdam is swamped by returns! Similarly they opted to make the expensive fixed ELT mandatory even though there were much cheaper but viable options available.
I hope this is not just crying over spilt milk. This is what you can expect from any country’s CAA in these ‘precautionary principle’ days. I hope the UK CAA will learn from the Dutch experience when considering the Stansted requests to expand mode S compulsory airspace but I suspect I will not be the only one to fail to learn from experience.
Enough gloom and doom. What was I going to do about future flying now that I was established in France with its marvellous flying environment? Clearly I had to keep flying, that goes without saying, but how could I salvage the situation? Chatting to my French buddies suggested there are really only two ways to go for the pilot who is not made of money, either ULM (Ultralight/Microlight) or CNRA.
There is no doubt that the advances made in ULM design have been considerable and in the index of performance stakes they have arguably overtaken many traditional aircraft. They also attract a lesser medical requirement which is an important factor for the aging GA pilot in France.
The drawback is mainly capital cost particularly if you want more than two seats. Capital was and remains in short supply so I decided to investigate the possibilities under the ‘certificat de navigabilité restreint d’aéronef’ (CNRA).
CNRA is the French homebuilders charter. There are distinct parallels with the LAA but some differences as well. It seems to have much in common with the U.S. ‘Experimental’ classification with a similarly liberal ethos when it comes to mods. In my case I was pleased to discover that it caters quite well for people who want more than two seats.
The constructor himself enjoys a concession of an airworthiness check on the aircraft only every three years but this is reduced to one year for a subsequent purchaser or if you just finish off an existing project. There is an open market both for finished CNRA aircraft and partially completed projects (see the RSA and Fox Papa homebuilders sites) (all French homebuilts are registered F-P-- ).
Generally, where there is an overlap with an equivalent but factory-built aircraft, the CNRA aircraft will command a premium because of the much lower maintenance costs. In particular, there is no TBO on motors which is the most common cause of demise of French CofA aircraft.
You do not need to join any particular homebuilders organisation but you will of practicality be a member of a French aeroclub and have the FFA cover. You do not need to be French to register a project (but of course it helps!) but you would probably have trouble if you were not resident at least part of the year with a French address.
My first exploratory outing was to investigate the Oceanair, a homebuilt type with an uncanny resemblance to the DR400 except without the characteristic Jodel/Robin ‘bent’ wing. Just the job as a home for many of the parts of my grounded Robin you might think.
By chance my spies had located a freshly constructed ‘straight’ wing, which you might have expected to be more elusive than the Yeti. Too good to be true? Yes! It turned out the seller had the wing professionally built then hassled officials to have his time-expired Robin re-christened an Oceanair in double quick time. In a trice the mighty official GSAC (Groupement pour la Sécurité de l'Aviation Civile) stamp had crashed down on his paperwork ‘NON’ so that was that.
GSAC will not stand for passing off an entire factory-built aircraft as a homebuilt and who can blame them. On the other hand it is not unknown for quite large and important pieces of a former CofA aircraft to be incorporated into a homebuilt by the canny and frugal French constructor. The official telescope may have turned momentarily in the other direction on occasions it seems. The situation is complicated by the existence of a separate CDN(R) category for factory-built aircraft that have been orphaned.
The next project to catch my eye was a Jodel 103T airframe advertised on the RSA site by a well-established group of homebuilders at Royan. This turned out to be a king-size Jodel some 5cms wider in the beam than the DR400. The woodwork was finished and most of my Robin bits would have fitted although my 0235 Lycoming might have been a bit marginal. There was only one other of this type already flying but this one did not seem to have been registered with GSAC plus there was doubt about the availability of a full set of plans. All I came away with was an autographed photo of Delmontez (the much revered father of the Jodel family) doing the washing up at some aeroclub do which I accepted with due solemnity.
Unless you buy an existing aircraft with a valid CNRA you need to make sure any project has a full set of authorised plans with the leave to construct. Projects should be registered at an early stage with GSAC but this may not have happened when planes are constructed with a borrowed set of plans or whatever. Plans (if available) cost around 400 Euros and the vendor will have to explain to the satisfaction of GSAC the reason for the delay in registration. Unlike the UK there are no early inspections (except in the case of aerobatic aircraft) virtually until ‘airframe completed but uncovered stage’ where you are constructing an accepted design from the plan rather than building a prototype. This is followed usually only by a ‘ready to fly’ inspection.
Another ad in the CNRA section of the RSA site caught my eye. It was for a Jodel 1050 airframe. Once again this had the potential to legitimately use important bits from my Robin so I e-mailed the vendor to try to find out what I could about the project. This proved to be the start of another quest in search of the Holy Grail: the three seat affordable aeroplane.
To be continued........
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