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This idea of "taking your aircraft into the Experimental category" comes up from time to time. How much time and trouble am I worth?Ĭan you convert your A model to the experimental class? Understandably I'm just one customer with an old Mooney. As mentioned earlier they aren't real interested in helping customers who would like to use their products beyond their current portfolio. I did try to get a letter of permission from S-Tec to go for a field approval using a unit purchased from them directly for a B, C or E model but they said they would not. The FAA used to publish the STCs where anyone could access them but the manufacturers complained and forced them to stop the practice because the information was being used by competitors and infringed on their protection of intellectual properties. You can't use / copy an existing STC verbatim for a field approval however you can take portions of an STC or multiple STCs and use them in creating your documentation for a field approval per my conversation with the DER at the FAA. If you are going to use data from a STC as part of a field approval you will need a permission letter from the STC holder. If I had the opportunity to purchase an approved Autopilot I would more than likely NOT use S-Tec based on their service after the sale or flexibility to assist with a realistic solution.Īt this point my only hope is to try for a field approval but it's going to take a lot of documentation to back it up. Not exactly customer centric if you ask me.
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In fact in an effort to basically get me to go away they offered to let me pay for the creation of a new STC for my model at the cost of $75K + as well as the cost of the Autopilot. I proposed this the S-Tec and they had no interest in helping me. The DER at the FAA gave me some encouraging advise based on my particular case but it will involve utilizing excerpts from an existing STC for the S-Tec documentation along with my own documentation showing the application utilizing PMA'd components and like model installation techniques. If I can purchase a complete unit from an aircraft being parted out and work on getting a field approval that really is my only option. I've talked with Mooney and aligned them with Stec for my particular case but haven't heard back. You are absolutely correct that Stec doesn't what their units recycled across other aircraft and I can understand that they are in the business of selling product directly however I also feel they should support after sale products as well. Not that it would do any good if they did because the only remaining A model components of my aircraft is the Fuselage.
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#Stec 50 autopilot youtube install#
If I want an autopilot, there are others I can install from the boneyard for <$10k under either the TC or from companies that will sell an STC for the cost of doing the paper work.Unfortunately Stec doesn't offer an STC for an A model. Personally I can't stomach the business ethics at S-TEC enough to give them my money, I don't need an autopilot that bad. If they rebuild the unit at the cost of a new unit, then that would well arguably in court reset that clock. They are no more exposed than when the plane as a unit sells to a new owner, and actually less exposed since a sale of the unit they are not involved in does not reset the 14 year (pretty sure that's what it is, I might be wrong there, but there is a liability limit) liability clock. It's just maximizing profit is all, their risk exposure has not changed by a unit changing ownership. Click to expand.Meh, even in the litigious society it's a low risk anyway, all they are doing is assuring each owner that exposes them to liability compensates them for the liability rather than each unit produced that exposes them to liability.