Going over the 100 hour?

[simon]

What are a) the regs and b) CAP policy about exceeding the 100 hour:

1) On a flight enroute the the service location.

2) If a proficiency flight takes it over the 100 hours and then it still has to be taken to the service location.

[SJFedor]

Go read FAR part 91.409 and CAPR 60-1.

[Short Field]

Try CAPR 66-1.   Para 6b states you can overfly the time by 10% (10 hours) to allow the aircraft to be flown to the designated place of inspection.  This time is counted toward the next 100 hour inspection so you don't ever gain anything by delaying the inspection.

I didn't find any exception that allowed you to fly over 100 hours for a mission.

[lordmonar]

As this just came up recently during a training operations....national would like you to stop flying it before you exceed the 100 hours.

The 10% over for ferrying is supposed to be for special circumstances and not the norm.

Bottom line is if you have less then time left then your planned flight...it is grounded until it goes to service.

[Flying Pig]

In CAP if you go over the 100 its usually a result of poor planning on the part of the pilot. 

[Short Field]

Really!! 

[NIN]

In CAP if you go over the 100 its usually a result of poor planning on the part of the pilot.

While I'd tend to agree with you on that, I've seen it happen where a pilot was inadvertently delayed on the return from an actual mission and when he landed he was a LOT closer to the 100 hr than he realized and failed to note that in the log due to it being very late and he was quite tired.

The next guys who came along took the plane out for proficiency and missed the due inspection, and wound up overflying it by a LOT.

The embarrassing thing was it was the Wing MX officer who failed to put the plane to bed correctly.  It was an easy error to make (I want to say there was 10+ hrs left on the plane when he took it for the mission, and the mission wound up taking him to a neighboring state and doing DF'ing in IFR conditions, a return flight in IFR conditions, some vectoring, etc, and he flew more than he anticipated or realized, thus putting the plane closer to the 100 hr...), but was exacerbated by the following crew not catching it, either.

It got even more embarrassing when the wing commander used that incident as an excuse to fire the MX officer and demote him.  The MX officer filed a MARB complaint, alleging retaliation.  Seems that the wing commander had recently found out that the MX officer had filed a complaint with the IG that the wing commander was sending annual inspections to his buddy the FBO, knowing that his buddy would meet the budget numbers he had in mind, even though some of the annuals were "flashlight annuals" and potentially putting CAP folks at risk.  (The wing commander was unhappy that annuals were going over budget, due to the other FBOs finding problems and fixing them, so he "consolidated" the maintenance at his friend's place over the MX officer's repeated objections to the quality of the "maintenance.")  The MARB found that the demotion and firing was indeed retaliation for the IG complaint, but it took so long to see/hear the case that the wing commander was long gone by then.

But you should really, really be cautious close to your scheduled inspections.

(I once had to do all the paperwork for overflying 50 hr on my helicopter and darn near busting all of the overfly margin, too.   We were like 5.5 out from the 50 hr, on a mission scheduled for 3 hrs that wound up flying 7.8 or 7.9.  The maintenance control guys were flipping out when we came back, and I got yelled at for allowing the pilots to overfly the inspection. I politely reminded the maintenance officer that CH-47 cargo helicopters are not fitted with a 3rd set of controls in the rear that allows me to override the decisions of the gentlemen in the front office, and the pilots confirmed that I had warned them we were 5.5 out from the 50 hr when we started, and that we were 2.5 hrs out when we got extended, and that I had even said "put it on the ground" when we flew over the 50 hr mark, but that they had elected to continue the mission and get the aircraft home.  The paperwork nearly took longer than the 50 hr to complete)

[Spaceman3750]

In CAP if you go over the 100 its usually a result of poor planning on the part of the pilot.

The next guys who came along took the plane out for proficiency and missed the due inspection, and wound up overflying it by a LOT.

I'm not a pilot, but they didn't note the starting time and compare it to the next 100Hr time before flying?

[bosshawk]

In these cases, there is usually enough blame to cover two or three people.  The MX officer is supposed to stay on top of the inspections, the PIC is supposed to know how much time he has before a mandatory inspection before he turns the ignition key and the Sq CC is ultimately responsible for all of this. 

One of my worst complaints about CAP pilots(and I have been one for 18 yrs) is the attitude that CAP planes are like rental planes(let the other guy worry about all that MX stuff).

If we take care of our planes, they will generally take care of us. 

BTW: I have owned airplanes for over 20 yrs and I have been the Aircraft Manager for three CAP planes, so I have a little background.

[Flying Pig]

NIN...

again regarding your scenario.  Poor planning on the part of the pilots.  If the first made a mistake, the new, fresh pilot failed to see how many hours he had left. 

[NIN]

NIN...

again regarding your scenario.  Poor planning on the part of the pilots.  If the first made a mistake, the new, fresh pilot failed to see how many hours he had left.

Yeah, oddly, the _TWO_ pilots who took the plane after the MX officer brought it back got letters of reprimand for actually busting the 100 hr. The guy who flew the mostly-IFR actual mission that brought it up to the 100, well, as I said, he got fired and demoted.

[N Harmon]

If a pilot returning from a mission is too tired to complete the post-flight paperwork immediately after the flight...was said pilot really rested enough to fly home?

[Short Field]

If a pilot returning from a mission is too tired to complete the post-flight paperwork immediately after the flight...was said pilot really rested enough to fly home?

Depending on the quality of the air, a two or three hour flight can totally exhaust you.  High air temps and rough turbulence can become very draining.

Still, that is no excuse for not doing the paperwork.

[NIN]

I don't recall all the circumstances, he may not have been "tired," but rather there were other factors (weather, darkness, fatigue from flying a 3-4 hr mission in IFR conditions DF'ing a moving non-distress ELT, whatever..).   

Its not like you're flying along and you say "Wow, I have .6 to go until I get to home base, but I sure am tired. Maybe I oughta pull over here and get a nap.." 

And having been there, its been my experience that you sometimes don't realize you're as tired as you are until you're tying down the aircraft and saying "man, I'm @#$% exhausted.."

[simon]

Thank you for the replies and insight.

So, getting back to why I asked the question:

I had been waiting for quite a while to do the instrument add-on to my Form 5, which I did some months ago (In a round dial plane). As many of you will know, progressing as a pilot with CAP is often more about when you can get a check pilot to volunteer their time than it is whether you are qualified (on paper) to take the ride. So last week I got the opportunity. A couple of hours before the instrument ride, the MX manager, who received the scheduling notification, emailed me, mentioning that the plane had 1.5 on it before the 100 hour and so long as the flight was either going to be on the ground and shut down before that or I was going to drop the plane off at the remote maintenance site (About an hour away), that the flight was not going to be in compliance.

Arrrgghh! I finally get a check pilot's time (The hardest thing), the plane is not grounded, it is available for use, I get a 'leave pass' from my significant other, then this!

In between writing this forum message and asking various people lots of questions, I learnt a lot about CAP maintenance rules. Basically, the flight was a not go.

However, it just so happened that I have been flying around a new (Private) 182 G1000 lately, but not a CAP one. I have also been waiting to get checked out in the CAP G1000. I did the ground school, did the VFR Cessna FITS scenario ride but had not done the IFR ride. The G1000 CAP plane was 10 miles from the round dial plane that I had reserved and it was available. I called the check pilot, switched the planes in the scheduled and flight release, then proceeded to take the instrument add over the next 3 hours in the G1000 plane. Forget messing with going overtime on the the annual with the round dial!

(BTW, we had a brief but bona fide AHRS failure on an ILS approach. It gets you going from the relaxed AP descent to a lot of button pushing really quickly. Yahoo!)

What is of course interesting in all of this (And this is a thread all unto itself), is that according to everyone I have asked, CAP regs do not differentiate between the G1000 and a round dial when it comes to qualifying for the CAP "instrument add on". Within CAP regs? Yes. Sensible? Of course not.

Would I allow a G1000/IFR CAP pilot to fly me on an approach, IMC, in a round dial 182 in which he had never flown an approach? Nope. Not me. There are too many essential mutually exclusive skills. Like, say, keeping the crosshairs in the donut. Kind of important.

So that was an interesting side learning experience on CAP regs. But really the best one was to understand how many hours are left before the 100 hour / annual before you reserve the plane. Abd I just put that down to my lack of CAP pilot experience.

[bosshawk]

Lesson learned: good job.  Now to get more CAP pilots to do similar checks.

[WT]

The rule of thumb is, the aircraft must be in the air on the way to the maintenance facility when the tach ticks to 100 HRS past the last 100HR!

[simon]

"Hey, I know that now, okay?"

    - Honeymoon In Vegas

;-)

[HGjunkie]

"Hey, I know that now, okay?"

    - Honeymoon In Vegas

;-)

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