Jeff & Wayne,

 

I give flight instruction in 235/320/360 Lancairs. I would be very happy to help you but I must point out a few legal technicalities:

 

FAR 91.109(a):   “No person may operate a civil aircraft (except a manned free balloon) that is being used for flight instruction unless that aircraft has fully functioning dual controls.”

 

The FAA considers rudders and (because we have no nose wheel steering) brakes to be a part of “dual controls”. I have read recent comments that persons have given dual in Lancairs without right side rudders. I believe that those persons are taking on considerable liability and risk of certificate action by doing so. I am not in a position to take that risk.

 

The FAA has been extremely clear that dual instruction is not permitted in an aircraft that is still in phase I testing. The Operating Limitations that are issued with your airworthiness certificate, the FARs and many FAA rulings also make it crystal clear that experimental aircraft may NOT be used for compensation or hire. Therefore, an instructor can not give flight instruction in an aircraft supplied by the instructor. A possible exception might be if the instructor made no charge for his services and accepted no compensation whatever for the use of his aircraft. Even this possible exception is not totally clear from a legal standpoint. 

 

Consequently, the information that you received from HPAT is not only correct, but is the only possible course of action that they can legally propose.

 

I hear your complaints that you feel “abandoned” and “screwed”.  Although I understand, I do not agree. RV kits come with dual rudders and brakes. With a Lancair it’s our choice...your choice. The regulation requiring dual controls for flight instruction is not new. I feel that you need to take some responsibility for the decision not to install them. I would imagine that you realized from early in construction that you’d need instruction in your plane. 

 

I hear your lamentation that LOBO should figure out how to solve the problem of training. LOBO has been and is now hard at work to that end. One answer is a LODA (Letter of Deviation Authority). This is a letter issued by the FAA that would offer specific exemptions to the “compensation or hire” restrictions for flight training. Nobody...I say again, nobody is pushing the FAA harder in this area than LOBO. To the best of my knowledge, no LODAs have been issued by the FAA although several have been applied for. They say that they are formulating “guidance” for their field offices.

 

I spent the past 2 days in Washington DC representing LOBO at a meeting with the FAA. This was a meeting to revise guidance for Flight Instructor certificate renewal but the main and constant topic was GA safety. Among the 30 or so industry folks in attendance at this meeting were many of the top people in aviation education (John and Martha, Dr. Gleim, AOPA, Jeppesen among others) We had presentations from and very frank discussions with several FAA people. These were not local FAA inspectors but people up to the assistant administrator level. One presentation was by the head of ASF-800, Mel Cintron. Mel is in charge of all GA activities at FAA. He presented his list of the top 10 factors in GA fatal accidents. Care to guess what he listed as number one?  Yep, amateur built aircraft. The people at these levels at FAA are under tremendous pressure not just from the administrator but from Congress and the Secretary of Transportation to reduce the accident rate. One easy and obvious answer for them would be to greatly restrict amateur built aircraft. I don’t believe that they want to do this (and they said as much) but the possibility cannot be ignored. LOBO has met with Mel Cintron before and has and will continue to press for relief from the commercial training restrictions. Since this could help solve their problem as well as ours I am cautiously optimistic that we will start seeing LODAs in the near future (note: FAA “near future” and our “near future” may not be related) 

 

Until such time as we can legally offer different solutions, I urge you to make the hard decision. Install “fully functioning dual controls” in your airplane, bite the bullet, reach deep into your wallet and pay a qualified pilot to test your airplane and fly off the hours (a good one will do real and meaningful testing and data gathering). The decision that I would beg you not to make is to fly your airplane without training. As I always tell folks that I fly with in the 320/360, these airplanes are different...not difficult, but different. Different enough that to fly it without training would be, at the very least, inadvisable.

 

Please contact me if there are any areas that can help you with or questions that I can answer.

 

Bill Harrelson

N5ZQ 320 1,850 hrs

N6ZQ  IV under construction

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wayne Tassin wrote:

Second, the hpat rep tells me he has to train me in my airplane which is not complete
and he has to have rudder pedals on the right side which I did not install.
 
So what it looks like is I will need hpat to fly the 25hrs off and retrofit the right side pedals which look to be all but impossible
and then train me.  Please give me your thoughts or ideas on this situation.


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I would really appreciate it of LOBO could figure out how to solve the problem of training
in the 360 series.

If you build any RV, the factory will help you get training.
If you build a 360 you are basically screwed.

Lancair has abandoned the
360 and does not provide training. All they do is point you to HPAT, and they want to
fly the entire test period (40 hrs for me) before they train you in your own plane.

Has LOBO abandoned the 360 builder as well?

Apparently, despite all the 360s out there, some owned by CFIs, there is nobody willing to
train the new 360 pilot.
 
--
Jeff Peterson