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Originally Posted by larry bowdish
You are absolutely correct. And when we ask if your airplane is used for low level work, even then we are not getting a good picture of what that means.
Take for example someone doing fire spotting, where they are making tight turns, maneuvering at low altitudes, with lots of thermals. At the other end of the spectrum, some one who is doing polar bear tracking, where, they are flying over a non-thermal environment, basically straight and level, though at a low altitude.
You can't simply say 0-2's had higher stresses. I would argue that the fire spotter gets more stresses, on a continuing basis, than most of the 0-2's in civilian service. Remember that the 0-2's that were beat up pretty badly were simply scrapped.
When you buy a plane, and you look at the log books, you can't tell what kind of use the aircraft had. My former aircraft had lots of hours, but it was a all used as a corp plane for a collection of companies, and for a number of years, was flying every day.
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By lumping O-2's into the mix with a civilian 337 you are asking for trouble. The FAA is not the smartest operation around and they tend to go with the worst case scenario. Back years ago the FAA issued a wing demating for PA28 and PA32 airplanes because a PA32 shed a wing in flight. But if one looked into the circumstances the plane that created the AD was flown in Alaska, off of rocky strips carrying cargo (overweight).
You are relying on the benevolence of the FAA. Look at it this way, this is a negotiation. You don't go in with what you feel is adequate. Go in with a lot more conditions because I will guarantee you they will cut them down to get right to the point. Unless you guys want to wind up with a cost prohibitive AD on these planes you better be careful. Cessna would love to get rid of all these old planes and the corresponding liability and the FAA would be all to willing to help them.