Weekend Feild Annuals

[J31]

Shop rate $100 per hour
If you watch and ask questions $125 per hour
If you want to help $150 per hour.
If you help and fail to do it right the first time $200 per hour.

[RedAndWhiteBaron]

Shop rate $100 per hour
If you watch and ask questions $125 per hour
If you want to help $150 per hour.
If you help and fail to do it right the first time $200 per hour.

LOL, I've actually made that request of my mechanic - "Can I help if I pay you more?"

It's especially funny because he has a poster in the office saying exactly this.

[photofly]

I’m boring, I know, but I find that sort of laugh very disrespectful to the customer. It׳s like the pottery jar that says on it “ashes of difficult clients”. Neither projects a professional image.

[digits_]

I’m boring, I know, but I find that sort of laugh very disrespectful to the customer. It׳s like the pottery jar that says on it “ashes of difficult clients”. Neither projects a professional image.

Yup. Or the classic mousetrap with the "ring to file complaint".

The funny thing is, you only see those labels in places where it can't really be interpreted as a joke.

[CBAME]

I once considered doing the same thing, but due to the reasons posted and the amount of equipment and tools needed i decided a shop can do a better inspection in a hangar, Also the shops and AME's who do the inspection with a pen could be my competition, difficult to compete against someone who never finds any snags and is all done by lunch, curious on who the shop mentioned is. It bugs me if you say "I do not need to check the spark plugs it only flew 30 hours" what happens if next year the plane flies 30 hours, you say the same thing, then it flies 100 hours and your spark plugs now have 160 hours on them, and probably the grease in the wheel bearings, the oil filter and the floor has 2 to 3 years worth of bugs dirt and corrosion under it. jus my thoughts

I do admit it would be fun to work on planes again if i could find a good customer or even helping an AME with his weekend/evening annuals, PM if your in SW Ontario and need help.

as for being a licensed AME and having to delver pizza to get by, that is not good and something needs to change this career should be enough to get by. and the owners should be ashamed they do not pay their staff enough to live.

[SmartWrenchMonkey]

I once considered doing the same thing, but due to the reasons posted and the amount of equipment and tools needed i decided a shop can do a better inspection in a hangar, Also the shops and AME's who do the inspection with a pen could be my competition, difficult to compete against someone who never finds any snags and is all done by lunch, curious on who the shop mentioned is. It bugs me if you say "I do not need to check the spark plugs it only flew 30 hours" what happens if next year the plane flies 30 hours, you say the same thing, then it flies 100 hours and your spark plugs now have 160 hours on them, and probably the grease in the wheel bearings, the oil filter and the floor has 2 to 3 years worth of bugs dirt and corrosion under it. jus my thoughts

I do admit it would be fun to work on planes again if i could find a good customer or even helping an AME with his weekend/evening annuals, PM if your in SW Ontario and need help.

as for being a licensed AME and having to delver pizza to get by, that is not good and something needs to change this career should be enough to get by. and the owners should be ashamed they do not pay their staff enough to live.

One great part of this whole thread for me has been "Can a AMO provide a better inspection than the same AME". I have the tools and equipment, I splurged for some neat new toys too. I am open to discussion on this, if I can't provide an equal or greater quality I'm not interested in operating. Please let me know if you think of anything the thread hasn't already discussed.

There is another part to that story which makes it a little more understandable but at the end of the day as an apprentice I was shocked, also stupid. What I learned since then is that GA is a different beast, things are complicated sometimes. Fundamentally the relationship between a aircraft owner and his maintainer can be extremely valuable.

I think most guys have a side gig. I know a guy who sells antiques on ebay, couple guys reno'ing houses, a buddy who rent's electric bikes to tourists. It's just how it is. Life's not easy, it's not suppose to be.

For anyone following along. I have a hangar to work in now.

[SmartWrenchMonkey]

Been an engineer for over 30 yrs now. I remember being enthusiastic like yourself many moons ago. I worked in a shop pumping out annuals like a puppy mill. Learned on my own with out guidance. Annuals were expected to be done in 8hrs start to finish from initial run up to post run up cowls on. Excuse by management being "they only flew 4hrs last year. nothing to look at it." This mind set although wrong was the norm. The customers came to expect an annual's cost. Trying to break out on my own and give them value and preform the work as expected, would mean i would have to double their annual cost if not triple as the parts that require replacement would also need to be attended to. Also I knew the shop owner i currently worked for would fire my ass, rightfully so.
Fast forward and after a few year of wrenching i jumped to structures and moved to another city. Now i could do annuals on the weekends and not have a conflict with current employer! Perfect right? HA! Start out doing the annuals in their hanger, no heat, no lights, no supplies. So i try and purchase and be prepared for every possible scenario, show up at 8 am Saturday morning, work till 5, come back the next day at now 7 and finish it all off hopefully by 5 that night. (Family has been ignored all weekend as they were off enjoying the lake and having fun.) While working those 2 days im wishing i had my own spark plug tester( among many other things), i know i need to test after gapping, but a friend who has one is a 20 min drive one way, Well i work that into my day. Cant charge the customer for me not being prepared can I? Nope eat 45 mins. Working away, now comes the local weekend warrior pilot seeing a new face wants to come talk airplane.. Oh joy. So give the courtesy to talk and bam another half hour goes by. Figure might be a potential new customer right, nope never is. So cant charge my customer, so eat another half. Some days more than just one local pilot wants to talk. Their hobby of airplanes is not mine.
So now comes time to bill. Eaten some of the hours of my day and charge the Customer straight billable hours. Have worked the whole weekend and can maybe bill 80% of the time worked. I have supplied oil and by the time i paid freight the price per liter is above the list price on Aircraft Spruce! The go to for every pilot/owner who want to ensure the are treated fairly on the pricing! The bitching and the moaning on the cost of parts and consumables, as if its me who sets them just gets on your nerves after a while. Im not your therapist. The hours spent at home researching the best possible price is not worth it, even with a meager 10% mark up. I have told the customer they need to get the part, guess what? They have no manuals and have no idea what they need, so you need to do the research anyways, spoon feed them what they need to buy, and then still have them ask you to order it in anyways as they dont want to set up an account with the vendor. But they now know what the vendor charges and they expect the same price. ( little hint most vendors dont give discounts to weekend annual performers, we dont have the volume of sales)
Now lets talk about the customer who wants to "help"! Sure ok, I get it, you want to "learn" and keep your cost down. Sigh. So now I'm baby sitting you, giving you tasks like taking off inspection panels, removing seats, cowls etc. I get you to take off every panel on the wing, some of them are not inspection panels but access panels from then the wing was assembled in a jig, but meh, keeps you busy and make you feel productive all the while keeping you our of my hair so i can focus and get the rest of the annual done. My time is valuable you see, I have a weekend off and its here working on your machine. I want to get it done as efficiently as possible. No you cant use that robertson Pk screw that works just as well as the phillips head one to put back on the panel, No i dont want to explain to you why. @#$! me. Now your struggling with the seats coming off on your cessna. I need to stop show you how to crank the seat up high and move it all the way forward blah blah blah. Your helping me has slowed me down and turning this annual into something way longer than it needs to be. Now i have found a concern of something that needs to be addressed. Cant be done this weekend as we need parts, Owner with big crocodile tears now wants to know how much it will cost? and the preverbal "does it have to be changed? Can i run it a little longer?" whaa whaa whaa. now i ha. ve to explain your a grown man, you can do whatever you like. I have told you what is wrong, you can ignore the problem and hope it fixes itself, like hoses that are 50yrs old have been known to do( insert eye roll). I will just write it in the log book as a known hidden defect and you can decide to fix it whenever. Now I'm the asshole. I have devalued their airplane as i have made it less marketable as they wanted to sell it soon. You cant fucking win in this game. It is thankless and the unicorns of good pilot/owners like Pilotdar or Photofly are just that unicorns. The real world of guys who dont visit this forum are plentiful.
I havent even touched on the cost of having your own hanger and the overhead to keep it going. I make more money renting my hanger out for boat storage and motorcycle storage than i do for aircraft storage. Planes take up a lot of floor space. No one wants to pay 500/month to store their aircraft, but 2 boats and 8 motorcycles pay very well. In the spring/summer they are gone, and i have the shop to myself. They pay a retainer to have that space available come fall again.
I am down to only 2 aircraft i maintain on the side now. My weekends are valuable. I have the customers i now want. I have fired all the rest. There is not enough money in the world to make me want to work on their aircraft. Ya im old and crusty, bitter etc. But this is the realistic life of a guy trying to annuals on the side for extra cash, because their full time gig doesnt pay enough.

I agree 1000% with this and experienced almost all of it personally.

The reason I think the OP has a chance is his strong aerosexuality, zero personal life or interest in having one, a raving desperation to please pilot owners, and working at a "great company" that pays poorly enough that he delivers pizza on his time off.

I never had that sort of ambition or motivation.

I really thought the whole being a hero thing was finally history.

Enjoy sleeping in your truck. It will be a good prepper for when you're living in it.

COOL!

Covered this friend, I have a lovely refrigerator box and a spot picked out down by the river.

[CBAME]

What did you decide to do?

[Heliian]

I’m boring, I know, but I find that sort of laugh very disrespectful to the customer. It׳s like the pottery jar that says on it “ashes of difficult clients”. Neither projects a professional image.

Yup. Or the classic mousetrap with the "ring to file complaint".

The funny thing is, you only see those labels in places where it can't really be interpreted as a joke.

Options are:
-cheap
-fast
-high quality

You can have 2.

[RedAndWhiteBaron]

Options are:
-cheap
-fast
-high quality

You can have 2.

Options are:
- single
- attractive
- mentally stable

You can have 2.

[SmartWrenchMonkey]

What did you decide to do?

I'm working my way into it.

[fzyk172]

wrench monkey,
What province are you located in?

[edmanster]

I may be a bit biased ...
In the early '90s in Calgary .. I owned a full fledged AMO ..
Next door(hangar) to me an Airport Employee rented a space & provided annuals on his days off ..
He charged $300-$500 per annual for a basic Cessna / Comanche annual.
- He had a line-up of customers ..
- One Sub-zero weekend morning; one of his customers comes knocking on my door with a flat oleo.
(I guess inspecting a leaking oleo was not part of the annual package price)

- Working outside in in blowing winds; removing cowls; access to a buried schrader valve; hauling a N2 bottle thru snow drifts ..
Finally .. all buttoned up .. Job done .. "Thanks! i got no bills right now - catch u later in the week to settle up !"
... last i saw of him ... This is type of customer you will be dealing with !!!

[SmartWrenchMonkey]

I may be a bit biased ...
In the early '90s in Calgary .. I owned a full fledged AMO ..
Next door(hangar) to me an Airport Employee rented a space & provided annuals on his days off ..
He charged $300-$500 per annual for a basic Cessna / Comanche annual.
- He had a line-up of customers ..
- One Sub-zero weekend morning; one of his customers comes knocking on my door with a flat oleo.
(I guess inspecting a leaking oleo was not part of the annual package price)

- Working outside in in blowing winds; removing cowls; access to a buried schrader valve; hauling a N2 bottle thru snow drifts ..
Finally .. all buttoned up .. Job done .. "Thanks! i got no bills right now - catch u later in the week to settle up !"
... last i saw of him ... This is type of customer you will be dealing with !!!

I have worked for a few shops in my time in aviation. I have never charged someone to charge an Oleo unless it took a serious amount of time. Good pilots toss $20 to the beer fund, but I get it. It's not always a 5 min job.

I spend lots of hours working without pay, it's a reason I charge what I do.

[PilotDAR]

I spend lots of hours working without pay, it's a reason I charge what I do.

Which is your choice, and I certainly do it too. However, the choice that you work without pay should certainly not be that of your customer. It's god business to provide a freebee every now and then. It's not good business to attract clients who expect you to do that.

[SmartWrenchMonkey]

I spend lots of hours working without pay, it's a reason I charge what I do.

Which is your choice, and I certainly do it too. However, the choice that you work without pay should certainly not be that of your customer. It's god business to provide a freebee every now and then. It's not good business to attract clients who expect you to do that.

I couldn't agree with you more.

At the shop I'm a monkey, who gets charged for what is above my pay-grade. Personally I don't think 15 min of shop time is too much to ask someone flying a 200k airplane, but no one cares what I think.

On my own, I accept CC, e-transfer, stocks, bonds, assets, rare metals, bitcoin, dogecoin, some third coin, valuable collectables, your first born child, even Canadian Pesos. Pay me and I'll get up.

The day I get stiffed on a bill, I promise I'll be on here complaining about it.

[Bug_Stomper_01]

I may be a bit biased ...
In the early '90s in Calgary .. I owned a full fledged AMO ..
Next door(hangar) to me an Airport Employee rented a space & provided annuals on his days off ..
He charged $300-$500 per annual for a basic Cessna / Comanche annual.
- He had a line-up of customers ..
- One Sub-zero weekend morning; one of his customers comes knocking on my door with a flat oleo.
(I guess inspecting a leaking oleo was not part of the annual package price)

- Working outside in in blowing winds; removing cowls; access to a buried schrader valve; hauling a N2 bottle thru snow drifts ..
Finally .. all buttoned up .. Job done .. "Thanks! i got no bills right now - catch u later in the week to settle up !"
... last i saw of him ... This is type of customer you will be dealing with !!!

Canada’s GA is the worst group to maintain. Cheapest group of jerks known to man, I don’t get it. People will splurge on upgrades on luxury boats and cars but with GA aircraft lockwire zip ties and duct tape holding everything together. One of my college instructors in the engine shop mentioned “the sickness” these “aviators” have. I didn’t understand until I had to deal with them first hand..... it makes no sense, those people do have those cars and yachts whats up with their aircraft ffs?

[Bug_Stomper_01]

Been an engineer for over 30 yrs now. I remember being enthusiastic like yourself many moons ago. I worked in a shop pumping out annuals like a puppy mill. Learned on my own with out guidance. Annuals were expected to be done in 8hrs start to finish from initial run up to post run up cowls on. Excuse by management being "they only flew 4hrs last year. nothing to look at it." This mind set although wrong was the norm. The customers came to expect an annual's cost. Trying to break out on my own and give them value and preform the work as expected, would mean i would have to double their annual cost if not triple as the parts that require replacement would also need to be attended to. Also I knew the shop owner i currently worked for would fire my ass, rightfully so.
Fast forward and after a few year of wrenching i jumped to structures and moved to another city. Now i could do annuals on the weekends and not have a conflict with current employer! Perfect right? HA! Start out doing the annuals in their hanger, no heat, no lights, no supplies. So i try and purchase and be prepared for every possible scenario, show up at 8 am Saturday morning, work till 5, come back the next day at now 7 and finish it all off hopefully by 5 that night. (Family has been ignored all weekend as they were off enjoying the lake and having fun.) While working those 2 days im wishing i had my own spark plug tester( among many other things), i know i need to test after gapping, but a friend who has one is a 20 min drive one way, Well i work that into my day. Cant charge the customer for me not being prepared can I? Nope eat 45 mins. Working away, now comes the local weekend warrior pilot seeing a new face wants to come talk airplane.. Oh joy. So give the courtesy to talk and bam another half hour goes by. Figure might be a potential new customer right, nope never is. So cant charge my customer, so eat another half. Some days more than just one local pilot wants to talk. Their hobby of airplanes is not mine.
So now comes time to bill. Eaten some of the hours of my day and charge the Customer straight billable hours. Have worked the whole weekend and can maybe bill 80% of the time worked. I have supplied oil and by the time i paid freight the price per liter is above the list price on Aircraft Spruce! The go to for every pilot/owner who want to ensure the are treated fairly on the pricing! The bitching and the moaning on the cost of parts and consumables, as if its me who sets them just gets on your nerves after a while. Im not your therapist. The hours spent at home researching the best possible price is not worth it, even with a meager 10% mark up. I have told the customer they need to get the part, guess what? They have no manuals and have no idea what they need, so you need to do the research anyways, spoon feed them what they need to buy, and then still have them ask you to order it in anyways as they dont want to set up an account with the vendor. But they now know what the vendor charges and they expect the same price. ( little hint most vendors dont give discounts to weekend annual performers, we dont have the volume of sales)
Now lets talk about the customer who wants to "help"! Sure ok, I get it, you want to "learn" and keep your cost down. Sigh. So now I'm baby sitting you, giving you tasks like taking off inspection panels, removing seats, cowls etc. I get you to take off every panel on the wing, some of them are not inspection panels but access panels from then the wing was assembled in a jig, but meh, keeps you busy and make you feel productive all the while keeping you our of my hair so i can focus and get the rest of the annual done. My time is valuable you see, I have a weekend off and its here working on your machine. I want to get it done as efficiently as possible. No you cant use that robertson Pk screw that works just as well as the phillips head one to put back on the panel, No i dont want to explain to you why. @#$! me. Now your struggling with the seats coming off on your cessna. I need to stop show you how to crank the seat up high and move it all the way forward blah blah blah. Your helping me has slowed me down and turning this annual into something way longer than it needs to be. Now i have found a concern of something that needs to be addressed. Cant be done this weekend as we need parts, Owner with big crocodile tears now wants to know how much it will cost? and the preverbal "does it have to be changed? Can i run it a little longer?" whaa whaa whaa. now i ha. ve to explain your a grown man, you can do whatever you like. I have told you what is wrong, you can ignore the problem and hope it fixes itself, like hoses that are 50yrs old have been known to do( insert eye roll). I will just write it in the log book as a known hidden defect and you can decide to fix it whenever. Now I'm the asshole. I have devalued their airplane as i have made it less marketable as they wanted to sell it soon. You cant fucking win in this game. It is thankless and the unicorns of good pilot/owners like Pilotdar or Photofly are just that unicorns. The real world of guys who dont visit this forum are plentiful.
I havent even touched on the cost of having your own hanger and the overhead to keep it going. I make more money renting my hanger out for boat storage and motorcycle storage than i do for aircraft storage. Planes take up a lot of floor space. No one wants to pay 500/month to store their aircraft, but 2 boats and 8 motorcycles pay very well. In the spring/summer they are gone, and i have the shop to myself. They pay a retainer to have that space available come fall again.
I am down to only 2 aircraft i maintain on the side now. My weekends are valuable. I have the customers i now want. I have fired all the rest. There is not enough money in the world to make me want to work on their aircraft. Ya im old and crusty, bitter etc. But this is the realistic life of a guy trying to annuals on the side for extra cash, because their full time gig doesnt pay enough.

I agree 1000% with this and experienced almost all of it personally.

The reason I think the OP has a chance is his strong aerosexuality, zero personal life or interest in having one, a raving desperation to please pilot owners, and working at a "great company" that pays poorly enough that he delivers pizza on his time off.

I never had that sort of ambition or motivation.

I really thought the whole being a hero thing was finally history.

Enjoy sleeping in your truck. It will be a good prepper for when you're living in it.

COOL!

Lol never underestimate the power of aerosexuals And their lack of personal life. Incels like that are why there’s no way to make a livable wage in Canada anymore

[Pat Richard]

I know, right?

He's on about "everybody has a side gig.." That's the vindication to continue getting arse phukked.

His attitude is the reason why this business will always be shit. the owners know there is always some sad sack enthusiast out there that will be happy with the company fist up thier ass, getting worked like a hand puppet.

I don't know of any other industry with this kind of bullshit, only aviation. Proud losers.

[Bug_Stomper_01]

I know, right?

He's on about "everybody has a side gig.." That's the vindication to continue getting arse phukked.

His attitude is the reason why this business will always be shit. the owners know there is always some sad sack enthusiast out there that will be happy with the company fist up thier ass, getting worked like a hand puppet.

I don't know of any other industry with this kind of bullshit, only aviation. Proud losers.

It’s f’n disgusting, I’m glad I have a side gig that’s a full time career not aviation lol