I am not an A&P! If anything I write here can be interpreted by anyone as contrary to the "book", than, the book way is the way I did it. I came late to the airplane world, nut I did not live 58 years in a bubble before that time. Everything you experience in life can be used with common sense to make sense out of new experiences.

I have been blessed with an A&P-IA who will let me do anything that needs done on our bird. He is always there to look over my shoulder and impart his knowledge and advice, as well as to insure that I do it right. My experiences working on my airplane, my discussions with Dave and the ongoing threads on the various aviation forums I attend tell me that many are afraid to "mess" with their plane.

If you have enough mechanical ability to remember "righty tighty, lefty loosy", you can perform the maintenance tasks allowed to the PP-ASEL, and give real assistance to the A&P on the more complex tasks.

Do not be discouraged by the maintenance manuals. Most of them are sketchy at best. It almost makes me beleive that they were written to preserve the aura of mystery that surrounds the A&P. But the oil change instructions that simply say "drain old oil, remove filter, replace filter, refill oil" were not written to discourage you from doing it. They were written with the assumption that the person doing it had enough common sense to locate the drain plug and provide a way to get the oil into a bucket instead of all over the inside of the cowling.

When it came time to replace my main gear donuts, I could not find enough details anywhere to give Dave nor I enough sense of the task to understand it's magnitude. As we did it, I made notes and took pictures and published them here. The response from the Musketeer owners was gratifying. The idea then came to do the same for other maintenance functions that I perform or participate in.

The manuals are sketchy. These musings are not intended to go to the level of "unlatch cowling, open cowling, secure cowling in the open position, etc,". If they did, someone would nit-pick over some item that was not in the order they do it. Or someone might contemplate litigation over an omitted or misunderstood item. Some items will be omitted for other reasons:

• They are obvious.
• The order is immaterial.
• Exactly how to do it would be a matter of personal preference.

An example of this will come in the notes on an oil change. I will say "Cut safety wire. Remove filter." I will not tell you when to remove the safety wire for all of the above reasons. It will obviously have to be removed, at least from the place where it attaches to the engine. It would be better to remove it immediately to avoid slicing yourself on the loose ends, but it may be in a location or orientation that will make it difficult to remove until after the filter is out of the way. You may be able to pull it out with a pair of pliers, or you may have to wait until the filter is out to get dikes in to cut it loose from what it was twisted to. Taking a welding torch to burn it off is obviously not a viable option.