Ready for DAR

[jonstark]

[QUOTE=tommg We have a great guy (DAR) that's authorized to inspect in your area as well as most of the New England states. His contract is through the Boston MIDO. He's quite reasonable on price and travel expense.[/QUOTE]

The FAA DAR directory is out of date. They have all retired in my area. What is your man's name? Local builders are now having to use a FSDO inspector.

Jon

[tommg13780]

Ron Jones, DAR located in Eaton, NY, near KVGC. 315-684-7221. He generally answers the phone at his shop. I'd suggest a pre-inspection meeting to review paperwork for errors and omissions. After that he opens a "window" that may be 30 days to actually perform the inspection. The paperwork is by far more critical to a successful outcome that the airplane.

http://eatonaviation.com/

[efwd]

Hello Gentlemen.
With regard to a builders log. I started construction of my SS7 March 12 of this year. I have not created a builders log outside of placing dates on the pages of the construction manual. My RV4 I started 15 years ago didn't come with such a manual that has the completion date lines to fill in so I kinda thought this would suffice. I have been meaning to call John to ask this question but since your mentioning this here I guess its as good a place as any to get some information. I have been taking photos of my boys and I doing the build so I should be fine by the end with photo documentation but the log? Are you just "journaling" the build in a book as I did years ago or how exactly do they wish for you to log the time? It seems journaling is just going to be paraphrasing the construction manual.
Thanks
Eddie

[DesertFox4]

Eddie, you should be fine with using the build manual. It has a place for date and your initials when a build task has been completed. That was acceptable to my DAR back in 2003 for my model 4 build along with photos. Of my current build I bet I have 500 plus photos already and many more to come before completion.

I do recommend keeping photos of the build and trying to get yourself in as many of the photos as practical throughout the different phases of the build. If I find myself alone and wanting a photo of a part of the build with myself in the photo as proof, I set my digital camera on the timed photo setting and quickly get into the shot before the timer takes the photo. After I accumulate a batch of photos I transfer them to a flash drive containing all my build photos. That flash drive then goes into my fire proof safe until the next download of photos. With photos of you building and your dated and initialled build manual, it would be hard to dispute just who did the majority of the construction, either for your airworthiness certificate or your repairmans certificate.

[jiott]

Another really good reason to take lots of photos is for the benefit of the people on this forum. After you are done with the build and happily flying, many of us find it interesting and helpful to others still building by continuing to be part of this forum and sharing our experiences. Many times someone will ask a question about some part of the build or modification they made and it is great to have a store of detail photos you can share to show how you did it. I wish I had taken more close-up detail photos in addition to the general overall views.