Bogus safety equipment

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heymagic
likely do more Thermal Perfomance testing on fire suits etc,

This keeps going through my head whenever I read this sentence:

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fiasco

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hoche
5W AM transceiver, aviation frequencies, FAA certified: $4000

Anything involving the Z-axis and the FAA automatically adds two zeros to the price. Which is why, despite my urges to take flying lessons for both fixed wing and helo to check it out, I stick to cars.

That's why you have to fly experimental. I spend less on my plane than my rally car.

Hurst didn't specify how they did the test...

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johnhuebbe
That's why you have to fly experimental. I spend less on my plane than my rally car.

Experimental would be fine, except for two pesky sections of the rules: 91.319.c and 91.319.d.2

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Self-righteous douche canoe

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hoche

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johnhuebbe
That's why you have to fly experimental. I spend less on my plane than my rally car.

Experimental would be fine, except for two pesky sections of the rules: 91.319.c and 91.319.d.2

Slightly off topic to bogus safety equipment, but...

More reading:
http://members.eaa.org/home/govt/issues/samateur_built_operating.asp

Like you mentioned, FAR 91.319 has a few rules applicable to experimental aircraft. FAR 91.319c states that "...no person may operate an aircraft that has an experimental certificate over a densely populated area or in a congested airway". Interestingly, many pilots remember this rule from 91.319, but conveniently forget a similar rule applicable to ALL airplanes in FAR 91.119 that states that "...no person may operate an aircraft below the following altitudes: (a) Anywhere. An altitude allowing, if a power unit fails, an emergency landing without undue hazard to persons or property on the surface."

Really, the vast majority of commercial aircraft are operating into and out of airports in major cities where they couldn't make an emergency landing "without undue hazard to persons or property"

The FAA's concern is with any action by a pilot that creates a hazard to innocent bystanders on the ground. In practice, this means that during "Phase 1" every new amateur-built experimental aircraft may not be operated over any congested area. After the 25 or 40 hour phase 1 testing, the plane "is prohibited from operating in congested airways or over densely populated areas unless directed by Air Traffic Control, or unless sufficient altitude is maintained to effect a safe emergency landing in the event of a power unit failure, without hazard to persons or property on the surface."

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heymagic
Well for the very knowledgable audience....SFI does testing in their own lab about 3 miles from the headquarters in Cali. Hurst says they have two full time lab people and likely do more Thermal Perfomance testing on fire suits etc, harness testing than anyone. They test stuff from drag car wings to chest protectors and fuel cells. A huge variety of stuff. There are also several labs across the country that do testing for them on specialized equipment. So guess Mark needs to back to the Honey Boo Boo reruns .

For those who actually care to read a bit page 43.. http://read.uberflip.com/i/119664

Very good Gene, thanks for the update. My info was direct from the SFI site, not anything that I made up. Either way makes sense to me.

May I ask a sincere question? Did you ask Mike if ALL SFI produst testing has to be done through his lab or through SFI in some fashion? Or was his answer that 'yes, we test a wide variety of stuff" without making it clear that they do or do not test ALL SFI approved articles? The info above does not make it clear one way or another. (I have no doubt that they have a lab.)

Where do I apply to be on the committee for the tin foil hat standard?? Sounds like fun...And no Honey Boo-Boo reruns....I just spent about an hour studying a Fourth Circuit Federal Court decision on the Bonner Bridge project.....THAT will really make your head spin....

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john vanlandingham

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heymagic
. Remember the Corbeau seat deal anf the FIA? Corbeau wasn't the only one to lose certs for seats that were not up to standard.

No I don't remember Corbeau seats a few years ago that "were not up to standard".
I remember some bullshit that Corbeau had not renew or submitted or something--paper work and money exchange, in this case FIA, Gene, not "not up to standard".

Yes, I recall it. The situation was that there was a follow visit to the factory, or a retest of a later produciton item of the product, and something was found wrong and the FIA approval was pulled. (I never was clear on what exactly was wrong: manufacturing porcess, materials change, design change....??)

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Iowa999
What I do have a problem with is the idea that the people who will ultimately profit from the sale of X should be the people who test X (regardless of who decides on the standards), or -- in some ways worse -- the idea that the people who will profit from selling X should directly pay someone else to test their product. That last option is what we had in the banking and mortgage industry; unless you've been under a really heavy rock, that didn't work out so well, did it?

Reasonable concern IMO, but it is not exactly the banking industry problem....that situation involved politicians to a degree that the safety testing industry does not have! The way it is supposed to work is that any testing lab is certifed by an indepedent agency that just does lab certifying, and not product testing. In Europe, these are called Certifying Bodies. These have the charter to certify labs, equipment, and processes to a decent standard.

There is another factor in the favor of this porcess: One thing to keep in mind that independent houses DO have a reputation to protect to stay in business. So they actually have a strong general incentive to NOT bow to manufaturer pressure. I know that many don't want to beleive that, but a test house's reputation would be ruined or badly damaged if they got caught at that. Doesn't mean it will never happen, and ti will be tempting if a LOT of one's test biz came from one mfr, but the integrity of testing and results is the highest value that a test house can usually offer. (We don't work in that business, but we do work in a business where sometimes we end up at odds with the interests of the big boys in our industry, simply because we consider our reputation to be our most valuable asset, and I make concious decisions all the time to sacrifice some relationship comfort with a big player for that factor alone. So the universally bad picture of business that you paint is not representative of reality, IMO.)
Regards, Mark B.

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heymagic
Anyhow hate SFI or not, there are some phony suits on the market and people should be aware that they aren't going to pass tech with them. That was the only point of the post. Watch out for the deals on EBay or Craigslist in a couple months...

Seems like I ran across a lot of 'deals' on those particular Corbeau seats for 1-2 years after that model lost its FIA approval...so Gene's warning is accurate, IMO.

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starion887

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john vanlandingham

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heymagic
. Remember the Corbeau seat deal anf the FIA? Corbeau wasn't the only one to lose certs for seats that were not up to standard.

No I don't remember Corbeau seats a few years ago that "were not up to standard".
I remember some bullshit that Corbeau had not renew or submitted or something--paper work and money exchange, in this case FIA, Gene, not "not up to standard".

Yes, I recall it. The situation was that there was a follow visit to the factory, or a retest of a later produciton item of the product, and something was found wrong and the FIA approval was pulled. (I never was clear on what exactly was wrong: manufacturing porcess, materials change, design change....??)

Different company but speaking in detail with the LUKE harness guy he said basically FIA was a blatant obvious rip-off couched in a lot of bureacratese, so it was just write a check, a large check and send it in.. What I heard was they didn't write a check.

"SFI was simpler, just write a check"
No testing no failures, simply didn't write a check.

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John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

Mark,
They test a lot in house, about 1000 tests a year. There are some tests done elsewhere, Mexico, Canada, eastern US that have some specialized equipment that SFI doesn't own. Mike attends many of those. Some of the different test equipment is pretty pricey and specialized to just run a few tests every 2 years and that makes sense.

JV,
ten year old anecdotal testimony from some unnamed source isn't worth the time to repeat it. Get over yourself. You don't have an HNR, current belts, probably not a current helmet, definitely not a current competition ready rally car so you really have nothing to bitch about.

If a manufacturer wants their product accepted by someone who requires a certification then they need to get that certification. Common sense would indicate that getting something certified is going to cost something. The benefit is you get to sell to that market. The whole world of racing seems to somehow survive the costs and procedures. If there is a problem it most certainly would be someone who puts a fake label on a product or changes material, procedure or design after certification. No excuse for that, none...and I wouldn't want to deal with or trust someone who does business that way.

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heymagic
Mark,
They test a lot in house, about 1000 tests a year. There are some tests done elsewhere, Mexico, Canada, eastern US that have some specialized equipment that SFI doesn't own. Mike attends many of those. Some of the different test equipment is pretty pricey and specialized to just run a few tests every 2 years and that makes sense.

JV,
ten year old anecdotal testimony from some unnamed source isn't worth the time to repeat it. Get over yourself. You don't have an HNR, current belts, probably not a current helmet, definitely not a current competition ready rally car so you really have nothing to bitch about.

If a manufacturer wants their product accepted by someone who requires a certification then they need to get that certification. Common sense would indicate that getting something certified is going to cost something. The benefit is you get to sell to that market. The whole world of racing seems to somehow survive the costs and procedures. If there is a problem it most certainly would be someone who puts a fake label on a product or changes material, procedure or design after certification. No excuse for that, none...and I wouldn't want to deal with or trust someone who does business that way.

Gene a second time---you bitching me out has NOTHING to do with what I report.
Your cheerleading is just that.

Have YOU spoken at ANY time with people manufacturing shit that has to get it SFI, FIA or NHRA approved?

I'm not suggesting that whatever the weasly fuckers who faked labels are good, they bad.
But you really need to get around a bit more if you don't think the entire process is fraught with THE APPEARANCE of conflict of interests and corruption..

So what manufacturers of products did you talk to say last week?

Cause I'll be seeing one tomorrow..

No stale one person anectotal bullshit at all Gene.

So knock off your You don't have a car you blah blah..

DO YOU?

---

John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

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johnhuebbe
Slightly off topic to bogus safety equipment, but...

More reading:
http://members.eaa.org/home/govt/issues/samateur_built_operating.asp

Like you mentioned, FAR 91.319 has a few rules applicable to experimental aircraft. FAR 91.319c states that "...no person may operate an aircraft that has an experimental certificate over a densely populated area or in a congested airway". Interestingly, many pilots remember this rule from 91.319, but conveniently forget a similar rule applicable to ALL airplanes in FAR 91.119 that states that "...no person may operate an aircraft below the following altitudes: (a) Anywhere. An altitude allowing, if a power unit fails, an emergency landing without undue hazard to persons or property on the surface."

Really, the vast majority of commercial aircraft are operating into and out of airports in major cities where they couldn't make an emergency landing "without undue hazard to persons or property"

The FAA's concern is with any action by a pilot that creates a hazard to innocent bystanders on the ground. In practice, this means that during "Phase 1" every new amateur-built experimental aircraft may not be operated over any congested area. After the 25 or 40 hour phase 1 testing, the plane "is prohibited from operating in congested airways or over densely populated areas unless directed by Air Traffic Control, or unless sufficient altitude is maintained to effect a safe emergency landing in the event of a power unit failure, without hazard to persons or property on the surface."

Probably should start a new thread and move this to Off-Topic if we're going to keep gabbing about it, but...

That's interesting. I don't really keep up with experimental regs; I was under the impression that like light-sport they were pretty limited with where they could fly. Clearly it's less of a limitation than I thought. So, that leaves one remaining issue: can you get them instrument certified?

I fly out of Hayward, which is a Class C that's slammed right up next to and underneath Oakland, which is in turn a Class C that's underneath San Francisco. Right next door to the west is San Carlos's Class C. Getting out of there under VFR involves a lot of shenanigans, and sometimes it's just easier to file IFR and get clearances. Also, it's often fogged in in the morning, so an IFR clearance is often necessary if you want to get airborne before about 11am.

The other issue, of course, is that I have a perfectly good Cherokee 6 with a 600hr engine, and I like the thing. It hauls a lot and is a pretty mellow bird to fly. I need to upgrade the avionics a bit, but I keep spending money on this stupid racing nonsense instead.

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Self-righteous douche canoe

Again all anecdotal John and a bunch if hearsay so far. FIA ...I have no problem seeing evil in that direction . They control the races and the racers along with everything in between. SFI does nothing that someone doesn't ask for. They have none of the power or control that FIA does. 100% opposite situation. Now maybe the 2 year belt thing (for example) isn't kosher, I don't know but without someone ceritying safety equipment standards in todays litigous world we wouldn't have any racing. Since we obviously can't trust the manufactures (at least some, at least some of the time) then how would we have reasonable oversight and or consistancy? What is your solution?

Its hard to decipher what we're talking about but a lot of industries test their own products with an oversight organization. Which is what SFI is pretty much doing, I believe.

I work in the nuclear industry, we do all of our own seismic testing, EMC, and environmental testing. In our own labs. There is some NRC and customer oversight, but thats the way its done.