Advice for newbie and AD's

The texts of all the ADs are available on the Univair web site. There a few that are 100 hour ADs (as opposed to annual) so if you fly a lot look out for those! Some have ways to fix them so they are no longer needed, others are every 100 hours. Most are annual. Any competent mechanic should be able to get the list and check them out. It wouldn't hurt, however, for you to check the AD list and make sure your A&P/IA has the same list. Once you get it all worked out, new ones are fairly rare, so that list will serve you well. The ADs for the wing spars (annual) and the center section spar (every 3 years) have been around for quite a while and shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. Some of the others may be less obvious, like the new one requiring calibrating the airspeed indicator and checking aileron play. On that one, the airspeed indicator should have been checked soon after the AD came out just that once, and the aileron free play part must be done every 100 hours. So basically, you should get with your mechanic and work out what is done every 3 years, what is done annually, and what is done every 100 hours. If you fly less than 100 hours annually then you can just handle those at annual. Some of us (ahem) have to keep our eye on the tach hour meter...

Remember that there are coupes (later models) that don't have some of those issues. Those (I own a 66 Alon) are fairly easy to address for the few recurrent AD's that exist for it.

If an Alon doesn't suite your needs, then I'm sure that the folks out there will be able to respond appropriately.

Having said *that* - no one I know that has an early model coupe complains much... Maybe they're too busy having fun flying!

josef