Chuck H..
You are correct about paper work varying from country to country.
We do restoration on collectors airplanes all over the world and the bureaucratic minefield is mindboggling in all countries.
What we do to determine the value of any given airplane is compare the records..or lack thereof to the actual airframe and components on the airplane being examined, seldom do we find the paper work to truly reflect the airplane for the simple reason that paper work is a bureaucrat thing and as long as the papre work is acceptable to a bureaucrat the airplane is airworthy..even if it is sitting outside on fire.
We have a super Cat in the USA at the moment that we are struggling to get flyable...that was sold as airworthy, we were brought in to get it flyable ant it has taken us six weeks of work seven days a week,it is still not ready to ferry and we will be going back in Sept. to finish it.
So it is buyer beware, anyone who takes paper work as the benchmark for the true condition of an airplane just may have a very expensive problem on their hands.
And yeh, I missunderstood who's airplane George was describing, sorry about that George, the typed word is sometimes easily missread.
As to my comments regarding aviation being " dummed down " it is not an American thing, you will find the same problem all over the world, and the problem is training airplanes have been designed to be a simple and safe as possible and that you can blame on lawyers. Now we are stuck with a training industry that thinks a tail wheel Cessna is some exotic machine that only superman can fly.
Anyhow, for sure this whole thread has gotten way off subject and through missunderstanding rather unfriendly, at times...I guess I am mostly to blame for the way it went, but do not appreciate being referred to as an arrogant prick because of some missunderstanding. Of course I could just not talk about the area of aviation that we work in but I am sure some here are interested...
Chuck E.
