FAA Inspection

You can get these placards from aircraft supply places like Air Craft Spruce.

Once you get it put it on a photo copier and copy it.  Fill in the blanks on the copy with the information you want to appear on it and take it to you local engraver store like the shops that do engraving on trophies.  These folks can make it look great and do it for a very good price. I can't remember for sure buy it seems ours cost us about $11.00 to have done.

You can see in the pics that there are many locations you can attach this thing and it all depends on you and your local FAA examiner or DAR where it's going to end up.

There are two factors involved in the placement of this ID placard.

# 1   It must be located in an easily seen location.

#2   The most important factor is it must be located on a part of the ship that will be the most likely to survive a crash and or fire so the FAA will be able to identify the craft.

This is a good looking spot for it but in the event of a fire or a nose first crash it would most likely be destroyed.

This installation is definitely out in the open and of you read the guidelines from the FAA on the subject they are exactly where the FAA tells you to put them.

On the other side of the coin, if a fire were to occur it would most likely be destroyed and even worse the last thing in the world you want to do to your tail boom is drill holes in the side of it because at this location it would severely weakens the structure.

This location looks pretty good but is its on a part of the ship that isn't attached very well. There are no fasteners on this side of the tail cone cover meaning it doesn't fit snugly on this side.  The other thing is the protruding rivet shanks would be chafing against the tail boom eventually rubbing a hole through or possibly rubbing the two forward rivets back sides off causing it to come loose and blow off.

This location is the one we ended up choosing because it seemed to present itself as the most survivable location plus it wasn't totally out in the open where it would be an eyesore.

If you attach it too far back like we did

the top left rivet poses a problem because there isn't enough depth at the rear of the fin to accommodate the shank depth of the rivet so be sure to place it far enough forward to avoid that problem.

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