Thank you for visiting the Commander Owners Group's page dedicated to investigating the problems associated with the elevator spar AD recently issued for the Commander.
Background: Over the first few months of 2011, several 114's have been found with cracks in the spars around the elevator hinge areas. After the FAA issued the actual AD mandating an inspection, more aircraft were found with cracked spars including some 112 models. In order to help the COG gather more data about this issue and assist us with working with the FAA on developing reasonable inspection methods and hopefully a terminating action, and in the interest of the safety of all our members, we've put together this page to accomplish the following:
Gather data to help spread the word about what we know about the issue thus far.
Deliver a suggested procedure that your mechanic can use to check your aircraft including some steps not specifically called out in the AD. The additional step are intended to help shed light on the underlying cause of the cracks being found.
Provide a mechanism for centrally collecting the results of what each member finds so that we can work with all interested parties in better understanding the issue and next steps.
We will make all collected data available to each member and Commander Premier who has requested a copy of what we find.
Here's what we'd like you to do:
Download the below Elevator Spar Inspection Guide and Report by clicking the link below. The Guide explains exactly what the problem is and a suggested procedure for checking your aircraft. We suggest you print and hand the Guide to your mechanic. (Thanks to Jim Richards at Aerodyme for supplying the material in the Guide)
After your mechanic performs the check on your aircraft, please have them fill in the requested information in the Guide. Note that we want to hear from you regardless of what is found. This is very important as we want to get as many results back as possible to help determine possible causes.
With the Guide in hand, come back to this page and enter the result in the table below.
If your shop or you don't have time to fill in the online
form, please either fax the results to us at 978-921-0950 or scan
the Guide and email to us at survey@commander.org
As we gather data we'll make it available in the forums on a periodic basis. Thanks in advance for helping your fellow owners!
Post-check Report (Do not hit
'Enter' when typing or form will be submitted. Use Tab & mouse to move between fields)
