Fixing Your Own Plane by Michael E. Morotta
Ron Cooper was recommended to me by several of the pilots at Livington County airport (OZW) in Howell, Michigan, for a
newspaper article I wrote in 1998. "I have to like the plane and
the owner before I take them in," he told me. "There are some
planes that I consider high risk or poorly engineered and I don't
take them."
Ron Cooper grew up around airplanes. "My Dad and I did a lot of old time fabric planes, Tripacers, Vagabonds, Stearmans, Aroncas." he said. He graduated from the old Detroit School of Aeronautics and got his A&P license in 1975. His strip is called "Coopers Landing" and you will not find it on any charts, but the local pilots know where to find it in the trees along Hogsback
Road. In fact, from the air, it is plain as day -- just watch
out for the power lines.
Ron Cooper was a peace officer and in 1989, he explains, "an experimental plane lowered me down a bit." He holds patents on the wheelchairs he built to ensure that kept working. Under his direction, pilots fix their own planes. Ron does 25 to 50 planes a year. It all depends on how the work goes. No one is in a hurry and the owners are used to holding patterns waiting for Ron
to take them under his wing.
When you work on your own plane, you get to know it a lot better. Ron Cooper does everything except avionics. He only directs three annuals a year and prefers not to do them in the winter. Still, you can do a 100-hour or install a more powerful engine. After Ron directs you disassembling your plane and then putting it together, you fly out and back and he listens. "I can hear the work, just like I heard your alternator belt when you pulled in the drive way." (He was right about that. I got it fixed before we met again.)
Ron Cooper thinks that A/Ds (Airworthiness Directives) are motivated more by a need to create sales than concerns for
safety. He cites an example. Take a 1942 Aronca Champ. All
aerobatics are approved for the plane, but they are over 50 years
old. If you eliminate aerobatics in older planes, he contends,
you remove need for A/Ds.
In addition, he says that he has seen a degradation in the quality of new and rebuilt parts. He tests and inspects everything thoroughly before allowing a pilot to install it. He
found a run of cracked main front bearings on Lycoming O-470 engines. "They all crack," he asserts. "75% to 90% crack all the
way through. They came from Clevite who had them made in South
America. Everyone carries the same part. I even went back and
got an old one and it was cracked."
His skills are a rarely learned art. Aviation schools change with the times. "No one teaches dope and fabric or wood any more. Most young mechanics cannot work with wood," he said. He talked at length about stretching canvas and the differences between the old fabric and the new plastic. Whether you wet
canvas or use a hair drier on plastic, it takes the same patience to chase a wrinkle and get it to finish tight.
But flying is a bug, and while a lot of pilots would give it up if they could make the save money elsewhere, there's still a love of flying that makes it worthwhile.
