Deice Boot Question
 

The feds are all over my company right now for, well a number of things, one of which is deice boot patches that are delaminating (beginning to peal off). Generally maintenance fixes this problem by re-securing the edges of the patch. Recently they have been cutting off the part of the patch which is delaminating. Is this legal? It may seem like a small thing to worry about, but when the feds are sending out LOIs for this sort of thing, I'd like to know. Anyone with a maintenance background or experience in this area know if what they are doing is legal?

In order for the patches to be legal, they must cover the hole and not be delamenating. NOW, while I never thought of being so cheap and lazy as to cut off the portion that is delamenating, I suppose as long as the hole is covered and the patch is flush, it is legal. Nothing suprises me at Lakes though. To cover your a!@ just go to maintenance control next time youre in CYS and look at theyre manual to see for yourself. And then poop on Chucks desk! MEOW!

You as a pilot will not get busted if an airline does improper Mx and logs it as proper. You are not expected to be an A&P(IA), you are just expected to read the writeups in the can and comply with MELs.

Of course it might be good to know the answer from a safety point of view...

I agree with most of your statement rickair7777, but the following is more specific to Lakes, so I wouldn't expect you to know about this. The patches are part of the "preflight inspection checklist", so we do have a certain amount of responsibility in knowing what a "legal" patch is; especially after seeing what I saw a few days ago: 3 Feds following an FO during a walk around, watching his every move, and asking him a barrage of questions. Then, two of them break off during the walk around, and stare at me as I'm starting a different aircraft. Those two sat there with their arms crossed, watching my every move as I slowly taxied the aircraft out in full ground fine, even riding the brakes a little to avoid a taxi faster than a "fast paced walk". Good times...but all too common at Lakes these days, unfortunately.

As they say, if you're not able to ground a 1900 from every walk around you're doing it wrong. If you're flying a 1900 you should expect things to be broken anyways. No need to look good in front of the feds.

Agreed................

Your mechanics actually repair them? When I was flying the BE-99, our instructions were to let the ice build up enough so that it sealed the holes in the boots, then we could inflate them.

Joe;)

boot patches are typically a one size fits all sort of deal. Trimming the outer edges of a patch certainly is not a major issue. However if the edges of a patch are being peeled back by the airflow and it "looks" a bit much, calling MX out to trim the patch isnt usually and issue plus it gives them a chance to look at it themselves. Just my two cents.

Its been a while since I've flown anything with boots, but I did fly the 1900 for over 1000 hours and flew the J41 some. The only thing that was brought up about boot patches was that they could not overlap.

To cover yourself, write up to "request inspection" of the deice patches and be specific of the location on the wing, it has been a long time since I have flown anything with boots, but I do remember there was a limit of how many on each wing and within a certain distance of how many along any given point. Best to call your POI for verification. This is very specific.