Well, looks like theres a new way to help keep older aircraft flying, and in some cases maybe get modified without the financial pain. From what I can gather, this appears to be a streamlined easier way to get simple field approvals taken care of, as well as a more official pathway for "owner approved parts". While this wont lead to any major modifications, itll make simple ones far easier. As the VARMA program gets used more, im sure we will see some great benefits. An obvious example is landing lights. For those of us who cant seem to justify pissing away multiple hundreds of dollars on Whelen LED landing lights, you could now replace them with a far cheaper Non-PMA part and use the left over money for gas so we can actually afford to fly these planes after improving them. Cant wait to see what other approvals come through to help make maintaining older aircraft more attainable and affordable.

Link below:

https://www.eaa.org/eaa/news-and-public ... tage-fleet

Thoughts?

Good

But I don’t think the old GE incandesce lights were PMAed ether

Part number PAR46, lots of lights they fit the bill, never bought into the PMAed LED thing myself

But yeah, it’s about time the FAA started streamlining things, maybe the wrong word, reaching a semi acceptable approval speed

So it sounds like it still has to go through the 337/field approval process?
Sounds great, but IMHO in reality maybe not so much.
I got a field approval a couple years ago for 26" GY's on my C180--
a very common mod, using an FAA/PMA'd part, & plenty of field approvals previously granted,
so you'd think it'd be a slam dunk, right?
Nope-- took me 11 months, and multiple phone calls / emails to the FSDO inspector.

And it's a pain that these changes only apply to aircraft built before 1980. Are more modern aircraft so much more delicate that only PMA'd parts will allow them to fly? If the change is safe, it should be safe across the board.