Rationale

Early in the development of the primary standards for LSA airplanes, it was deemed necessary to address engine/airframe/propeller interaction and installation issues. On 24 January 2004, a ballot was submitted to revise the Quality Assurance standard (F2279) to include a requirement for 100 hours of flight testing on a given airframe/engine/propeller combination prior to the distribution of any production LSA to an end user. The intent of this requirement was to deal with potentially unique interactions of engines and propellers on a particular airframe design, while not requiring complex and expensive accelerometer and strain gage testing. The ballot item failed due to negative votes arguing that the requirements belong in the Design and Performance standard, not the Quality Assurance standard. Nevertheless, there was consensus that this sort of requirement was needed, and an action was taken to propose proper changes to F2245 to address the relevant issues. This action was not completed; however, the issues and concerns are still real