They will find you

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This podcast is brought to you by Avstar Fuel Systems. Did you know that Avstar Fuel Systems has been advancing GA Piston Fleet Fuel System safety and innovation for more than 25 years?

SPEAKER_2 (0:13)

That's right. Avstar manufactures precision fueling components for certified general aviation piston engines, including carburetors and fuel servos.

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And Avstar Fuel Systems have accumulated more than 30 million flight hours in service across the global fleet.

SPEAKER_2 (0:30)

Wow, 30 million flight hours in service. That's a significant amount of operational time.

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But what sets them apart is Avstar's process using CNC machine components that result in consistent fuel metering for reliable engine performance, while other fuel system manufacturers use legacy casting processes.

SPEAKER_2 (0:49)

Another thing to keep in mind, whether you're an aircraft owner, maintenance technician or FBO, is that Avstar also overhauls fuel servos, carburetors and other fueling components for the GA fleet.

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So next time you think about your aircraft fuel delivery system, think about the experts at Avstar.

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Give them a call at 561-575-1560, or fill out their contact form online at avstarfuelsystems.com.

SPEAKER_1 (1:16)

That's avstarfuelsystems.com.

Mike Busch (1:23)

Hi, I'm Mike Busch.

Paul New (1:24)

I'm Paul New.

Colleen Sterling (1:26)

I'm Colleen Sterling. Welcome to Ask the A&Ps from AOPA.

Mike Busch (1:42)

This is the show where you guys get to put us on the spot with your difficult maintenance questions. So if you would like to try to stump us, send your stumpers to podcasts at aopa.org for a chance to get on the show.

Paul New (1:58)

And make sure to follow and subscribe so you never miss the stumping.

Mike Busch (2:07)

And if you'd like to get on our email list for our monthly newsletter and other interesting things that we send out related to maintenance, the easiest way to do that is to text the word SAVVY, the 33777 and you can add yourself to our mailing list. Colleen, you and I have been working on raising funds for our new SAVVY Aviation Foundation, our relatively new foundation, and it's been going quite well. We've got some really exciting projects that we want to do over the next year, and we're looking for donations to help us fund that. This is a 5013C non-profit public charity that we started just before the first of the year. But it's really two major projects that we have. One is our mechanic training initiative, and we put together a mechanic training course, an eight-hour course, the eight one-hour modules that we got FAA approved for IA renewal credit.

We've had about 1,500 or so people take the course so far. It's available free, it's online, it's all video plus quizzes and stuff, and everybody seems to think it's really excellent training. We try to teach stuff that nobody else teaches. But we actually have identified more than 40 additional one-hour modules that we would like to develop. We think that if we can get it funded, we can probably do another eight modules per year. And so this is gonna be a five-year effort to get these things all done. But it's gonna be pretty amazing, I think, once we start expanding the scope of it. And then IAs will be able to choose which eight they wanna take each year, which of the one-hour segments they wanna take each year because they need eight hours of training for IA renewal.

But it's interesting, of the 1,500 or so people who've taken the training so far, about one-third of them were IAs seeking renewal, but another third of them were A&Ps that were not IAs, and the final third of them were not A&Ps. They were maintenance-involved aircraft owners, home builders, so on. So we've actually had a pretty broad segment of people who've been taking this training. So anybody who's interested in either taking the SAVI Certified Training, which we offer for free, or especially if you're interested in donating to the Foundation, just go to saviaviation.org.

That's not .com, but .org. That's the Foundation website. And you'll find a lot of information about what we're doing and an opportunity to take the training and an opportunity to donate to the Foundation.

Colleen Sterling (5:36)

Thank you in advance.

Mike Busch (5:38)

And we're pretty proud of it.

Paul New (5:40)

So for owners, pilot types, not mechanic types, they give wings credit.

Grace (5:49)

Colleen, you want to talk about your first day with that?

Paul New (5:52)

Did I hit a soft spot? I'm sorry.

Grace (5:54)

Yeah, you did.

Mike Busch (5:55)

Colleen's been fighting this battle for ages.

Colleen Sterling (5:58)

Many people have asked that question and we think it's a great idea. And so we went to the FAA and started down the road of getting wings credit, which required a detailed description of every course module and which ones, you know, focused on pilots and which ones focused on mechanics. And really most of them are focused on both. And then the guy who was the FAA wings guy got reassigned somewhere.