Final story, and I promise to waste no more bandwidth on ramp stories (What is bandwidth, anyway??).
Part 135, light twin, air ambulance. I ended up carrying a friend who had a heart attack. I was preoccupied with seeing him safely into the ambulance, and didn't notice the two guys in cheap suits with mismatched socks looking the airplane over, until they asked for my certificate and medical. All was quiet until then. It turned out they were doing a base inspection at the FBO/Operator where I stopped with the patient, and the airplane I was flying belonged to that company; it was on leaseback to mine...so they wanted to inspect it, too. Fine.
One inspector was good cop. Very cordial, very polite. Asked a few questions. Second inspector was Satan. (Really).
Screwtape crawled all over the aircraft. Before the patient was even in the ambulance, he was in the back of the airplane pawing through the patients medical records. I took them away from the inspector twice, stating that those papers were private and confidential. He began tossing medical supplies out of the aircraft, and going through the nurses drug bag. Then he went around to the front of the aircraft and began tossing out all the papers there. I went to a payphone to call the boss; I spoke to the DO and told him what was happening. He told me to have them call him when they were done playing.
When I got back to the aircraft, screwtape was ready. He told me that the oxygen bottle sitting on the medical stretcher was a violation, as it wasn't secured. I pointed out that we had just removed the patient, and right now, nothing was secured. He told me I obviously didn't have the flight experience to be doing this job, and had never seen real turbulence, as that bottle could kill someone where it was. He made me secure everything and tie it all down while it sat on the ramp, to demonstrate that I did know how to secure things.
There was an old, old notebook in a pouch in the cockpit that had been used for discrepancies ages ago (and probably waitresses phone numbers and who knows what else). The last discrepancy noted was some fifteen years before; the book hadn't been touched in a LONG time. He stated that this was the maintenance log and wasn't used, and wrote that up as a violation. I explained that it wasn't the discrepancy log we used, but he didn't care. He demanded my certificate and medical again, and said he'd give them "to the boys at the GADO (FSDO) to take care of."
He found nine discrepancies, such as a chip on the ice detector lens, and wrote them all down stating that they were grounding items. He was yelling, waving his arms in the air, and turned a most energetic shade of purple. (I thought for a while he might need that oxygen bottle, and regretted sending the ambulance away prematurely). One discrepancy was what he called a cracked main landing gear door. That particular door had a fiberglass inner laminate stiffener, and the gelcoat surface had a scratch, which had been darkened by grease. I didn't argue, but thanked him for finding it, and asked what he wanted me to do.
He assured me he would put "red tags" on everything and ground the airplane, but that he was all out of red tags. He said I either had to have the door removed, or fixed, but that the airplane could not be flown in that condition. I invited him inside, and called the DO and DoM to talk with him. Then I took the nurses to lunch. I called the boss from lunch, he assured me the problem had been taken care of, and that he'd contracted with the owner/FBO to remove the doors.
I arrived back to find the doors in place, and after discussing it with the FBO/DoM, the doors were removed, stored in baggage, and we left for home. The next morning the I visited the DO in his office, and arrived just in time for the FAA to call. I could hear the inspector yelling even though the DO was accross a desk from me with the phone to his ear. Finally he handed the phone to me, and said, "here. This is for you."
The inspector was livid. He made threats. He screamed into the phone. He yelled. He finally sent me a letter of investigation, to which I replied. In that reply, I included his statement to "either have it removed, or get it fixed." Two months later he called me at home at ten o' clock at night, still upset and yelling, and told me that he would have dropped the whole thing, but that I had implicated him, and that he would "nail" me "to the wall." Then he hung up.
Shortly thereafter the inspector was transferred to another area. I found out he had been required to transfer a number of times in his career; three times when he pushed people so hard during ramp checks that he was punched and knocked down in the ramp. It took another full year, but I was cleared of everything, couched in the FAA's characteristic self-protective language that they had been unable to find adequate evidence to proceed, and that "conflicting information" existed about the circumstances. Instead, I was given a letter of warning, an administrative action, that stayed in my record for two years, and followed me.
Gotta love the feds. I do. But then, I 'm a career bug.
