I don't believe you are "sorry to press" and feel you lack integrity Phil.
Words have meaning and you appear to me to have trouble with that.
You have exceeded my tolerance for insults.
I am nothing like you Phil and am glad for it.
When you say integrity you likely mean sincerity? I didn't insult you and the word play is a sideshow and you and I may be the same, we may be polar opposite. I don't know you, nor do you know me and I don't pretend otherwise. I'm sure we can blame any mis-understanding on our respective school house masters, mine was a complete duffer. Although I do remember our schools production of Hamlet and something about protesting too much...
I've not been malicious is my postings and me giving you a tail tweek is for the most obvious of reasons. Yet there is a serious point to all this in a wider context and especially since I gather from postings elsewhere you and the PRA are potentially involved in a flight safety / revalidation initiative.
After all I might pitch up with a mates un-registered aircraft with me completely new to the type and prang it on landing. It might seem that before getting called out some are mindful to sweep it all under the carpet and hope nobody looked too hard.
Is that the integrity I lack or you lack?
No, the FAA agrees with you it was not a legal flight, as even though it was N#'ed but it had not completed the process. The DAR was fighting cancer and it delayed it by months.
He said many certified aircraft have found the pilot borrowing or rentals to be out of annual and it's about the same thing to them. It happens, if it's not directly the cause of the accident then they do nothing.
The FAA is really not our enemy as many think. They have since 1974 only helped me. His only thoughts were what do we need to teach the pilot not how to punish him.
He asked if Vance was making excuses for the accident after or now and I showed him a quote where Vance fell on the sword and is using it as a teaching example of a dumb human trick of being in a hurry to fave fun and not checking the paper work or the radio with his helmet before he flew her. I suspect that is why he never called Vance. That and they do not get involved in pilot vendettas.
Any official action by the FAA is less interesting to the action taken on the day and then subsequently which was pure cover up and misdirection over the circumstance. Given the people involved, PRA and THE most vocal flight instructor that is troubling [probably too strong a word but I'm too lazy to find a better one].
Forget pilot vendetta, which may have been the case with the guy who reported it all, but lets face it if he hadn't who would have known? Who could have learnt all the safety lessons that range from paperwork, impromptu flights, differences training, etc?
Still I suppose it provides a good war story for those annual revalidation candidates, oh and perhaps you'll need to tell Vance it was an illegal flight because so far he doesn't seem able to fall quite that far onto his sword.