This thing is getting beat to death. The plate required by the FAA and DEA located near the tail is primarly for use by big brothers snoops- ie for law enforcement you can have one made up by a number of companies who stamp these out just give them the data. John is right the aircrft data plate is attached to the aircraft by the manufacturer. Without this you just have a bunch of airplane parts. Case in point our local EAA chapter rebuilt a PA 15 over the past couple of winters. They have the aircraft serial number logs ect but not the original piper data plate. They have been trying to get a data plate from Piper seems Piper says its a PA 17 - but its a 15- so piper will not issue a PA 15 data plate. The FAA has been out several times nothing they can do about a data plate is manufacturers domain bottom line it looks like the way out is to have the aircraft declaired an experimental and apply for a new plate. What this does in reality it gets Piper off the hook for product liability. In reality you could purchase a ercoupe center section irrespective of condition with a manufactures data plate and use it to build a new airplane around it but no data plate no certified airplane. I have a PA 22 airframe that a block wall fell on airplane was flat as a board but I bought what was left just for the data plate
len
