I talked to Rick Hestilow (for more than an hour!) a couple days ago. His TOPCAT program is on indefinite hold because of several issues, not the least of which is that he has no time because of a big multiyear project at the school where he teaches.
He didn't renew the lease on his training hangar and so will need to get approval from the FAA when/if he gets a new facility.
He said interest in the program was lower than he expected, but provided an easy explanation: As it is now, the STC requires that the student actually /do/ the maintenance tasks on /their/ airplanes as part of the class. That is, you have to pull and reinstall the starter, alternator, yada yada yada. Kind of pointless and risky if they aren't broken (stripped stud anyone?).
Another downside is that you'd have to fly your plane to Dallas - easy for surrounding states, but who wants to fly from Seattle to Dallas just to tear the plane apart for a class?
So he got some sort of preliminary approval to conduct the classes using 'training aids' (a stand-mounted engine, for example). I got the impression this would be a big investment.
The bottom line is that the TOPCAT enables owners to legally do many things they've done all along (on the sly). Generally, I'd have no problem replacing a starter illegally. The problem is, I couldn't put it in the logs and it could raise flags at annual time or with a future buyer. A lot of guys that change their own oil don't log it because they mistakenly believe they aren't allowed to do it. Try selling a plane that shows no oil changes in the last 500 hours!
An interesting sidenote is that TOPCAT is the first STC in history that modifies the owner, not the airplane. Once the STC is issued, the owner can work on any 150/152 that he is an owner (or partial owner) of, even after selling the original STC'd plane.
