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A "100 hour inspection" is a term that has special meaning for aircraft that are operated for hire, i.e. charter and rental. It is a required inspection, and is essentially the same as an annual. (GMAS says it does not require an IA, so that is a difference, but I mean it is the same in terms of the extent of the inspection.)
However, if you only fly a 150 hours per year or so, the non-commercial operators that I know do not do this "full annual" type inspection, because only 50 hours later, you are going to have to do the whole thing over again (an annual), whether you want to or not.
In my opinion (and I am sure there are others), you *do* need to ignition maintenance every 100 hours, and some other things that your mechanic sounds like he is advocating. But a full annual is somewhat invasive, and in my opinion you have a non-trivial chance of breaking things that aren't broken on the airplane by taking it apart to that extent more frequently than needed.
So, this is a situation where you need to look at what items are in a full 100 hour inspection, and what items your mechanic is recommending, and decide yourself whether you want him to go "full boat", or just do what he recommends.
Again in my opinion, if you operate 200 hours a year or less, I would only do the annual once per year, and would not do the commercial operator type 100 hour. I *would* do a subset of the annual every 100 hours, including items like lubrication and ignition maintenance.
We all want to be safe. But consider that the most dangerous flight you make every year (from a maintenance standpoint) is the first flight after the annual. The risk of delaying a gear swing 50-75 hours (for example) needs to be weighed against the risk and expensive of "opening 'er up" for inspection.
Kevin
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