Leaderboard

I have noticed when flying in the winter or in the summer when at altittude and the OAT is very cold that the trim wheel is hard to turn. I assume it could be grease getting cold and stiff. Has anyone else experienced this? And the solution?

Can we just stop the excrement flinging please?

I kind of like the smell of fuel in my cabin ;-)

That lathe will spin faster, stay cooler, and never rust if you coat it with Camguard.

Let us know the final bill, laid-in.

Antares, are we disagreeing? Please see my opinion on backup instruments on a parallel thread: http://mooneyspace.com/topic/2806-turn-coordinator-or-second-attitude-indicator/page-3 I have two certified attitude indicators, with different kinds of power sources. For me xavion is a third level backup if that is what it is. But rather I am describing it as synthetic vision for situational awareness. That is different from a primary attitude device. Dynon is not a synthetic vision device. It is an attitude device. But there is overlap in function. But to your main point, let me say I have a great deal of software engineering experience from many consulting jobs over the years. This is not a huge job like building a windows operating system that requires dozens or hundreds of software engineers. A job that can be done by one person is sometimes done worse by many people. This is my experience in the realm of software engineering. But not to say that Dynon is going to be more stable because it comes from a company. I don't know much about that company, but I can say that I have had my garmin 396 freeze. I have heard from my hangar neighbor that his aspen has had a software freeze. I have heard tail of Garmin G1000 software errors causing big red x's over critical "instrument" displays. Even big faceless companies with lots of software engineers make big errors. Actually, I was really surprised at first to learn how sometimes even big companies have teams of software engineers but critical components are worked by one guy - when I was a grad student as an intern at the phone company, US West, I ended up writing a very large piece of code used in operations at the phone company. It replaced a piece of code that was legacy and had been modified and modified for like a decade and no one really knew what it did. Several of us were supposed to do the job but we weren't very organized on how to distribute the job and so I ended up doing the full thing. In other consulting jobs, I have learned this happens a lot. I don't take the fyi about accelerometrs and built in gps to the ipad as a warning not to use their product and to go by dynon because it is better and more stable and more accurate. Far from it. I take the warning as honest, and a warning to carefully choose the sensors depending on what is the mission it is intended to satisfy. For situational awareness (svt view) I am happy with built in accelerometers and external gps. If I did not have redundant mechanical certified attitude indicators, I would a) get a second certified attitude indicator, but at least get a iLevil. That said, I am sure Dynon is a fine instrument. But I am more confident in the stability of the iPhone for now - on principle - and I am quite convinced it is up to the computational task, easily, but I say that fully admitting I have never touched a Dynon, but just my experience with garmin.

The point, I think, is to learn as much as we can from this unfortunate accident. You are being very judgmental, pretentious and disrespectful. You are very quick to play Monday morning qb. It's very easy to fall into that trap especially when a fellow pilot and his passengers are dead and unable to answer any questions. Let's not forget that a similar occurrence can indeed happen to anyone given the right circumstances and sequence of events leading to it. I'm certain his intention was not to lose the airplane. May I suggest you judge a lot less and instead we all learn as much as we can with utmost respect, humility and professionalism.

I just watched the video today and agree that his decision making was terrible. But this was an accident caused by a chain of bad decisions that to us in our wisdom of 20/20 hindsight led to its inevitable outcome. One has to wonder how many times he engaged in similar decision making and it worked out fine? I would bet over his 200+ hours flying in the midwest this was not his first experience scud running and not getting weather information. This time he ran out of options, let fear overcome judgment and likely got saturated and lost it. It made me think about my decision making, especially when I am tempted to violate a personal minimum. For example. one that is really hard for me is that I am not going to take off from an airport unless it is above instrument minimums. I have sat there watching single after single take off while I wait and wonder if I am being too conservative. But then I think that if I violate this once and it turns out OK it makes the next time easier and then pretty soon that personal minimum is gone. And then after having been successful ten times I climb into the soup, lose my engine, not get back into the airport because it is below minimums and am then the subject of a thread where everyone says stupid is as stupid does. Don't get me wrong, he was incredibly stupid and irresponsible. My point is that no one takes off thinking they are going to get into IMC and auger in and kill their children. But no doubt we are all prone to making bad decisions unless we are very, very disciplined......and most of us with any number of hours (I am soon to exit the killing zone with over 600 hours God willing!) can look back and say this flight or that flight could have turned out pretty bad. I know I can....... It didn't have anything to do with the plane he flew and the training he received would have prepared him for this kind of weather and had he followed that training he and his passengers would be alive today because he never would have taken off in the first place. But stories like this remind me that when you have an attitude that you would never make a series of mistakes that lead to an accident you have probably taken that first step to getting yourself into a pickle. I am a firm, 100% believer that it can happen to me and that makes me even more diligent. And BTW, I too am a wimp when it comes to decision making and at times have felt a little silly after the fact but have always been able to maintain my discipline by reminding myself about the what ifs. What if that streak of oil on the top of cowling was evidence of an oil leak instead of a careless line guy getting a little oil on access door when he added a quart? I felt kind of silly landing early to check it out until I told my CFII about it later and he said its better to be on the ground wishing you were flying than in the air wishing you were on the ground. These kind of stories ought to cause us to do a little soul searching along with the reasonable critique of the PIC.

You may want to give Jim a call at Russell Aircraft Refinishing, 302-349-5920. You'll be happy you did. They are at D74 in Greenwood, DE. Not far from you. Jim also comes highly recommended from a couple local MSCs he does work for. From personal experience, he is an honest and fair gentleman, and a true professional at what he does. It was a pleasure to do business with him. You also may want to call Craig at Scheme Designers, Inc. to help you with the scheme details. It's the only way to paint an airplane and achieve the professional results you want, imo.

I wouldn't patch it, I would drill out all the rivits, remove the piece trace a new one and cut it out on my scroll saw ( I don't have a shear ). Use a hole duplicator and a bunch of clecos, should take a couple of hours. Or you could spend the big bucks and order the piece from Mooney Pn# 140153-005.