Jamie

You're forgetting the solar (tail) wind. The trip back would be longer, of course.

Before the mooney, I looked at a '74 relatively low time 172 with hail damage. It was much less expensive than the mooney, obviously, but it came with hangar space. Long story. Anyway... wow, were the owners arrogant. Balked at a pre purchase because "it just came out of annual". Didn't see any reason to take it anywhere else. I was a cash buyer and let them know it. Ignored me. Fine. A few months later, I check on trade a plane and the thing was marked "SOLD", but at an asking price 20% under where I was ready to pay cash. Idiots. Point being, just because you're called a tire kicker doesn't mean you're a tire kicker. People are dumb. Given the distribution of intelligence in the general population, most people are dumb. Given the frequency with which I seem to hear "any traffic please respond", most pilots are idiots. Take your cash and move on. It's likely to be a buyer's market for years. Time is on your side.

Looks like the weather might FINALLY be changing toward the end of this week. If not, I'll find an instructor and get it off the ground that way. I sort of knew about the need to regularly fly before I bought the plane, but I didn't think it'd be like this. If I wanted a dependent I would have bought a dog.

Yup. Short of dissassembling an engine every week and looking at it, I don't know how to get that data either. Anything else is "anecdata".

Sure. No argument. But.... why? The more reading I do, the more this looks like a "simple" problem of keeping water away from iron. If true, then it could be as simple as "Running the engine regularly re-coats the interior with oil." What I don't know is, how much water will be in the oil that coats the engine, and is this worse than letting the oil drain away and expose the metal to the Alabama humidity. The wiki article on rust says that sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide in combination with water can speed up rusting. Also, that the pH of the environment affects how fast something rusts. It could be that a low temperature run causes more products (other than water) which actually accerlerate rusting. An engine running hotter and leaning probably produces less of these chemicals.

It's a complicated problem, no doubt. Lots of variables and worse, you can't easily monitor the engine (inside) during the experiment. I've always wondered about the "people who fly everyday make TBO and beyond". I don't doubt it happens, but the reason isn't obvious... Is it because running an engine every day is better for it, or is it simply that those people will reach TBO sooner than me in terms of elapsed time? 100 hours a year == 20 years to TBO. 1 hour a day == 5.5 years to TBO. Water + Iron + Oxygen == rust. A sitting engine -can- rust. Why? Where does the water come from? Water resulting from combustion, ends up in the oil. Water that condenses out of the air (mostly after engine shutdown) Any other sources? I'm no expert... Anyway. I'm also suspicious of the "get your oil to at least 180F". What's magic about this number? It's below the boiling point of water. Assuming a major source of water for the engine rust is water created during combustion, I don't see how this helps remove it. My current hypothesis is: Rust occurs when metal parts are directly exposed to air (water condenses out, O2 readily available). Oil will eventually (weeks) drain away from metal parts leaving them exposed to the air. Regular running recoats the interior with oil. Other effects mentioned may contribute, but note the use of dessicant plugs when storing an engine. That -isn't- to remove water that didn't boil away in a run to 180F so much as it's to prevent water in the air from condensing out. I would imagine (but do not know) that the preservative oil used is probably more viscous than regular oil (stickier). Are engines in dryer climates (arizona?) any less prone to rusting if allowed to sit? Like so much of what we do to and with our engines, it's really voodoo. Cause and effect are separated in time so much that we're really just guessing.

I want to, but the hangar has leaks, and I'm not crazy about letting water drip from random places onto the BatteryMinder set up. I'd tell them about the leaks, except I'm not sure where the water is coming in. It's a metal roof with a truss type structure made of metal pipe that randomizes the leak location (water drips onto pipes, runs some distance, then drops). And they raised the rent recently.

METAR KHSV 051653Z 16011KT 10SM FEW013 BKN020 OVC032 25/22 A3014 I need to get my instrument rating.

Between work and the lousy weather, my plane hasn't been started in so long I'm beginning to worry about it. I've read that doing a ground run won't get the engine hot enough to do any good, but is it better than letting an engine sit for weeks without being run at all? I'm tempted to go down to the hangar, pull the plane out and run it for 15 minutes or so to get the oil back on all the stuff that could rust, and charge up the battery a bit. Obviously, the best thing to do would be to go fly, but I don't know when that will be.

No kidding. I wonder how many distress calls, lost hikers, etc. are ignored by NSA because notifying someone would reveal capability.

...and this, ladies and gents, is why my profile here, and on any other boards I may or may not participate in, will NEVER have significant identifying information in them. Manage your online presence. Don't use your real name, no details, nothing. When this topic comes up, some people have the attitude "I have nothing to hide", which sounds great and noble until you start to think it through and realize your "nothing to hide" mantra makes you a soft target. (I'm not saying this is what caused this to happen to 1964-M20E. But they got both his and his son's phone number's somehow (how'd they even know he had a son?). Information leaks. A half hour with google and you can build up a surprisingly detailed picture of people who "have nothing to hide". Be careful out there.)

Same here, only I give it a few seconds before actually crossing the hold short line. I figure if I missed someone on final AND they're paying attention, they'll say something.

This sounded interesting, so I looked. I tried to... My search-fu is weak, apparently. What are the magic key words to summon these articles? "mooney crash" doesn't seem to get anything specific to avweb.

After thinking about this a bit, it might LOOK like I didn't reach very far given the original poster's suggestions. Not true. Simon, set the way back machine to the year my plane was born (1981): Assume I got my all glass cockpit. A complete electronic AHRS, satellite (!) based navigation system whose database contains every bit of airspace and all approach procedures, information on every airport (frequencies, elevation, runway diagrams, etc), a computer generated view of the terrain from my current position, on board real time weather and traffic information (for free), no LORAN, no ADF, no DME, digital engine monitor showing CHT and EGT for each cylinder with downloadable data logging, etc. Oh, yeah. And while I'm dreaming, let's duplicate all of this and more on a thing the size and shape of an issue of National Geographic which has a full color display, It'll have 32 gigabytes of storage and 1 gigabyte of RAM, run an operating system a kid wrote and gave away for free, programmed in a language a company developed and gave away for free running on middleware another company wrote and gave away for free. It'll have its own satellite nav receiver and... wait.. sure, why not. IT HAS ALL MY MUSIC (all 500 albums worth) and hundreds of tv shows. Recorded, like on a VCR only different. You know what would make it perfect? If my headset were to somehow analyze, in real time, the ambient noise and emit a sound that would exactly cancel that sound so that it would be as quiet as a car. Oh, and it'll connect to the mini computer (let's call it a 'tablet') wirelessly so I can listen to all of my stored music and recorded movies in flight. I know, right? Never happen. Well, it's 2013, and while I don't have an all glass cockpit or synthetic vision, I have everything else. I'm living in my future. It's not quite what I hoped for (no jet packs), but it's not bad.

Apparently. I owned a black/black corvette in Florida for years, and now I have a black/black mustang. Park with the front glass facing the afternoon sun and use a sunshade. I never have understood all the fuss...

Paint the one I have, all glass in the panel, black leather interior. Really.

Zane, you're right... I do need to do that. Excellent advice. Thanks.

I think the video goes into this, but it's probably the classic "Hey... I want to help you here. Cooperation goes a long way." or "It looks worse if you refuse... do you have something to hide?" It's probably better to go into this situation determined that "you might beat the rap, but you won't beat the ride". I'm trying to prepare myself to be arrested (if it comes to that) and have a better shot at defending myself in court rather than hope I can talk my self out of a "ride downtown" and end up in jail -anyway- with a horrible legal position. Keep in mind, I don't have anything to be worried about. But I can see that if you oppose them in any way, they're going to do everything they legally can (and cynically) probably stuff they can't, to get whatever it is they want. Don't help them.

Zane, if I wanted to establish a relationship with a local attorney so I can have someone on "speed dial" if this ever happens... what should I look for?

Well, we're not all from Texas, but we try.

Attached. Too important not to. CBPGuildelinesKneeboard.pdf

Yup. Thanks.

That link doesn't work for me... do I need to be logged in?

Having just watched House of Cards and West Wing, I'm now an expert in this sort of thing.... The ONLY reason I can see is that maybe it's a form of political favor trading. Coming out for or against an non aviation related issue might help get some other aviation thing done? Dunno. If not that, then it's just stupid.

I remember them... but no one has ever shown me how to make sure I'm not violating them. I could experimentally I guess... but how do you tell if you're 2000' away horizontally? I guess they needed numbers, because "clear of clouds" would have some morons right in them ("naaaa! naaa! I'm not touching it!"), but making me memorize all the distances for the various conditions and airspaces when there is NO way of determining those distances is dumb. "yup... That right there is 2300 ft if it's an inch. I'm legal". wtf.