Bob - S50

A site I'm still playing with to see if it gives me accurate info is Ogimet: http://www.ogimet.com/gramet_aero.phtml.en Gives a pictorial view of your route showing the freezing level, winds, clouds, icing and turbulence. Enter your route using airport codes separated by an underscore like this: ksea_kolm_kkls_kpdx It does not know every airport. In general, if the airport has a TAF it will know it. It also knows some that don't. For example it knows KKLS above, but it doesn't know KCLS which is about 30 NM away.

Last time we did it we just drained it out the gascolator. We put a container under the drain point, then put a screwdriver through the pull ring to hold it up. Actually used a second screwdriver to help hold the first one a little higher by slipping it under the tip of the first one. Wasn't quick but got the job done. After we got all we could, we sumped the tank to get the last of it out.

While training and improved avionics will help, the only way to significantly improve safety among GA pilots is to improve judgement. It is hard to impossible to teach judgement. There are times when a pilot through no fault of their own has no good options, but to quote Ron White, "you can't fix stupid". By stupid I mean stuff like taking off cross country without checking the weather, flying VFR in weather that is marginal at best, not checking how much fuel is on board before taking off, taking off without enough fuel, not monitoring fuel levels, not checking weight and balance, showing off to someone on the ground. But it happens every day. Even with that said, we all make mistakes, some big some small. In over 40 years of flying I have never made a perfect error free flight. Probably never will, but I keep trying.

One question. When you say you are leaning to 100F ROP at 2500 and 6000, are you really doing that or just leaning to the same EGT in both cases? I'd suggest you try something different. Try leaning to the same RPM, MP, and FF at both altitudes, then compare the TAS to see if you are faster at 6000'. In my plane, I'm not sure I could get 24" MP at 6000'. It would be close. When ROP, power is basically determined by RPM and MP because the engine is oxygen limited. Well, that's true until you get well ROP when the mixture won't burn well. When LOP, power is determined by FF because the engine fuel limited.

I too prefer the LPV because the signal is more stable and not prone to interference from ground traffic. However, as gsengle said, the ILS sometimes has lower minimums. For example, at Tacoma Narrows (TIW) the LPV 17 minimums are to 344' (400-5/8) while the ILS to 17 is good to 200' (200-1/2). Practically speaking, probably not a big deal since the weather is rarely right at minimums (except for every approach in the simulator).

#1 No-Go. Too much wind and too much turbulence for my passengers. #2 Go. IF the destination has an approach that is at least 200-1/2 better than the forecast weather. #3 No-Go. Likely icing. #4 No-Go? Take a look at radar on line and look for current location and movement. I will not try to pick my way between storms. If it looks like I can easily go around it then I might give it a try but be spring loaded to a 180 and go home. #5 No-Go? Depends. Is the current weather better or worse than the forecast for right now? If it's worse then I stay home. If it's better and I can put enough gas on board along with all my passengers to make it to a reasonable alternate then I might consider it. However, if the forecast has weather being down so low we can't come home afterward, then I'll probably stay home anyway.

Murphy's law for time estimation: Make a reasonable estimate. Divide numeric portion in half. Increase units by one. 3 months becomes 1.5 years.

I see a lot of nice looking panels with a GPS. I see many without an annunciator for that GPS. When we installed our GTN650, there is a requirement for annunciation of the navigation source to be within the pilot's primary field of view. The manual defines the field of view in horizontal and vertical dimensions. It gives a couple options as to where the measurements are taken. If the GPS/VLOC indication on the GPS isn't within the field of view, an annunciator placed within that field of view is required for IFR certification. There are a couple other distance limits too, but they are less restrictive. On our airplane, the center stack of radios was less than an inch too far to the right to be within the field of view. We bought and installed an annunciator. I'm too lazy to look up the reference right now. Do I use it? Rarely. Does it work? Yes. If you don't have it and have an IFR accident will they notice? Maybe. Will they care? Probably not unless having the wrong source selected was a contributing factor.

The only time it is nice to receive both 978 and 1090 is when you are flying outside ground station coverage. That could be due to low altitude or terrain. Flying in the midwest might not be much of a problem, but flying anyplace west of the Rockies will likely have several dead zones at altitudes we fly. Granted, there might not be much traffic in those areas, but it only takes one other plane to ruin your day.

Just realized I should give my parameters. I was assuming 150 KTAS cruise and 30 knot winds. Obviously, if you have a 150 KTAS cruise and 150 knot winds you will be spending all your time fighting the crosswind. Under those conditions, at 30 degrees off the wing you'd lose 130 knots forward but gain a 75 knot tailwind component for a net 55 knot loss.

Good rule of thumb. Just for grins, I did the math (approximately). The break even point is about 5 or 6 degrees off the wing. At that point you'll lose as much speed due to wind drift correction as you gain from the tailwind component. Assuming a 150 KTAS cruise and a 30 knot wind, at 30 degrees off the wing you'll lose about 2.5 knots due to drift correction and gain about 15 knots due to tailwind. Net gain of 12.5 knots. Still like your rule of thumb though. Especially since wind forecasts are always wrong and inconsistent.

I don't think so. The fastest flame front occurs at peak EGT. Anything leaner OR richer slows down the process. A lower RPM will increase cylinder pressure regardless of whether you are LOP or ROP. Here's a good Pelican's Perch article from John Deakin: http://www.avweb.com/news/pelican/182084-1.html And here is a quote from that article: "Our POHs instruct us to use full-rich for takeoff. The extraordinarily rich mixture is required to assure that detonation does not occur. The conventional wisdom is that the purpose of the "excess" fuel is to cool the engine, but in fact its primary purpose is to slow the combustion rate and delay the PPP, which eliminates the risk of detonation by reducing the pressure peak. This does, in fact, result in cooler operation, but that's actually a second-order effect of the delayed PPP. (If we could just retard the ignition timing for takeoff, we wouldn't need to throw all that extra fuel at the problem.)" The bold emphasis is mine.

It is still meaningful, it just isn't the same as the temperature reached inside the cylinder during combustion. While it is indicative of what is happening, it isn't the actual temperature during combustion. It is very meaningful in finding the correct fuel/air mixture. Regardless of what your EGT reading is (1200F, 1400F, 1500F) when it peaks, you have the ideal mixture and the fastest possible combustion. In theory, if is was a perfectly distributed mixture, you would have no left over oxygen or unburned fuel coming out of your engine. However, the mixture is never ideally distributed so at peak EGT you have a little unburned fuel and a little unused oxygen coming out of your engine. That's why peak power is just a little (50 - 100F) ROP. That's what it takes to use up all the oxygen with a little fuel left over. Similarly, that's why best economy occurs just a little LOP (30 -50F at cruise power settings) because that's what it takes to use up all the fuel with a little oxygen left over.

The GTX345 is supposed to work with either Garmin Pilot (Apple or Android) and Foreflight. I use Pilot on two Android devices. We only have the GTN650, not two GPS's like some people! I plan to run my tablet split screen with sectional overlayed with weather on one side and traffic on the other. I'll just use the traffic overlay on the GTN. I keep my approach charts on my tablet and phone and use my phone, attached to the yoke, for the approach plates. Even if I had a GTN750 I still wouldn't get flight charts on it. If I'm already paying for flight charts on my phone, why pay for them again for a GTN750? Plus, the chart on my phone on the yoke is in my line of sight. I'd have to look to the right to read the charts on the GTN. Less head movement when IMC. Please let us know how you like your GTX345 once you get it up and running.

As TJ said, the EGT you see is the average temperature of the EGT probe. It spends 1/4 of the cycle bathed in hot gas (exhaust cycle) and 3/4 of the cycle with no airflow at all. So it heats for a short time and then cools for a long time (relatively speaking). So the temperature you see is really actually lower than the temperature of the gases exiting the engine and thus not 'real'. Because the turbine inlet probe sees the exhaust from all cylinders, it is bathed in exhaust gas nearly continuously. It will be closer to actual temperature and be 'real'. As for the EGT getting too hot. There are only two ways to make the gases hotter. 1). Create a perfect mixture of fuel/air. This occurs at peak EGT. 2). Cause the peak cylinder pressure to occur closer to top dead center when there is less space above the piston. This can happen if your magneto is timed wrong and firing too early. That's one (main?) reason EGT drops as you go rich of peak. The less than ideal mixture causes a slower burn in the cylinder which causes the peak pressure to occur further after top dead center. If your timing is set correctly, you cannot make your EGT too high. You can, however, make your cylinder peak pressure too high by having the magneto timing set too early.

When you had it installed, did you have them set it up to make the flight ID editable or fixed?

I must be the only one that thinks in miles rather than minutes. I look at my groundspeed. If it's 150 then I'm doing 2.5 miles/minute (if it's 180 then I'm doing 3 miles/minute). At 500 FPM that's 5 miles/1000' (or 6 miles/1000'). To lose 6000' I need 30 (or 36) miles. Distance to destination is displayed on my GTN650 so I start down at 30 (or 36) miles. I reduce RPM to 2200 and keep MP at 20" in the descent so my speed doesn't go up much but my fuel flow goes down. Being out west with lots of mountains, I can't count on a smooth ride all the way down and I don't want to be surprised by a big bump when I'm at the top of the green arc. I don't add any extra mileage for the descent. Here's my reasoning. At 5 miles/1000' I'll reach pattern altitude 5 miles from the airport. Even if I end up going straight in, the normal glideslope is just over 3 miles out at 1000'. That gives me 2 miles to slow down to gear speed. If I'm not going straight in I've got even more time to slow down.

I like the idea of replacing the TC with the Sandia, but I notice the AI shows wings level but the Sandia does not. Is it always like that? Which one was right? Is it just an adjustment that needs to be made?

My pleasure. We finally pulled the trigger and picked a shop to install ADS-B and update our GTN650 at the same time. I hate surprises and hate using the standard Airbus driver line: "What's it doing now?" Therefore, I installed the 6.0 simulator on our Surface and have been playing with it. Anytime I have a question about how to do something, I fire up the simulator and play with it.

We may be saying the same thing, but there is another way to 'trick' the system. When entering your flightplan, enter another airport after your destination. If you are going IFR, this can be your alternate. If not, just pick one. For example, if I'm going S50 to KTIW, I could load S50 KTIW KOLM. Once you do that, if you load an approach for your destination (KTIW in my example), the approach will appear AFTER KOLM. The flightpath lines on the screen will go S50 KTIW KOLM then to the approach fix. You can then either activate the approach (and go direct to the fix) or activate a leg on the approach. In other words, you get the old behavior. Another advantage (if you want to call it that) of this technique is that it leaves your destination airport in the flightplan so you can reference it for waypoint info like frequencies. Under v6.11, if you don't use this technique, when you load the approach the airport disappears from the list (it is replaced by the approach). Like I said though, no matter what we do, we can always mess it up. Know what you are doing.

I'm not sure why they did that. Could be that people kept forgetting to activate the approach. This would solve that problem. Trade one problem for another. No matter what they do, we can find a way to screw it up.

My first choice would be the first one although... I could not find how much time was on the engine. Unless you NEVER plan on putting more than 3 people in the plane, I would also ask about useful load. Could not find it for either of the first two. Did not see a price on the last one.

I think I mentioned this in another thread, but one BIG change is a behavior change when you load an approach. It used to be that if you loaded an approach but did not activate it, your GPS would try to drive you to the airport before heading back out to fly the approach. That is what ATC has cleared you to do until you get cleared for an approach or start getting vectors. With the latest version, the only difference (that I can determine) is: If you LOAD an approach, the GTN will take you to the last fix in your flighplan prior to your destination, then to the first fix in the approach, and then fly the approach. This may not be what you are cleared for so be careful if you load the approach early. If you LOAD and ACTIVATE an approach, the GTN will take you directly to the first fix (transition fix for example) in the approach, and then fly the approach. That is, it will skip all the remaining fixes in the enroute portion of your flightplan. So in other words, the only difference is at when the GTN takes you to the approach. In either case it thinks you are cleared for the approach. So in the words of Hill Street Blues (for us old guys), "Be careful out there".

Mike, Welcome aboard. I'm 5'9" and I can see outside and reach the pedals just fine. My wife is 5'2" and we bought a 4" thick seat cushion for her to sit on so she can see outside better. Tell us about how you want to use the plane and what your budget is and we'd be glad to help you spend your money! Bob

Cool! I saw something in the video that surprised me though. At about 2:22 in, just before takeoff it looked like there were a couple moments when the main gear were airborne and the nose gear was still firmly planted on the ground. Never would have expected that. Enjoy the new toy.