philiplane

Updating this topic- At FXE and PMP, Sheltair is raising the rents by 50 percent. A standard, 1000 square foot, 40 foot wide, rusty, leaky, 45 year old tee hangar is going from $890 per month to $1350. You can get better hangars for less money anywhere else.

when was the last time the HSI was calibrated? It should be checked every two years. The remote compass and the HSI require regular inspections to ensure accuracy.

Unfortunately the tail comes off first in most cases

South Florida heat is a battery killer. I never expect more than 3 years from any battery. The manufacturer's instructions say to store batteries below 95 degrees. But planes here experience 95 degree for half of the year. Sometimes more, in these un-insulated hangars, where it gets to 110 degrees from June to September. You'd have to take the battery out between flights and store it in an air-conditioned space to get more than 3 years from one. When I lived in Connecticut, I could get 7 to 9 years from a battery.

"instrument repairs" means opening up individual instruments for repair. That's all. Avionics repair stations are only needed to do the altimeter and transponder 24 month inspections, and to open up radios or instruments such as altimeters and airspeed indicators. Everything else on the plane is the domain of A&P's. Including auto pilot installations, and changes of their components.

The SIM should have an air blast tube focused on it. Lycoming used to provide those when using Bendix mags, but when Slick mags became the standard, the blast tubes went away.

Then your engine is improperly tuned.

It's hard for our brains to comprehend the microscopic difference the second spark makes at cruise power. We're talking milliseconds of burn time. You can't extrapolate the 100 rpm difference you see in a pre-flight mag check, to what happens during cruise. The hazard of having two opposing flame fronts also increases the octane requirements to avoid detonation.

I don't have an opinion on this, I follow the facts from 20 years of experience in dual-fuel customized engine controls, NASA studies of aircraft engines for emissions/performance, electronic ignition conversions, and more. People don't fully understand combustion events. Once you light the fire, it burns. Adding a second source is for redundancy, not for improving the performance of the initial ignition. There's a lot of nonsense that claims that higher voltages, or longer dwell times, make more power. That is untrue. If there is spark at the right time, the mixture burns. More spark does not make it burn better, more spark just wears out your plugs faster. I've written about this extensively. If you have an optimized ignition source like a Surefly, not a crude one like the Electroair, adding a second one only provides a backup. The initial ignition event is what matters. You get better starting because you have full voltage the moment the engine cranks. No waiting for an impulse coupling or showr of sparks to build voltage. You get better low-power performance due to the advance available under those conditions. You get zero benefits in a full power takeoff and climb because certification prevents advancing timing when detonation margins are small. So the benefits of the first SIM installation are HUGE, and the second one is virtually nil.

there is zero benefit to a dual Surefly installation, and significant downside. If you have a SIM failure, there are no spares anywhere you might land. You'd have to put a magneto back on it, or wait days to get a replacement. This has already happened in the Cirrus world. Second, there have been a few failures, not many, but it is an electronic device, and we don't yet know how long it will last. Especially with the extra heat of a Continental, where it sits on top of the engine and gets baked on every shut down. Lycoming installations don't suffer from this. I've had Sureflys on my twin since they were first approved. They work great. But there is no way I would put two on each engine, until the fleet accumulates enough hours, and years, to prove that they will last.

I've installed several Arctic Air units. I have one in my Aztec. They work well, but they have limitations based on the fact that they're "portable". Sure, you can make it more efficient by using outside air only for the condenser, but then the extra holes in the aircraft become a certification problem. So we accept that we can't truly recirculate the cabin air, because we're always drawing in some outside air to cool the condenser. Even so, on a 96 degree South Florida day, it will drop the cabin to 80 degrees in just a few minutes, and a bit cooler after that. I'll take a 75-78 degree cabin on the ground, and then I have to turn it down above 5000 feet, and off by 8000 feet. In order to make a true recirculating unit, the air intakes and exhausts have to be carefully handled to not run afoul of your IA, who's got to buy off on the "portable installation" every year. In most cases you need a structures DER to draw up proper intakes and exhausts, because few planes have suitable inspection panels that can be re-purposed as vents. The exhaust vent is pretty straightforward, but the intake is not. There are flow and static pressure considerations, prevention of water ingestion, insects, etc, to provide for. The additional air cannot interfere with the factory-installed cabin heating and ventilating systems either. Dozens of people have been down this road already. Most have found that all of this fussing isn't worth the hassle. That's why the simple nature of the original Arctic Air installation is a good balance of cost and complexity versus performance.

It says it develops 5100 BTU at 540 watts, which is about 38 amps of current draw. Do you have that much power available? My Arctic Air R134 unit puts out 7200 BTU's while using 30 amps at 14 volts. The specs page doesn't make a lot of sense either. Part of the 32 pound weight is the battery. Non-battery 7000 btu units weigh 42-45 pounds. I have doubts that a unit weighing less than 32 pounds can put out 5100 BTU. 7000 to 11000 BTU is what is needed to cool an airplane cabin.

https://www.asias.faa.gov/apex/f?p=100:95:::NO::P95_EVENT_LCL_DATE,P95_LOC_CITY_NAME,P95_REGIST_NBR:26-APR-24,HORNELL,N5632Q

That's good. But if you ask around you'll find there are dozens of these going off at random every year. Customers have given up on six of them here, and switched them to Artex 345's. I've got two others that have been sent back twice for repairs. Both came back with new boards. One of those is going off at random again, and will make its' third trip home to ACK in less than two years. A nice additional "feature" of these events is that ACK gets to sell you another expensive battery. ACK also says that low battery voltage in the remote control, or corrosion in the battery case, can set them off. So when you do the ELT repairs, you end up replacing the remote battery, the horn battery, and the ELT battery. The biggest population of the ACK ELT-01 is in Cirrus aircraft. They were original equipment from 1999 to 2006. Probably 3000 to 3500 units installed. Many if not most of those were upgraded to the ELT-04. Many of the upgrades were driven by persistent G switch failures that caused the ELT to go off at random. I probably changed out over a hundred myself. In 2007 Cirrus switched to Artex ME406, and then to the Artex 1000 to add the GPS interface. So far, ACK has not charged for any of the repairs to the ELT itself, and the oldest one I've sent was seven years old.

The ACK ELT-04 is a great unit if you are lonely. It goes off at random, and you get to make new friends with people that call you to see if you're ok. ATC will check on you while you're in the air, when it goes off in mild turbulence. On the ground, people not only call you, but if you don't answer right away, they'll call your family, and then the airport manager to be certain that you haven't crashed.

the yellow hose is only good for about five years. Wherever possible, MIL-6000 hose is better. https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/appages/mil6000.php The yellow hose should not be used in direct exposure to oil or crankcase fumes. Only for fresh air ducting.

A later model Ovation with G1000 avionics would make an even easier transition to the TBM.

As expensive as it is, the 149 NL/EC is the best starter you can buy. Airparts in Fort Lauderdale has 20 of them in stock. $1201.

It's my experience with more than a dozen MT propellers, several of which the owners have scrapped, and gone back to Hartzell. We're about to do that to another one that is seven years old with only 850 hours since new, has been resealed three times, continues to leak, and the deice boots are also falling apart. On a hangared, well-kept airplane. I think the folks who have good luck with the MT don't fly very much. On flight school planes, the MT needs work every 100 hours. Paint, filler, re-gluing the fiberglass every six weeks gets old. I've got a 2023 DA40 with 350 hours and the MT prop is looking like crap already and starting to leak. On the Cirrus forum, there is a shop gathering data on dozens of case cracks on IO-550's equipped with lightweight props. And you might notice the sharp stop and clunking when you shut down your MT-prop equipped engine. What is that doing to the crank counterweights, magnetos, and gears over time?

The MT prop is lighter because it's got wood blades inside a fiberglass wrap, with some metal glued on to keep it from self-destructing in short order. The fiberglass covers come unglued at the trailing edge. The filler between the leading edge and the blade comes off in small chunks, because those light weight blades flex a LOT. The hub is lighter because it has no bosses for grease fittings. And the way these props ooze grease, you need to take it off to have a shop re-grease and re-seal after awhile. Which means you're committed to a 5-6 year reseal at a cost of $2k. Provided they don't find any damage from the lack of grease. An MT prop will easily cost more per hour than any other prop. I've got another one laying on my hangar floor, going in the dumpster. It's less than 15 years old, less than 3 years since last overhaul, commercially operated and maintained, and was going in for yet another blade replacement, and a re-seal. MT says the internals of the hub are beyond economic repair. Probably since it leaks grease and you can't grease it? The best prop for a 180 to 270 HP engine, bar none, is the 2 blade Hartzell composite. Second best is a 2 blade Hartzell scimitar. If they make one for your Mooney, get one.

both of these alternators are sold as of today. I do have one brand new Interav (Motorola) 50 amp alternator, available for sale. $450. For Lycoming 4 & 6 cylinder applications.

Neither the prop hub, nor the engine lifting lugs, are designed for lifting the entire airplane weight. Only for their own individual weights. Wing jacks on the jack points, or airbags under the wing spars, are suitable. Wood blocks and a jack under the firewall area are acceptable to lift the forward part of the airplane's weight. The engine mount itself isn't made for lifting either, though it will take more abuse than the engine lifting lugs or the prop hub or crankshaft.

Yes. You would only need to buy the R-1224 regulator to replace your generator regulator.

In theory, flushing with avgas will remove more oil. But it will remove less particles, because avgas is much lighter than oil and does not have good hydraulic properties. Meaning, you will remove the most particulate matter by draining the oil when it's hot. If you flush with avgas after that, you will remove any remaining oil in the pan. Which is very little. But if there are particles in the pan, the avgas will not remove them. It's too light.

I'm on my second overhaul of a 1966 Turbo Encabulator and I'm still amazed at the intricacy of the divergent girdle spring installation, alongside the spurving bearing case and the lunar waneshaft. Magnificent engineering and execution!