Vance Harral

Couple of caveats about this. First, while the Duke's and ITT actuators are largely the same, one difference with the later ITT actuators is that they lack a Zerk fitting to add grease in situ. Thus, you can't "give it a few pumps of grease till it comes out the screw hole, while in the plane", at least not the way those with the Duke's actuators can. You can remove two of the screws and pump grease into one hole with a cone tip until it comes out the other. But I've never had much luck with this, as access is awkward and it's difficult to get the cont tip to actually seal well enough against screw hole #1 to pump through to screw hole #2. I've gotten to the point where I simply don't try to lube the gear cavity without removing the actuator from the airplane and disassembling it. I've done this enough times now that it's not a particularly big hassle. The other caveat is that if you use this technique of pushing grease through one hole (zerk or screw) until it comes out another, you've got to be sure to take enough grease out of the last hole before you reinstall the bolt, to ensure the bolt doesn't hydro-lock against the grease in the cavity, and strip the threads of the actuator. You can guess how I know this.

In our stock M20F, the threaded hole does not extend into the tanks. This does indeed seem to be specific to the Monroy tanks.

"Nice time machine you've built there. You going to go back in time and invest in Apple? Nvidia?" "Nah. Mooney landing gear doughnuts".

Of course not, but the question is how much "gas in the tank" the pilot has left, cognitively, to perform tasks above and beyond what's required for the IPC. As you note, lots of pilots wind up getting an IPC signed off not because they need one, but essentially by coincidence. Such pilots are active, proficient, and able to accomplish all the tasks required for an IPC without being mentally taxed, and therefore can meaningfully accomplish more than the required items in a single flight (I wouldn't call the IPC task list just "basic minimum items", there is quite a lot there). And in almost all cases, such pilots don't actually "need" the IPC because they're already instrument current, and very likely to remain instrument current for the forseeable future just by conducting training and/or real-life operations that gets them the 6 approaches, holding, and intercept/track. For pilots like these, the concept of "getting an IPC" is really just shorthand for wanting a high level of proficiency training. Whether there is an IPC signoff in their logbook is academic. As you might guess, only a subset of the pilots who come to me for an IPC fall in this category. The others are rusty, trying to regain currency, and I'm just trying to do my best to give them the best odds at making use of their rating (and frankly, keeping them alive). If I press too hard on the idea that an IPC includes more than the bare minimum, most of these clients are entirely game for it, because they understand that the end result makes them a better pilot. You would think that's a good thing. But that's just theory. In practice, the result is sometimes that the "IPC plus" flight goes somewhat poorly, I never see them again, and I'm left to wonder if the net result was actually an overall decrease in safety.

It's helpful not to confuse an instrument proficiency check with instrument proficiency training. As @bigmo notes above, meeting the requirements of 61.57(d) for an IPC is specifically and legally tied to a list of tasks in the Instrument Rating ACS, and all of them must be covered. The instructor (and their client) get to choose how those tasks are covered, and you can of course add extra stuff. But there's something of a cultural expectation that a proficient IFR pilot can accomplish an IPC in one session. If you start getting too creative in that one session, you wind up with a fatigued pilot at the very far realistic corner of the unusual situation/emergency envelope. That's not necessary helpful to anyone, and it doesn't meet the spirit of law that requires the IPC in the first place. So I don't try to "pack" an IPC with much more than the ACS task list itself. When I conduct IPCs these days, really the only item of much discussion is how to conduct an "Approach with Loss of Primary Flight Instrument Indicators" in an airplane with redundant EFIS displays. This is increasingly the default situation, because even the most pedestrian IFR airplanes tend to have at least a dual G5 or similar. I have a couple of comments about that. First, I'm not opposed to pulling a circuit breaker. I'm aware of the guidance from Garmin not to do so, but you've got to understand what's behind that guidance, which is more about confusion of pilots, instructors, and maintenance personnel than it is about any damage to the expensive gizmos. I've written about this in other threads, so I won't go into it here except to say that an electrically powered device can certainly lose power, and pulling a breaker is a way to simulate that. Like all abnormal situations, it's best to experience this on occasion in training, so you can see how small things can be quite disruptive. e.g. most dual EFIS setups will revert the primary attitude display to the backup display if the primary display loses power. This is great, but I've found that pilots tend to underestimate just how distracting it is to have their primary attitude information in even a slightly different location, even though it's the same display. In the case of the smaller EFIS instruments like the G5/GI-275, they may also not realize how hard it is to do without an HSI, even though the primary ADI shows course guidance information (in a different manner) at the bottom. But all of those things are less distracting on the first attempt than abandoning everything in the panel in favor of Foreflight on an iPad. To be clear, Foreflight on an iPad is a reasonable backup plan, but you've got to practice with it. Anyway... having said that, I also like the technique of simply using backlight controls to dim an ADI display down to the point of it being invisible (working perfectly fine, you just can't see it). There are a couple of reasons I like this approach. One is that while we tend to be enamored of the "redundancy" of dual G5s or whatever, that redundancy only kicks in when a device loses its bus link to the other device - typically due to a complete loss of power. That is not the only - or I suspect even the most common - failure mode. It doesn't help you if the sensors feeding the device quit. Also, LCD backlights can definitely malfunction, and if they do, they don't fail in a way that a secondary display could detect. In addition to considering these "partial failure" scenarios, I also think the whole point of partial panel work is just to get the pilot used to the idea of using all available instrumentation to control the airplane when something goes wonky. It's not so much that you're trying to simulate a "realistic" failure, as it is that you want the pilot to be thinking about things like the fact that airspeed is a somewhat decent indicator of pitch (at a given power setting), GPS groundspeed is a somewhat decent indicator of airspeed, that a good old wet compass really does show heading, and that GPS track is a fine proxy for heading in all but the most extreme circumstances. That a standard rate turn as shown on an old TC really does change your heading 3 degrees per second, and so on. All of those things make you a better instrument pilot even in non-emergency situations, and the better you are individually, the better the system works for everyone. One of my airplane partners calls this sort of stuff "mental pushups", equating them to physical push-ups. We don't do push-ups because the push-up motion is something most of us often (or ever) need to do in real life. We do them because they help you be generally strong, and being generally strong is good for your overall health, even if the exercise that got you strong isn't directly applicable to your life. Once I started thinking of things this way, I got more creative about simulating failed equipment. Partly because it's fun and helps me learn more about the complex systems we fly these days. But also because it wholly and legitimately dismisses pointless fights over what is a "realistic" failure. The vast majority of pilots flying behind EFIS panels are - understandably - never going to be able to understand the nuances of all the possible failure modes. I can tell you that as a hardware/software engineer, even the people that design the systems can never completely guarantee they understand all the failure modes. If they can't, you can't. And if you can't, mental push-ups is the best strategy. But getting back to the original topic, this is not the sort of thing you knock out in a single IPC. Again, an instrument proficiency check is not instrument proficiency training.

In my experience that's not always practical. It's one thing to aggressively polish down a flat surface like a wing skin. Quite another if the stain has seeped into lap joints, non-flush rivets, and so forth. In those locations, you're likely not getting rid of the blue/brown stains without taking a wire brush down to bare metal and repainting a touch-up area. A combination of laziness and interest in preserving the protective value of the paint even if it looks awful, has left us with a number of blue/brown stains on the undersides of the wings. I'm watching these threads with great interest. We've been getting by with tolerating small seeps and making every-few-years patches on our original (1976) sealant. That got us through the ~20 years since we bought the airplane, and I don't regret the approach one bit. But the collection of small annoyances and increasing concern about getting to a patch facility in the event of a major breach, has led us to schedule our airplane with Don Maxwell for a full strip and reseal at the beginning of February. I'd like to think this is going to give us "new" sealant that's relatively impervious to whatever fuel achieves market leader status in the future, but time will tell. It's hard for me to worry about the paint for now, as the current paint job was not that great on day one (in 1990), and now has 35 years of wear-and-tear. G100UL is sort of a moot point for us in the near future, as there is none nearby: only 100LL at our home drome , and UL94 that we can't use at some other Colorado airports.

We did the light bulb thing for a while, but ultimately decided jamming a glass bulb in the engine compartment (even with the protection of a trouble light cage) skeeved us out. Now we put a small electric space heater under the cowl and direct the airflow up the cowl flap. It's not fast, but it's better than the light bulb, and seems less risky.

Uh... negative... multi-engine training aircraft do indeed spend a whole lot of time with the throttle pulled back and the prop windmilling. Almost all OEI training is done with the "dead" engine actually still operating - it's either windmilling at idle, or operating at a very low power setting ("zero thrust"), because it's considered good risk management to minimize the frequency and locations under which an engine is actually feathered for real. Power off stalls require a windmilling prop. Vmc demos require a windmilling prop. Emergency descents are always performed with both engines at full RPM and idle power, in a high speed descent. This sort of work happens every day, so it makes it hard to buy into the idea that prop-driving-the-engine is a high-risk concern (hard to worry about "shock cooling" too, but that's a separate subject). None of that takes away from your data point on your buddy's RV-6 with the broken rings, though. And again, the acute risks of multi-engine training are high enough that long-term engine management concerns might be dismissed even if they're real. I'm just trying to understand the physics.

That's exactly why I'm asking for details. I'm a relatively fresh multi-engine instructor. The nature of the training requires allowing the "prop to drive the engine" on essentially every flight. Nothing in any multi-engine training material I've ever read indicates this is a concern. To be fair, the concerns of an immediate emergency/loss of control/crash are so acute in that environment that probably no one worries about the longevity of the engine. A neuron fired, and I remembered this article from AvWeb a long time ago: https://www.avweb.com/features/pelicans-perch-78-props-driving-engines/. It seems to suggest that the issues with the location of the oil hole in the rod journals, torsional resonance, etc. are "real", but do not rise to the level of an operational concern except in radial-engine (master rod) powered airliners descending at very high speed out of the flight levels for very prolonged periods of time.

What, exactly, is the strain or wear mechanism in the prop/crankshaft train that makes this a concern?

Thanks for the complements. I'm willing to share our documents, but I first owe my partners the courtesy of getting their consent to send them to third parties. I'll ping them when I get a chance, it will take a few days. One thing I will say immediately is that it took us a while, but we finally figured out that one should have one simple document which addresses the business of the LLC and its members only in general terms, independent of what business the LLC might be engaged in (things like how shares are tracked, rules for meetings, etc.); and a separate and usually more complicated agreement that details how aircraft owned by the LLC are operated, maintained, and funded. Don't mix and match the two, as doing so winds up creating conflicting information and generally just becomes a headache.

That's the way our partnership works, and I was really enamored of the idea in the early years. I'm not disenamored with it now, but I also don't care about it as much as I used to. It turns out it that people who spend a lot of time advocating for this kind of thing are largely missing the forest for the trees. The majority of fuel bought will always be at the home airport, because any other strategy quickly runs afoul of the hourly cost just to fly the airplane to the airport with cheap gas. So pilots are only going to leverage this delta on cross-country flights. A really active partnership (not a flight school) might have partners who each fly 100 hours per year at roughly 10GPH. That's 1000 gallons of fuel per partner, most of which will be bought at home. Even if a partner with particular wanderlust buys fully half their fuel away from home, and manages to save or spend an absurd average delta of $2 per gallon, the resultant "savings" or "subsidy" vs. other partners is $1000 in this extreme example, and in reality it's much less - maybe a few hundred bucks. Compared with the cost of owning and operating the airplane in the first place - especially the uncertainly discussed above - this just isn't a whole lot of scratch. That's not to say it's not still a good idea. But when forming a partnership, you really want to look for cues about whether the individuals are more concerned about the health of the partnership and friendships, or more concerned about "getting their fair share". People who put a lot of energy into arguing about how wet rates aren't fair tend to be in the latter category, though that's of course not an absolute. Just my two cents.

No, but I think doing so is entirely reasonable for pilots with plenty of interest in avionics (which is most of us). A lot of this has to do with what kind of equipment is in the airplane now, and whether the partners are really interested in just maintaining that exact same capability (and style), vs. staying at some Xth percentile of avionics cache' in the community. The former can be done less expensively, but a lot of pilots would say the latter is the real definition of "maintaining the avionics". Basically, they'll acknowledge they don't need an upgrade every time something breaks, but in the end they can't really stand the thought of flying with yesteryear's panel. As a specific example, you can't get a GNS430 repaired any more, and some people interpret this to mean that if their unit breaks, they "must" at least install in an Avidyne 440 (at considerable cost), because there is "no other option". But there are always other options, e.g. accepting a prolonged period of time without an IFR certified GPS, while hunting around salvage yards for a serviceable old GNS430, the same way one might have to do for a serviceable fuel selector or intake boot or landing gear actuator. If you take the latter attitude, the old GNS430 in your airplane is merely a $3-5K time bomb, not a $10-20K one. You can make similar arguments about autopilots, engine monitors, etc. Heck, we're still maintaining our Brittain autopilot, and we're not the only ones. I understand the concern, and I think there is no way around this risk in certain cases, e.g. a Mooney with a non-WAAS G1000 panel is a major liability due to a combination of integration, and how the STC is held by Mooney. But most of us don't have these corner case panels, certainly not in the vintage birds. What's a little more perilous/expensive/frustrating is how the system can change out from underneath you in ways that are out of your control. When we bought our airplane in 2004, a transponder was a dull gizmo that we didn't think much about, and had no plans to ever upgrade. We didn't set aside separate funds for "transponder maintenance" any more than we did for tires. But we had to shell several thousand dollars out of pocket for a new transponder in 2019 in order to continue legally operating the airplane in the metro area where we live. That was an unexpected cost, essentially a "forced upgrade". One could make the same argument about VOR receivers in the future, or even transponders again (I'm waiting for the powers that be to dictate we must have ADS-B diversity antennas in the US). So putting specific dollars per hour into an avionics kitty is certainly fair, and I wouldn't avoid a partnership that did so. Long story short (too late), I think you should talk with your partners about what it really means to "maintain" avionics, since there's a much wider swath of opinions about it vs. maintaining O-rings, rod ends, brake pads, etc. In general, I'd say a partnership of scroungers doesn't need a separate avionics fund, while a partnership of panel junkies does, even if both partnerships start with exactly the same equipment in the panel. Excellent, this attitude will server a partnership nicely. I don't begrudge those who feel differently, I just wouldn't want to be partners with them. That sounds like a great number to me, as long as everyone understands that some annual inspections uncover discrepancies that must be addressed immediately and vary wildly in cost. Whether to attribute such things to "the annual" vs. "maintenance that was coincidentally performed at the annual" is a regular source of discussion in our partnership. It's always complicated (and kinda fun, actually), but one guideline we use to decide is if we feel the affected component broke or wore out due to use (flight time) or just age (calendar time). In our case, we have separate logical funds for fixed vs. operating expenses, but the fixed expenses include maintenance items in addition to things like hangar rent, insurance, etc. The annual inspection is itself a fixed expense, so it's not a stretch to say that certain things addressed at the annual are fixed expenses as well. A trivial example of this is fuel-cap O-rings, which you might replace on a 1 (rubber) or 5 (fluorosilicone) schedule at the annual, regardless of number of flight hours. Most of the sole owners browsing this thread have quit reading at this point, after rolling their eyes right out of their sockets that anyone in a partnership really agonizes over the bookkeeping of O-rings. But I trudge on... One of the most difficult things to figure out in a partnership is how the partners really feel about "banking" money. Of course you want a kitty, but you need to treat the partners like grownups, and not overdo it. Requiring partners to bank money toward future maintenance expenses reduces the risk of someone coming up short, but it also requires them to pay opportunity costs for things that might never happen. Everyone has (or should have) a limit beyond which they're not willing to give a corporation they're affiliated with an interest-free loan. Even if that corporation is made up of their friends and fellow airplane pilots.

We've run our partnership for 20 years as of 2024, and have tracked this kind of stuff pretty closely, but only the past couple of years are relevant looking forward. Regarding engine/prop reserve, there is no way to set an hourly assessment that ensures the kitty is fat enough to avoid out-of-pocket costs at overhaul time, because you have no way of knowing when the engine will actually need an overhaul. Because of this, we choose to bill an hourly value that tries to approximate the market depreciation on the airplane as more and more time is put on the engine, which presently seems to be about $20-$25 per hour. This is related to the cost of overhaul and recommended TBO, of course, but it's not exactly the same. More importantly, the hourly depreciation is the same regardless of whether the airplane has 600, 800, or 1000 hours on the engine when the new partners buy in. To relate it to your specific question, I'd say $45/hour is much too steep, because the airplane isn't worth $45 less every hour it gets flown. It sounds like you're getting that $45 number by dividing your guess at overhaul cost by (2000-600), such that over the next 1400 hours you'll build up enough reserve to overhaul the engine for no out-of-pocket cost. Again, though, you have no idea when the overhaul will be needed, so that's not a realistic financial model. Instead, all the partners have to share the risk that the engine will need a premature overhaul, and everyone is on the hook for a share of the out-of-pocket cost (they can also share in the windfall if the engine goes well beyond TBO before needing an overhaul). The only way this works is if the hourly rate is based on market depreciation per hour, not the estimated cost of a future overhaul divided by a wild guess at how many hours it will be before that happens. To each their own, but I would not buy into a partnership that required me to pay an "initial reserve" on the engine, unless my buy-in price discounted the value of the airplane by exactly the same amount as the initial reserve. It kinda sounds like you're trying to get the incoming partners to cover some of the cost of the first 600 hours of depreciation, even though you were the only person enjoying the use of the airplane during that time. Regarding non-engine maintenance reserve, ours is currently set at $20/hour, and that's been adequate to cover status-quo upkeep. But we do a lot of owner-assisted maintenance, and we're also pretty formal about the difference between "upkeep" vs. "upgrade". For example, when our vacuum attitude indicator timed out a few years back, everyone paid out of pocket for the G5 installation, we didn't claim that installation of a G5 was just "maintenance" of the vacuum AI. We're not going to "maintain" our UBG-16 engine monitor by installing a GI-275 EIS when it malfunctions, or install a 201 windshield when the stock windshield gets too scratched up, and so on. If you choose to approach things this way, there is really no difference between the maintenance kitty for avionics vs. the maintenance kitty for tires, shock disks, heim joints, and so on. Things are maintained by replacing them with exactly the same thing. Anything different is an upgrade, subject to whatever voting procedures you use for upgrades. You didn't mention fuel costs, and that implies you plan on dry rates. Based on experience, I'd like to suggest you consider wet rates instead, that get adjusted a few times a year as fuel cost varies. I know this sounds like more trouble than a dry rate, but I think what most people miss is that it's simply not possible for every partner to always exactly replace the fuel they use at the end of a flight. Sometimes the fuel pump doesn't work the day you get home, and you're not able to drive back out to the airport the next morning to gas up. Other times one partner might ask another to deliberately leave the airplane down on gas so as to carry more payload, etc. In a wet-rate partnership, partners are simply reimbursed by the LLC for whatever fuel they buy, under any circumstances. In a dry rate partnership, events like the ones I mentioned create debts directly between partners rather than through the LLC, and that can lead to hard feelings. A wet hourly rate does deprive frugal partners of the opportunity to save money by gassing up at cheap airports and/or flying at reduced power, but the actual value of those savings is trivial in the scheme of overall airplane ownership, and in my opinion not worth the stress and risk to the partnership of creating fuel debts between partners. Finally, a word of advice: "add-on" partnerships like the one you're proposing sometimes fail because the previously sole owner never really treats the new partners like equals when it comes to how the airplane is operated. You've got to be at peace with the idea that you're *selling* the airplane, not merely lending it. On day 1 of the partnership, the new partners have a fully equal vote on how much gas to leave in the tanks, whether the airplane gets wiped down after every flight, how the seatbelts are stowed, what oil level to run at, whether the tow bar is left on the nose gear in the hangar or stowed in the baggage compartment, and so on. You need to avoid the feeling that you've got the airplane all figured out, and you'll teach the new partners how to operate it, and that can be pretty difficult. Regarding number of partners, we've had 3 or 4 at various times throughout the partnership, and that has indeed been a magic number for us. But... none of the partners fly overnight trips very often. Maybe 1-2 per year per partner. Obviously 4 partners isn't going to work very well if each partner wants to have the airplane away from its home base 90 days per year. That said, it's also worth noting that many people who buy into a partnership fly less than they planned/hoped, especially if it's their first airplane. I'm unconcerned when new partners approach our partnership stating they're going to fly 100+ hours per year, because I know that historically, most of them fly a little less than that the first year, and even less in the years after that. That knowledge makes it easy to be generous with scheduling. Most people are decent, and aren't going to take advantage in the long run, so you can build a really great partnership by being generous with scheduling and operating policies to your new partners in the early going. You might be a little annoyed that they don't put the airplane away the same way as you, but that seems pretty trivial in the long run when you build a great friendship, and every unexpected cost is split across the partnership rather than borne by you alone. Best of luck with your plans!

@amekler there may not be anything really wrong with yours. The intensity of the display is controlled by a potentiometer. Over time, with vibration of the panel, dirt, etc., this potentiometer can lose slider contact, resulting in the display intensity going to full bright or full dim. Simply wiggling the potentiometer back and forth a bit can often re-establish contact and restore reasonable intensity. We have had exactly the same problem as you, and I was able to resolve in just a few minutes with a small screwdriver. Instructions from the installation/maintenance manual are shown below. Suggest you slide the box out of the panel, tweak the display potentiometer a little, and re-install. It can't hurt, and might help.

I hesitate to say this in public, but after posting and asking questions like this about the oil stains on our gear doors and exhaust tunnels for years, our long-standing mechanic finally said to me one day, "Son, you need to either overhaul the engine, or lower your standards." Certain oil leaks that are benign from a safety perspective, simply cannot be fixed without maintenance that is just as likely to cause serious problems as it is to fix the annoyance of the oil leak. In our case, the main source of the leaking oil is the gasket seal on the oil pan, which is quite long in the tooth. This could definitely be addressed without an engine overhaul, but it would require removing the oil pan, which first requires removing the exhaust, which first requires removing the lower cowl, and so on. All of that could generate more serious problems. A bit of leaking comes from the rubber couplings on our oil drainback tubes, as @Yetti notes. When this first started, we tightened the hose clamps a bit and got it to seal, but eventually the rubber got pretty brittle, and it's more or less impossible to keep it bone dry without replacing the couplings - which maybe can be done without removing exhaust and/or induction tubes, but it's a pain. We have a couple of pushrod tubes that leak chronically at the seal near the cylinder head. The gaskets have been replaced multiple times, but they continue to seep. When we had cork valve cover gaskets, they'd start seeping after a year or two, though that's gotten better with the silicone gaskets. Sometimes seeping oil comes from a blown main seal at the crankshaft. We do check for this, and address it when found. But it's not really a critical airworthiness issue, and the prop has to come off to address it. One time the mechanic who removed the prop showed me how the previous mechanic to remove the prop botched the prop bolt safety wiring on re-installation. We do wash the engine at every annual, inspect for oil seeps at the crankcase seam and cylinder attach bolts, look for cracks in the case, etc. More importantly, we try pretty hard to wipe the oil off after each flight, so that we're starting from a relatively clean state, and can check after the flight to see if the amount of oil on the gear doors and exhaust tunnel is "normal". Bottom line, I've come to accept that while we'd all like a bone-dry engine, the design of the engines we fly isn't really conducive to staying dry through thousands of hours and dozens of years. Most of the Lycoming/Continental engines I see in the shop and on the ramp leak some amount of oil - particularly flight school airplanes and those flown for hire. For better or worse, I've abandoned the dream of a dry engine... at least until overhaul time.

Getting back to the question of ground testing... you should be able to do this using the OBS mode of your GPS. I'm not going to give a blow-by-blow detail of OBS mode here - you can read about it elsewhere - but in short it's the GPS equivalent of a VOR. You select a waypoint on the GPS, and a course relative to that waypoint, and your CDI needle (and the data fed to the navigation system) will indicate your position relative to that course. By selecting different courses, you can make your present position be "on course" or "left of course" or "right of course", without moving the airplane at all. If you enable your autopilot, it should move the control wheel to make a left or right turn accordingly, to intercept the selected course. As others have said, to test roll steering (GPSS), you'll want to have the autopilot in heading mode while you're doing this.

That's one of my favorite tricks, I use (and teach) it all the time.

Each PIC gets to make their own judgement calls, and I don't know anything about you personally, so don't take this the wrong way. That said, most of the unofficial line-up-and-wait I observe at my local non-towered field does essentially nothing to help with spacing. It is instead - intended or not - merely a way for an airplane on the ground to bully their way in front of an aircraft approaching to land, by establishing a dominant position on the runway. Most of the time things works out fine, but on the occasions they don't - which is not that uncommon - the approaching aircraft is forced to go around, while the departing aircraft still gets to depart as desired. There is then sometimes a fight on the radio where the departing aircraft insists the go-around aircraft should have stayed on the approach and that there was plenty of room. Even setting aside the immediate safety implications of the go-around, that makes line-up-and-wait sort of a jerk move by the departing aircraft, that occasionally creates a secondary safety problem while people fight on the radio about what just happened. When people ask me about this in an instructor capacity, I suggest they time how long it takes for them to taxi from the hold short line to the runway center line. Some airports have strange configurations with hold-short lines that are a long way from the actual runway, and it takes 30+ seconds to taxi the distance. I think reasonable people can agree that maybe there is a place for "unofficial LUAW" in that environment. In contrast, at my home airport, a competent pilot can taxi from the hold short line to the runway center line in about 10 seconds. An airplane approaching at 65 knots covers about 1100 feet in 10 seconds. It's my assertion that if you're trying to insert yourself into a slot where an extra 1100 feet of distance is the difference between going and not going, you are probably missing the bigger risk management picture.

A cap that fits the OEM switch in 70s-era Mooneys is this one: https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/690-SW53AA2 But... the problem a lot of people run into is that as those switches malfunction over the years, they are often replaced by shops with a switch that is equivalent in function, but not exactly the same, such that the OEM caps don't fit. There's nothing particularly shady about this - the OEM switches can be hard to find, and are often superceded by other parts. They're also "standard electronic parts", and a reasonable interpretation of the rules allows replacement of simple electrical switches with equivalents that are not exactly the same dimensions. So... your best bet is actually to replace the whole switch, along with caps to match. Perhaps with this one: https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/690-SA1BV20, which matches the caps above. Doing so is straightforward if you're handy with a soldering iron (and if there's enough of a service loop left in the wiring, otherwise you have to replace the wire or add extensions). I'll leave the legalities of DIY to others to pontificate on. Word of advice about the caps: either buy a whole bunch of them, or have the gumption to place a drop of CA or plastic glue on the cap when you stick it on the shaft. The caps just press fit onto the switch shaft. They're not particularly secure, and they don't stay in place very long in the cockpit environment. When they come off, they often get lost in the seats, carpet, or down in the bowels of the belly. You can guess how I know this, and it's probably the reason your caps are missing in the first place. I went through my whole stash of caps a while back, and gave up - we're back to just stabbing our thumbs on the tiny little shaft.

You're absolutely correct that statistical risk across a population doesn't necessarily map to any particular individual. ... but that's still the way to bet, including on yourself. About 1/3rd of all VFR-into-IMC accidents involve instrument-rated pilots, and about 1/3rd of all landing accidents involve pilots with a Commercial or ATP certificate. There's nothing particularly mysterious about this - pilots with instrument ratings are more willing/likely to fly in marginal VFR conditions, and those with advanced certificates are more likely to fly to challenging runways in challenging conditions.

The advantages of a feathering prop are a tradeoff against complexity, and new potential problems. Even if the feathering mechanism was free and weightless, some designers and owners might still choose against having one in a piston single. In a piston prop twin, single engine service ceiling and - more importantly - controllability, are so severely affected by a windmilling prop that feathering capability is a no-brainer even with the complexity and potential problems it brings. But in a single, the only thing you're buying with a feathering prop is a slight improvement in glide range, in the event of a total engine failure that doesn't affect the ability of the propeller to rotate. Note that feathering in a single doesn't help you at all if the engine is still making partial power (often the case, and in that case you want all the thrust you can get); or if it seizes suddenly enough that you don't get it feathered before rotation stops. In exchange for the benefit of feathering in the small number of cases where it actually helps, you get all the failure modes of the feathering hardware . Those include sticking of the anti-feather shutdown pins, such that the engine feathers on shutdown and is hard on the engine and battery on the subsequent restart; as well as the unlikely-but-catastrophic case of accidentally feathering the propeller in flight at full power, which tends to damage the engine. And because it would be very high risk to practice feathering and securing the only engine in a single-engine airplane in flight, you'll never train to do this "in real life", only in a simulator or on the ground. Most of my multi-engine students have a pretty difficult time getting the feather/secure sequence exactly right on their first "real life" attempt, and I suspect the error rate would be even higher amongst pilots of single-engine feathering propellers, who do not hold a multi-engine rating and regularly train the feathering sequence in multi-engine airplanes. I'm not really arguing that a feathering prop in a piston single is a bad idea. Just that it's not the no-brainer it might seem to be at first glance, even setting aside the large cost and small weight penalties.

Coincidentally, this week's update of the AOPA McSpadden report re-organizes the data in a way that specifically breaks out collisions, including by phase of flight. Here's the fixed wing, non-commercial data for the most recently available full year (2022): https://www.aopa.org/training-and-safety/air-safety-institute/accident-analysis/richard-g-mcspadden-report/mcspadden-report-figure-view/?category=all&year=2022&condition=all&report=true For those who don't want to pore over the charts, here's a quick breakdown of collisions in 2008 vs. 2022, which arguably spans the time period when in-cockpit traffic displays became ubiquitous: landing: 2 nonfatal in 2008, 1 nonfatal in 2022 takeoff and climb: 1 nonfatal in 2008, 1 nonfatal in 2022 maneuvering: 1/2 nonfatal/fatal in 2008, 1 fatal in 2022 descent and approach: 4/2 nonfatal/fatal in 2008, 2 fatal in 2022 enroute: 1 fatal in 2008, 1 fatal in 2022 taxi: 13/1 nonfatal/fatal in 2008, 10/0 nonfatal/fatal collisions in 2022 It's interesting to note that the overwhelming majority of collisions occur while taxiing. It's unclear to me if the landing and takeoff collisions occurred on the runway surface, or just after takeoff/just before landing, but I'm guessing they're probably on the surface, especially given that... ...there is an important note in the data stating that each aircraft involved in a collision is counted separately in the data. e.g. a classic "midair" is reported as two incidents, and any data point showing only one incident involves a collision with something other than another aircraft (probably a tower or cable in the air, probably lights and signs on the ground). So I think - my guess only - that the midair collision concern that traffic displays address, is contained in the fatal maneuvering, descent/approach, and enroute data, where there are an even number of incidents. That's 4 incidents (2 collisions) in 2008, and 2 incidents (1 collision) in 2022. It's debatable whether traffic displays have driven a 50% reduction in midairs, or if the numbers are so small that it's just noise in the data. It would be interesting to create a separate graph for every year to see how things move around. But what's indisputable is that that the average pilot is ten times as likely to kill themselves due to loss of control (the breakout says that in the descent and approach phase, for example, there were 29 fatals in 2008 and 17 fatals in 2022), as they are to die in a midair. I think one should plan their risk management focus appropriately. All this only applies to the average pilot, though - not gods of the sky who would never lose control of a perfectly good airplane. For that latter group, obviously "the other guy" is their biggest risk, and it makes sense for them to focus a lot of attention on midairs, and little on stick and rudder. Up to each of you to decide which group you're in.

Old instrument instructor's axiom: the more ridiculous the hood looks on you, the better it works. Anything that looks like a cool pair of shades is marginal at best. We're jiffyhood fans ourselves, just pull the strap over your headset. Trivial to raise it up at the end of an approach when you "break out".

Sure. A couple of months ago I was asked to assist with recurrent training for a client who was returning to aviation after a long hiatus. Despite the layoff, he was a good stick, and flew the pattern nicely. But only after I took his iPad away. On the first downwind leg, he has his head absolutely buried in the iPad, and was extremely concerned about a couple of other airplanes on or entering the downwind. I s**t you not, he spent more than 50% of the flight time on the entire downwind leg with his head in his lap (I know because I watched his eyes, like I do with all students). Meanwhile, he allowed the airplane to accelerate to over 100 KIAS (this was a 172), climb almost 200' above traffic pattern altitude, and was unable to conduct a stabilized approach. Again, he had no problem maintaining reasonable speeds and altitude profies in the pattern once I took the iPad away. When I asked him about this, he said he felt it was important to get acquainted with the "new technology", and talked about how much safer he felt with it. But no one had ever given him any training on how to use it, and he was stunned to hear me say he was making himself less safe. I did my best to do so politely, using some of the data discussed here. He finished the checkout with another instructor, and it's unclear to me what impact my training had on him. Another: last week I was established on downwind with a student in a specific training scenario (power-off 180 in a significant crosswind), when an airplane from the flight school down the road reported inbound on the VOR-A approach to my home drome. I'm very familiar with the approach. The MDA is 600' AGL, and flown properly, inbound aircraft are established at 600' AGL well before crossing the downwind leg for the runway on a perpendicular course, enroute to a midfield flyover and missed. There is no conflict between the VFR traffic pattern and this approach, when everyone has eyes outside (and augmenting that with ADS-B traffic data is great). But rather than continuing to simply report position, the inbound aircraft identified us by call sign and issued us an instruction to do a 360 to accommodate them. I've had this happen a couple of times, and I'm always incredulous. But that's actually not the relevant part of the story. Doing what they asked would have both compromised my training scenario and created another conflict with an aircraft behind me, so I replied "unable", to which the response was, "we have you on ADS-B, we'll blah, blah, blah", at which point their aircraft blindly maneuvered to head directly toward the location of our downwind-to-base turn, and climb right through the pattern altitude. I presume this is based on what they saw on ADS-B based on their last announcement, but who knows? In any case, they clearly had positional awareness, but not situational awareness. Another example, less interesting but still to the point: traffic is congested enough in our metro area that a "common training frequency" has been established, which all the local flight schools would like pilots to monitor if more than a few miles from any particular airport. I'm unconvinced this is helpful, but I'm not a jerk, so I do monitor it, and do my best to be polite. I routinely get calls to my N number from aircraft that are multiple minutes away from a possible conflict, asking me to "say intentions", and wanting to negotiate separation even greater than what the professionals who staff ATC require. Again, I try not to be a jerk about it, but the minor irritation is that it unnecessarily distracts from training; and the major issue is that I've seen it create bizarre panic on a couple of occasions when more than two aircraft happened to be vaguely in the vicinity of each other, but not anywhere near a real threat. If you've never seen or heard things like this, I respect that. But don't tell me I haven't seen and heard it with my own eyes and ears. There is definitely fixation and distraction going on out there. The bottom line argument in this thread isn't whether ADS-B is "bad", no one is saying it is. The opposing positions are between "Traffic displays are easy to use effectively, never a distraction, and represent a huge safety improvement", vs. "Effectively using a traffic display is complex and can be counterintuitive, and it provides a moderate benefit against a tiny risk, at the possible expense of a small increase in larger risks". In this respect, your comments about airspeed indicators are actually a great conversation piece. We have a finite amount of time to be "heads down" in the cockpit, so what do you think the risk is of taking time away from checking the ASI while in the traffic pattern, in order to look at your traffic display? Yeah, yeah, I'm sure you can do both at the same time - you're an excellent pilot, you can pat your head and rub your tummy, etc. But the accident data is right there in black and white: huge numbers of takeoff and landing accidents, very tiny numbers of midairs, and this hasn't changed since ADS-B became commonplace. As an instructor, should I really be telling other pilots, "I see you're looking at the airspeed indicator a lot, you really should spend more time on your ADS-B display"?