jaylw314

Aw dang, I was hoping to get a vicarious thrill out of spending your money on a new plane! Hope to see your friend here soon!

I have to admit, I have more problems from my own parents about flying than I do from the in-laws. I wonder what that means? I'd like to think the in-laws are ok with me flying their daughter because they see me as a systematic, methodical problem solver and have seen me do so when their daughter's life has been at stake before. Of course, that might just be what I think to stroke my ego. It's hard to know how to approach your in-laws since we can't know what their problem is with you flying, but the possibilities are always: It's all their shit. Nothing to do except mitigate their impact on your life It's everyone's shit. The hard one, since there are 4 people that means 6 relationships to work on. It's all your shit. Notice that the only one that doesn't involve the pilot is #1. For #2, sounds like you worked on the FIL constructively, the MIL not so much. Was there anything you could have done differently that might have been more successful before, or might have been more constructive for later? If you really want to work on those relationships, don't neglect the relationship between you and your wife, and her and her parents. You haven't mentioned much about what your wife has said about flying to you and her parents. You've also suggested some amount of lack of honesty on your part with her, about how much you expect this project to cost. Does she actually know how important this is to you if she's not come to your defense? Have you given her an opportunity to tell you what she thinks about flying? All food for though for working on those relationships In short, you're unlikely to get helpful relationship advice for #2 from here because it's complicated and your life. And that leads us to #3. We all hope it's not that, but it is possible that something about your personality or behaviors in the past make your in-laws distrustful of your risk-taking, and make your wife fail to come to your aid. But the only input we can have is to ask how good your self-assessment is? And, of course, when someone says their ability to self-assess is great, that doesn't mean anything since the 5 dangerous attitudes all imply difficulty in self-assessment. I hope I'm not speaking for everyone (OK, I kind of am), but I hear a lot of this whenever anyone asks the question that starts with "How should I do this?" rather than "Should I do this?" We all start asking ourselves if you're a #3, which is a little unfair, but nobody who shares this love of flying wants to see a fellow pilot end up as a result in an NTSB report. TL,DR: Work on your relationships with everyone involved, and honestly ask yourself how much of this is really your problem.

Still waiting on the new prop, I'll give you my impression once it's up and running again. I've been grounded almost 4 months at this point.

Same story I was given about my McCauley prop. It had survived 3 overhauls in 18 years, then I send it off to the prop shop and they condemned both blades, saying the o-rings have worn the grooves under spec. In my case, the hub also had scoring in the cylinder they could have repaired for an extra $2500, and a pair of new blades was quoted as $6100, so it was a no-brainer for me to get a new Hartzell prop. Going through my FBO the discounted cost was about $9500 for the new 2-blade Hartzell, but the lead time for a new prop was about 4 weeks. Of course, that doesn't account for the prop getting damaged on shipping and having the shipping company, the prop shop and Hartzell dicking around for a while figuring out what to do. In the end, I get a new prop but it's 8 weeks later and I'm still waiting. All whining aside, check with your A&P to see if you can get a discount from the prop shop going through them. Seemed like it saved about $1200 off the list price for me. I don't know how much you could sell the old hub for, but that might help change the balance on deciding whether to go new or replace the blades.

I should point out Carson speed probably isn't relevant other than as an arbitrary speed, since you're talking about fuel consumption as the outcome measure. You could just as well crunch the numbers with a 150 KIAS (or any other speed above best glide) cruise as a starting point. My guess is the outcomes will still be very similar. As an aside, there's an article from Flying Magazine that suggests actual Carson speed might be a bit higher than best glide speed, since power production becomes somewhat more efficient above best glide. They suggested "best range speed" x 1.32. The problem is, my POH does not have a "best range speed" or an easy way to figure that out from the performance charts, but if best glide is about 95 KIAS, might "best range speed" be about 110 KIAS? If so, Carson speed may be more like 145 KIAS, which is at least a tolerable speed.

I think you would expect to see some fuel draining from the intake manifold after a normal shutdown. IIRC, Don Maxwell (in his hot start video) commented that after shutdown, the fuel in the divider heats up and pushes the fuel in the lines into the intake over the first couple minutes. If there was a stuck sniffle valve, I assume then you would have NO fuel dripping? The cat litter idea is good, but it does make it hard to see if there is a change in what is dripping on the floor.

Why not have have the front passenger use the right rear plugs? Unless they help you with the radio, they don't need the PTT button, and they could just toss the headset in the backseat when exiting. Assuming there is no rear passengers, of course.

At least in theory, higher MAP and lower RPM keeps the engine warmer than low MAP and higher RPM. So 20"/2000 would keep the engine warmer than 15"/2500. Can't say I've noticed a huge difference in reality, but at least it makes for a quieter cabin on descent.

Wow, it's nice not to have mountains around! My last flight down the west coast I had to cruise at 12,000 MSL, and I could only get up to about 7.6 gph running WOT and 2400 RPM at peak (about 135 KIAS). LOP would have been painfully slow. Isn't Carson's speed something like 1.31 x best glide speed? That's about 125 KIAS for most M20's? I suppose if you want to maximize your airspeed x fuel economy, you'd fly something like 13,000 MSL at WOT and 2400 RPM. That would probably be about 125 KIAS.

If you're flying IFR, the time for the fuel stop is more like 45-60 min for filing the new flight plan and picking up your clearance. Even if you do those in the air after takeoff, you need an extra 15 minutes on the ground to prepare or just to keep your head from exploding. In the M20J, flying lower and slower also gives you slightly better fuel economy, but both have their limits. Flying down the west coast you have to fly over mountains and weather which limits the "lower." Your spouse's bladder endurance and willingness/ability to use a portable toilet may limit the "slower." On the other hand, when I told my wife the portable toilet would save us $75 and and 45 minutes, she promptly went for it, bless her soul

Ditto, they have 1/2 size binders at Office Depot. Get the ones with the 1" D-rings, the pages will last longer. Most of them have clear sleeves on the front so you can copy the front of your old POH for the cover. I became anal (okay, I was already anal) and copied all my POH pages and put them in a second binder to use as the working POH in the plane, and the original in my box at home for safekeeping.

Looks like the connector died from vibration in the wire, it broke right where the wire terminates. Too bad we can't use the super-fine stranded silicone-insulated wiring that's common in RC heli and drone use. I'm guessing that stuff would be MUCH more vibration/fatigue/heat resistant than normal stranded wire, and the better flexibility would mean less strain on the connectors as well.

Also, Va only takes into account maximum constant pitch up elevator movement. If you pitch down or apply aileron/rudder, you may or may not have less margin of safety before the structural limit. Also, you can exceed the structural limit below Va with dynamic pitch up controls, e.g. applying up elevator rapidly or rapidly alternating from pitch down to pitch up. If I remember correctly, that's how AA 587 had a vertical stab failure on takeoff

And for the OP, I use: Level clean: 2400/17" 105 KIAS Level dirty: 2400/22" 105 KIAS -500 fpm clean: 2000/16" 105 KIAS -500 fpm dirty: 2400/17" 105 KIAS I like 105 KIAS on approaches because my brain kept falling behind the plane at 120 KIAS, and easier to slow the plane down from minimums. It's halfway between 90 KIAS and 120 KIAS, so on timed approaches, the MAP is halfway between those times.

Haven't heard, but I imagine it will not happen. The insurance companies would need to argue you had an incident because of a medical condition, and to do that, they would need to obtain your medical records, which are confidential. The only way they might be discoverable is if a third party sued you (but then you presumably have a different problem).

Yeah, that's part of my T/O callouts--"Fuel pressure, fuel flow," since they are not on the instrument cluster in my panel (they're on an EI and EDM-700 respectively)

Well, if we played semantics, any bottom end failure prior to TBO is infant mortality, since TBO is supposed to have some meaning as the expected time-limited life of the components. Presumably, your bearing issue was a manufacturing or assembly issue, since it should have lasted to TBO. Granted I suppose abuse, misoperation or errors in maintenance could be other causes, but otherwise it would have to be a production, manufacturing or assembly issue.

There is an advantage to rebuilds over overhauls. Rebuilds are frankensteins, with various random parts from old engines that still meet limits (along with some new parts). When you overhaul an engine, many parts that do not meet limits have to be ordered new. Statistically, this means there is a higher percentage of old parts in rebuilds that have already survived infant mortality, unlike overhauls where there are a lot of new parts that are vulnerable to infant mortality.

No, they put it on hold indefinitely https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2017/october/04/mandatory-icao-flight-plan-filing-on-hold

That's why I didn't want to get too complicated. It was a stressful day in my IFR training when on my long cross country, my instructor gleefully stated, "so today, we're going to make sure you pick up your clearances in as many ways as possible." Although I admit, he didn't make me try calling ATC on the phone.

I think procedures are essentially identical, but you might be using different words for the same thing. In the US, instead of "opening" an IFR flight plan, we ask to "pick up an IFR plan to XXX" or "pick up IFR to XXX" when we contact the appropriate facility. I don't think that terminology is recommended in the AIM, but it seems to be what everyone here does. As long as you make it clear you have an IFR plan filed, though, I'm assuming the facility will figure out what you're talking about. The other services we have are Flight Services and 1800wxbrief. In a busy ATC environment, it's polite to go through one of them instead of asking ATC for your clearance if you didn't get it from a towered field. In most parts of the Pacific Northwest (other than over Seattle during the day), though, ATC will help you out getting your clearance. At a towered field, if you get in on the ground it shouldn't be any different than what you do now.

Looks like a great idea, although I'd suggest taping some kind of tag on the corner to make it easier to get off. Also, if it's like the vinyl window tint for cars, it does NOT block UV radiation, so you can get sunburned without realizing it. Regular adhesive window tint does frequently block UV radiation, but not the stick-on vinyl kind.

It's hard to get excited about a free VFR-limited flight bag app when Fltplan Go and Avare are out there, since they both are free and have unlimited IFR function as well

It only becomes an issue if it's bumpy or if I get slam dunked by ATC

Well, it is if you use pitch for airspeed and power for descent. And I do full-flap touch-and-goes while LOP All jest aside, I find I need more than 15" MP while flying in the pattern until short final in an M20J, so the caution range is only an issue while in cruise descents.