SantosDumont

Vegas local here. I would recommend HND. LAS is fun the first time when you want to park at Atlantic, get the photo of your plane with the strip in the background, then step outside and go check into your room at Mandalay Bay. What sucks is when you come back to leave, have to wait 20 minutes to be able to get a word in with Clearance Delivery to get a VFR departure, then wait another 20 minutes for a taxi clearance from ground, then a 2 mile taxi down to 08 or God Forbid, the 4 mile taxi to 26. The misery is multiplied exponentially when it’s summer and 110 outside. At HND you call ground, (they also have clearance delivery for IFR now) have a 2 minute taxi and are gone. The Uber from HND to the strip is only 15 minutes and about $20.

I've only been flying for 2 years... I've never heard position and hold. I've only been told to line up and wait.

I'm never running a tank dry. With all 4 tanks I got 100GAL on board. If it's just me + 1 then I usually launch with the inner tanks full (64 GAL). I get nervous when I get below 10 per side. I had the power supply on my B-Kool burn out this summer. Started smelling burning and then it melted my cigarette plug and blew the fuse. Bought a new power supply with much higher gauge wire and a quick disconnect plug.

I tell people that if you can’t pull $100 out of your wallet right now, light it on fire, and not care... then you are not ready for airplane ownership.

@gsxrpilot is right that spending money upfront for already installed components saves you in the end. The guy that did all the upgrades to my F spent over $100k to basically turn it into a J. I paid significantly less than that. Any upgrades you put into the plan are going to be worth pennies on the dollar later. Clubs or Partnerships? Clubs are good if you don't need the exclusivity and availability of owning your own airplane. If you're just going to get a $100 hamburger every once in a while then club is a great option. If you're actually gonna go somewhere for a week, club probably won't work. Partnerships are like marriages. With the right partner it can be wonderful, with the wrong one absolute misery. You need to be on the same page for maintenance, upgrades, availability, etc.

That was 2 years ago. I don’t remember the specifics of that plane. However I ended up in a F with a similar engine. 18 years old, 1600 SNEW, 10 years 400 STOH. I talked the seller down a bit, probably should have talked them down a bit more. I took a chance on that engine, put 400hrs on it and consider myself lucky. But I’m ready to spend $35k when it starts making metal. The difference is that my F has all the mods and avionics. I don’t have to spend a dime on upgrades if I don’t want to. (Obviously I want to, but don’t need to).

When I was looking for my plane there was a C, WAAS 430 with STEC 30 for $40k. I called a day later to put down a deposit and it was already gone. A pristine C with all the fixin’s will top out around $50k. More than that and you should be looking at Fs. The name of the game is know all the avionics you want and then be fast.

Is the plane $20k? Then maybe. Otherwise nah. Buy something updated with a WAAS GPS and an S-TEC autopilot.

huh. the language they use on the 8130 says Overhauled In Accordance With Procedure: AS28-031R14.

Aeromotors now charges $450 to overhaul the Dukes pump. Got mine back on Thursday, put it in. It seems louder than the original pump, but other than that works as advertised.

Since they take a credit card I'd have no issues with them charging up front for a set fee annual. It's not like I'm immediately out that cash, I'm not going to pay that on my statement for 15-20 days. Worst case If they totally screw something up, or don't do the work I can do a chargeback and dispute the charges. It does drive costs higher since LASAR will somehow pass the 3% merchant fee on with higher rates, but it makes everyone happy. LASAR gets semi-immediate cash for operating expenses. The customer doesn't have an immediate cash expenditure and has leverage to dispute the charge.

Yup. M20F with the ModWorks STC. Has all the speed mods and a TCM IO-360-ES. I’ve heard there are two planes with this STC, I don’t know who has the other one.

On TCM engines there is actually a fuel return line that returns unused warm fuel to the tank. It has kind of a radiator effect. I’ve found it lets me cool my CHTs by 10-20F when I have that extra couple PSI.

Looks like I found out the hard way that the Dukes are not rated for continuous use... I had been turning it on during takeoff as it seemed the fuel return was keeping the CHTs a few degrees cooler so I wouldn't pass 400F. Went to start today and the pump went WAH for 1/2 second then nothing. Looks like I'm in the market for a new pump. @teejayevans how's your Aeromotors rebuild holding up?

I have the KLN 89B in my plane. You can find them for like $500 bucks. The thing I don't like about it is that it only has GPS approaches (no VOR, ILS, or DME overlays) and only 1 of the GPS approaches if an airport has multiple. They must still be pretty good GPSs because they go for about $2k. Every so often I keep a lookout on ebay to see if I can grab one for around $1k because I'd probably do that in a heartbeat... more than that I figure I might as well put the money towards a GTN650 since thats my desired end state.

Took off the quick drain, looked like there was a little piece of gasket stuck in the entrance hole. Replaced the o-rings and used a wire brush to clean up all the caked on oil. I could tell there is a lot more resistance from the new o-rings when pulling the drain now. The quick drain o-rings are definitely something that is going on the annual checklist.

Hmm... these guys seem to recommend replacing the rubber seals every 10 years. https://www.mcfarlaneaviation.com/articles/drain-valve-maintenance-tips/content/ I bet if I looked in the logbook I would find that those seals are 20 years old (engine installed in 1998). Just ordered some seals and crush washers, we'll see if I can fix this thing.

Anyone else have a quick drain on their engine? I went to change the oil today, drained out all the oil, changed the filter, started pouring in new oil. Got about 3qts in when I saw that the oil drain was leaking out oil. Guess I need a new one of these. Is this something I can replace myself, or do I need an A&P to sign off on it?

I did some experimenting yesterday on take off, I tried stowing the gear at 70kts instead of 80kts and it seemed easier to get the bar down.

What is the part that is sticking out in the bottom left of the photo? Is that a piece of the tail?

First rule of flight club... don’t talk about the cost of flight club.

I’ve been to 15,500. Performance was so sluggish that I stopped there and didn’t try for 17,500. Maybe I’ll try again in the winter. I use a portable Aerox bottle size M.

@MHemperly was based at VGT. He might have a recommendation. I used Lone Mountain for my pre buy. They are the MSC in Vegas. They seemed OK except they missed that someone wrapped aluminum tape around a hole in the vacuum pump piping that was rubbing on the engine manifold. I also have used Horton Aviation Service when my GPS/HSI connection was acting up. They weren’t able to fix it, I ended up just buying a replacement annunciator that fixed the problem. In your case I’d probably go with Lone Mountain.

I’ve been having the same issue with the non-turbo IO-360-ES. Setting it just above idoe or throwing on the boost pump resolves the issue.

I have a Foreflight Sentry now, seems to work good.