EricJ

I raced Porsches with my Ford Focus. The Porsches lost. Yes, it's a joke. This was a DE session, not an actual race, and I think they were on street tires and I was on something stickier. Was still fun and I still gave them a lot of crap about it. I have legit beat Porsches in a Ford Taurus, though. Multiple times.

Have you looked at the oil pressure and oil temperature traces and rpm together on the engine monitor data? I'm still wondering if something wasn't assembled properly in the engine and you're losing pressure to the prop. You indicated it correlates to temperature, and viscosity is also proportional to temperature, so you may have an internal leak somewhere when it's hot, or it isn't keeping pressure up sufficiently anyway. Since you have the engine monitor in now, it may help sort out the details of what's happening at any given moment.

There are backup generator installations that go on the vacuum pump pad. They'll power a lot more than just an E-mag.

I remember when people talked that way about the guys running Enron. Or Bernie Ebbers. Or...

BTW, regarding Kelly Aerospace and dual mags, scroll to the bottom of this page. It sez they are making new ones: http://kellyaerospace.com/airplane-engine-products/aircraft-magneto/

Kelly Aerospace will sell you a new one or overhaul your old one.

I tried the stick-on thingies on the inside of a diving mask back when I did that stuff. Those were pretty disappointing as well. I seem to recall a dive when they were kinda just sloshing around in the mask, and other dives where they'd move around and be in random spots inside the mask. I used sunglasses with the reader built-in for a few years but for me it was only a couple years until my distant vision changed enough that I needed a full prescription, and then I just got prescription sunglasses. That's been very good for me ever since.

Do you still have the captive fastener that's riveted to the cowl flap? If so, that may need to be changed if it isn't holding the bolts in place. There should be a thin, smooth washer between the bolt head and hinge that allows the bolt to move in the joint with minimal friction to the bolt head. Also, make sure that the bushing is really isolating the hinge from the bolt, i.e., there's not sufficient gap that the hinge gets between the bushing and bolt and grabs the bolt. Mine nearly sawed through the bushing and the bolt before I decided there was too much play and changed it.

Maxwell's website is also changing and looking a lot more factory-like. It looks like the publications, SIs, SBs, etc., are moving there but aren't quite up yet.

That's way different from here. Here the A&P is universal (other than separation into Airframe and Powerplant ratings), and even covers helicopters, airliners, jets, recip, radial, turbine, etc., etc. There is apparently talk to change that, but I kinda hope they don't.

The oral questions are separated into categories, you'll just do the general oral with whichever rating you're trying to get, A or P or both. You can't get either without passing the general exams. So, by my count, there are three orals, three writtens, and three practicals. There are general practical tasks as well; things like crimping electrical connectors, flaring tube fittings, doing a weight-and-balance calculation, or cleaning and corrosion treatment of metals, etc., etc. I think safety wiring is covered in generals as well, as well as hardware, alloys, physics, etc. The ones I remember doing were cleaning surface corrosion off of a janky piece of sheetmetal from an old Bonanza, and repairing electrical terminals and tying the bundle with wax lacing. I see now they're letting people just tie the bundle with zip ties. I feel cheated. So nine exams by my count. There are very good study guides out there, though, but it's a lot of work to go through everything and be prepared.

I was gonna say, these are Google balloons (loon.com is an alphabet company, i.e., part of Google), and they've been showing up on flightradar24 for a long time, they're just not always noticed. They're quite large at altitude, and if it is a clear day and one is down-sun from you, it's not unusual to be able to see them from the ground with the naked eye. I've seen a few of them just by knowing where to look in the right conditions. They do a pretty good job of navigating them, changing altitude to exploit the winds to put them where they want them. It's been interesting to see where they launch them and where they go.

Have your IA show you the ones that he really wants off, and next year only do those. There's really nothing to see behind most of them. The ones around control surface hardware, landing gear parts, etc., probably should come off, but past that it's kind of the IA's preference. I have the multi-piece, factory belly and that takes most of the time and effort, and it's still really not that bad. As others have mentioned, once you've done it a couple of times you get in the groove and it goes reasonably easy, especially if you are careful not to over torque the screws when you put them back and maybe lube them a little. My airplane is essentially all stainless screws, plus I live in AZ, so I mostly just have to be careful to not strip the heads and not over torque them. Makes the next year go reasonably smoothly.

I live in AZ and carry a B-Kool when it is hot out. It only gets used on the ground and at low altitude. Usually descending through about 3000-4000 ft it'll start getting warm and get turned on, and I'm usually on the ground not long after that. So the amount of time it's actually on is not very much on a typical flight. While the B-Kool is a little bit of a pita (but not too much), it does mean I don't have the weight or complexity of an a/c system for most of the year when I don't need it.

I don't think there'd be an issue putting a cushion on that adel clamp.