EricJ

I'm waiting for somebody on the continent to say that was a hundred-dollar hamburger run.

I think I was #8 on the list a week or so ago, but she said a bunch just came open as a result of some of the work getting done. I got on the list at the end of January. I've no idea what the expectations are going forward, but the shelter you have should make the wait pretty easy, I'd think.

Nice! I got my hangar and access pass at DVT today and had a small issue with the hangar door. The maintenance guy came by and sorted it out and asked what would be going in there, and I told him a Mooney. He said, "Yeah, there's a lot of new Mooneys coming in here lately!" So word is getting out.

I grew up hearing a crescent wrench referred to as a "Mexican metric wrench". Now and then I take a crack at learning Spanish, since I live in the southwest, and I was amused to learn that the Spanish word for "crescent wrench" is "llave inglesa", or "English Wrench". Touche'.

Can I ask who did the work? I may need some stuff done before too long.

Pro race teams have been using vinyl/wraps for a long time. It's easy to print sponsors/logos in the wrap so that it's smooth. I wrapped a hood on one of my cars with the number printed on it, and it was pretty cool. For amateur racers wraps can be a pain because they don't hold up well to contact. If you rub tires with somebody on a paint job the black donut will clean up pretty well, but a wrap gets pretty much destroyed. Pro teams just re-wrap it, anyway.

I'm planning on getting my access card this week as well for an open spot until I bubble up on the hangar list (been on since Feb). When you get your access pass just ask them what to call that area on the radio. I've only ever flown out of DVT once, in a buddy's Swift, so I have to figure this airport out, too. Even in just that one flight I noticed a few things that are done differently.

You can do a "reverse dip" stick, too, where you put the end of the stick just touching the top of the fuel and measure to the bottom of the filler neck. This prevents putting the stick into the fuel very much and also avoids touching the bottom of the tank (and potentially any sealant areas). This may not work great at night, or in low light, though.

That was probably a different kind of smoke entirely.

Probably just a barrier to minimize rock chip damage.

Communication is everything. Being ambiguous makes it difficult for a student to figure out what you're trying to convey. My most recent experience with this was in tail-wheel training learning wheel landings (on the main gear) where the instructor kept telling me to "hold it off as long as possible", which to me means keep bringing the nose up which results in a three-point, not a wheel landing. It made it take longer and added some unnecessary frustration until I figured out what he meant, which wasn't what he was saying.

Pretty sure that's just to keep you from getting your noggin thumped by a rotor blade. This is kind of fun.

I think it allows a lot of power to be put into lifting with a smaller helicopter. The elimination of the tail rotor is a safety feature when operating in close quarters (like dipping for firefighing, etc.). Seems to solve some problems. The HH-43 Huskies were around in the 1950s, so it's not a new design. I seem to remember them being described as two helicopters flying in close formation.

The alternator will last a lot longer if it has cooling air. How much is a question, I suppose.

Iridium is a practical option but the data rate to a handset is limited (128kbps) and the service is expensive. Getting a reliable data connection with reasonable throughput to a small GA airplane is not going to be easy. I can get you a free 2kbps satellite downlink-only for the next couple of weeks or so, but that's not very useful, either.

To be fair they both changed their construction technologies for comparable airplanes at roughly the same time (as did most companies in the business at the time). Piper did, however, keep building fabric-covered airplanes up to about 1994.

I've spent a fair amount of time watching examples of those haul and dump water buckets on forest fires. Very cool to watch. When I was a kid my step-dad was stationed at Bergstrom AFB, TX, (which is the Austin airport now), and they had some of these flying around at the time:

It seems like everybody around here uses chains, including the place I rent from, and I just wince tying down with them, and I double-wince when I see airplanes chained loosely. Straps or ropes will stretch a bit and absorb some of the energy if the airplane gets blown around a bit, but a loosely chained airplane just gets all of the energy in an impulse to the tiedown when it hits the end of the chain slack. I'm glad the chain broke in your case (rather than damaging the airplane), but I shudder a bit every time I think of an airplane hitting the end of the chain slack in a storm. I suspect that sort of thing is what can make wing tank sealant crack in a Mooney.

The usual warning I hear about ratchet straps is that the end hooks can straighten out under load and basically let go, or just fall out if they get shaken too much. I think Sporty's or someplace sells them with heavy-duty ends with carabiner-style keepers.

Absolutely. Condensers are often electrolytic capacitors which degrade with age, even on a shelf. Even if a mag rebuilder installs never-used capacitors, they can be bad from shelf life. I suspect most don't test them before install. The airplane I'm (still) attempting to buy only had 30 hours on the dual mag since it was rebuilt but it turned out to be bad and had to be sent off again. I suspect that may have been crappy condensers, but the second rebuilder took care of whatever it was as the power loss was no longer there.

Especially if it's a 400. Zooooooommmm...

The MZeroA guy had his C172 repainted and a partial wrap applied. It looks pretty good! They did a video covering it.

It seems pretty clear that it's ignition noise, but it can come from any of the plugs or leads, not just the magnetos. A loose lead or a damaged lead shield, or even a faulty plug could do this.

Thanks for the effort on this! I'd be interested in the link.