afward

Ha, yeah. That's one thing I didn't get: The ride from FLL... Edison was so swamped with work the day I arrived he wasn't able to get away. Either way, I'm sure he will do a great job addressing that minor leak you have for a very reasonable price. Banyan does have a very impressive(ly expensive to operate) FBO over there. And to be fair, Stevo's videos really don't do it justice; it is really nice. The pilot shop was pretty cool, too, though I'm usually still an "order it online" type for that stuff.

So my plane is now home with freshly resealed fuel tanks. I cannot express how strange it is to sit in the plane in the hangar and _not_ smell fuel. It's like a totally different machine! I called Edison @ Wet-Wingologists East on about the 25th of January and was surprised to find he had an opening for February. We flew the plane down the following week, left it with Banyan (per Edison's instructions), and spent a few days on Miami Beach (not my style, but still nice) before flying back commercially. Over the next month, I called for status several times to find that Edison's sealant supplier had him back-ordered. He didn't actually open the tanks until the first weekend in March, but once he did... Oh boy... Apparently whoever did the last reseal wasn't fully knowledgeable in all the procedures required... There were multiple issues found. Edison explained each one and how he planned to address them. All are now remediated or fixed (replaced) outright. This did add some cost to the overall bill, but I think it was a reasonable increase based on what I have seen. The one thing I would say is a negative: When the tanks are refilled, the fuel comes from the Banyan full service truck, and is not covered by the cost of the reseal job. I was not prepared for the total bill there as they are _very_ proud of their fuel delivery service. My fault, though, because I didn't check prices before calling to pay the bill. Suffice it to say, I don't intend to refill bone-dry tanks to full there anytime soon. I'm really happy with the work Edison did. He's really a great guy and really cares about getting the job done right and taking care of his clients. I'll recommend him to anyone that needs tank seal work done on their Mooney. Now for the (funny?) annoying part: While the plane was to be down anyway, I had the fuel system / fuel injectors cleaned again by the mechanic Edison recommended, Manny. Manny is also great, and took care of it very timely and at a reasonable cost. The one caveat is that the plane didn't have any fuel on board at the time Manny did the work, so no leak tests could be performed. OK, no problem, I'll let you know when we get to that point. Guess what I forgot to do? So FXE has maybe two gallons on the ground it didn't previously. Manny took time away from whatever he was doing last Saturday to come address the issue (fuel bowl o-ring not installed correctly) and finish the leak checks. That cost me two hours on what turned out to be an all-day adventure (I'll share the rest elsewhere), but it's really fantastic that I was able to get going that day rather than have to stay the weekend.

I've been fighting this problem for months. After (your A&P is done) cleaning the nozzles and the ports they go into, (the A&P should) check the fuel bowl (bottom of selector; be careful putting the o-ring back on), inline filter (just forward of fuel pump; from a SB, you may not have it), and finger screen (behind fuel inlet on fuel servo) for debris. Check inside the finger screen chamber to make sure it isn't full (mine was so full of rust and "gunk" that the finger screen wouldn't come out without a pretty good tug). Check the age of the fuel lines, if 5-7 years or older, they probably should be replaced. I'm told flushing the fuel divider's hard lines with a couple gallons of fuel every annual can make a difference on the -A1A engines, so you might try that (I have not at this point; didn't know about it until pretty recently). Another possibility: Are your fuel tanks leaking due to failing sealant? That seems to have been the cause of my problems (much to my pocketbook's chagrin).

@DonMuncy I'll have to second @Tx_Aggie's comment... I bought mine from @Salvo last August and have been quite happy with it.

Realistically, a receiver would only need to be able to pick out the timestamp and location (or tower Id to look up in a database) out of the noise. 20W or so can carry a really long way if you don't need a lot of signal to noise margin. The big problem with using cell towers is the frequency range required: The bands start at 617 MHz and go past 24.25 GHz. Not gonna be a viable option for most light planes (unless someone can figure out how to bend the laws of physics). We already have a good option: FM, TV, and VOR all have identifiers built into the signals, and they all transmit with plenty of power to reach many miles at altitude. The only downside is one might want multiple antennas so direction and precise frequency can be determined (mitigating it is the size: a fractal antenna covering the whole range would only be about 6"x6").

Thanks Anthony! That's a crazy picture... Far worse than mine was. That said, it's amazing how much better the engine runs with the replacement fuel servo (and a fresh cleaning of the nozzles ); Starts right up, idles smoothly & at much lower RPM, builds good power more smoothly, and shuts down cleanly. I've got a bit over a month before the tanks are done... I'll report back on this thread with results after I've had the plane back for a few flights.

The socket itself is visibly clean (at least it was last time; I'm the one that put them back in, under supervision of course). The ports did have what looked like anti-seize around them, which I cleaned as best I could. Related to that, the next flight was to Wet-Wingologists... Everything was good, except it was touchy to lean: setting a target LOP took some back and forth before it settled just below peak with a 25F spread. I'll probably ask for the flow divider, steel lines, nozzles, and ports to be cleaned while the tanks are being resealed

Haha, thanks Anthony! I don't have any pictures, but my IA is certain the dark globs are NOT from rubber hoses. Per his assessment, it looks just like one would expect sealant to look. Basically, aside from the rust in the fuel servo, all the contaminant we've found has been a very dark grey blobs, no large particles (looks like it could be very small particles in solution), and very sticky. In the ultrasonic cleaner it comes out as just a dark cloud.

That... sounds waaay too familiar. Now I'm even more glad we replaced the whole servo! I will note the new one took to idling at ~700 rpm quite easily and it actually shuts down properly when I pull the mixture. Bonus? I just snagged the last reseal slot at Wet Wingologists for February, so I'll have a PIREP on them in a bit over a month... If I'm still having problems after that I'll be off to Maxwell to get the remaining hoses old replaced.

Y'know, I thought of that... There for a little while I was getting some crud out, but looking at the JPI data I think the problem started before then and I've not gotten any crud out in the last few months... There is a seep in one tank and a slow drip in the other when more than half full. I am scheduled with Weep-No-More, but it's gonna be a while and I'd really like to have a reliable plane before then (next year)...

This is killing my IA and I... My IO-360-A1A seems to clog injector nozzles every couple flights. We pulled the screen after the fuel pump and cleaned it, overhauled the fuel divider, replaced the throttle body & replaced the fuel line to the flow divider, and cleaned the flow divider. Flew it yesterday for about 20 minutes, and today all the nozzles were blocked (only one even had light showing through). We're at wit's end... A few details: The grit in the inline screen was lighter colored while the "globs" in the nozzles and flow divider have all been very dark. The nozzles feel "sticky" when removed for cleaning. Anti-seize was used on the nozzles after the first cleaning, but has since been cleaned out of the ports' threads. The old throttle body had rust in the inlet chamber and on the filter, and the spring was stuck in some unidentified "gunk" at the bottom. We didn't know how bad the rust was so we replaced it outright. The only parts on the metered side of the throttle body that haven't been cleaned or replaced/overhauled are the lines from the divider to the nozzles. Those are next for cleaning if cleaning all the nozzles doesn't work today. Thoughts? Ideas?

Funny enough, though I'm not an EE or radio guy I've previously looked into doing this. Fractal antennas for ultra wideband coverage, FM & TV tower database with auto-ID (via RDS / ATSC header decode), VOR reception with auto-ID, Doppler calculations to aid in vector determination (and ultimately 3d position determination), etc... SDR receivers would be required to make it work. Interesting ideas, but ultimately I decided I didn't want to build a whole navigator. One issue I thought of is frequency stability of the broadcast media antennas... For that I figured I'd use three antennas and use differential phase to determine actual transmitted frequency and bearing to source. Not sure that would've worked without antennas very widely separated, though. That said, it would be interesting to see a navigator that supports multiple position sources... then it would make sense to work on INS and terrestrial-broadcast position sources. @EricJ probably has already thought of all this, though if not I'm good with the ideas being stolen.

Maybe? It's really not something I'm interested in doing myself.

I'm case anyone wants it, I have another that is in rough shape. If not, it's going out in the bin in a couple weeks. Was working when removed. Make an offer.

I have a CI 156 in "good" condition as removed... I replaced it with a CI 196 before realizing the actual problem (radio issues + usb charger noise). PM me an offer?

We did a gear swing and everything appeared to be OK. Didn't check the over-center preloads though. Not sure how they would be affected...

Well, we got them on. Taking the donuts off showed us the parts themselves don't line up quite right (by about 1.25mm, upon closer inspection). To get it back together we put the donuts back on, lined everything up as well as we could, put pressure on the front of the wheel, then used a large punch & small hammer to tap the shaft into position (coming in from _above_ the plate and placing the punch against the inner surface of the shaft). Not pretty, but it worked. We did consider taking out the lower swing arm bolts, but quickly realized that would merely move the alignment problem to a position with less leverage. Either way, it's now done and I'm excited to see the difference. Now for the remaining items on the list...

That makes waaaay too much sense... No wonder we didn't think of it already.

Unfortunately, it's not the retaining bolt holes not lining up... I can't get the shaft with the inner bolt holes (and the donuts) to line up with the hole in the bottom of the plate it's supposed to go into. That said... If my IA has a large enough c-clamp and we can fashion an appropriate set of spacers, I bet we can get it that way... I'll have to check with him on that.

The plane is down for a separate issue, so I figured I'd replace the MLG donuts yesterday. We're using the "aircraft weight" method. The right main appears to align well with the new donuts installed (still need to compress), but the left main is giving us fits... When removing the retaining screw, we noticed the shaft did not drop as we removed weight like the right side did. A few firm impacts to the wheel freed it up so we could remove the old donuts. Trying to put everything back in place, we found that the shaft the donuts are on does not rotate forward enough to align with the hole at the top (hits about 1/4" aft of where it should). Any ideas on how to address that and/or what the problem is? I forgot to take photos last night; It was late and I was pretty much "done" when I left. Hopefully the description is enough...

21 gph of diesel (roughly the same weight as JetA) and 400 hp works out to a BSFC of .350 lb/hp-hr. That's pretty much in-range (slightly high) for a modern diesel, so I don't doubt the numbers are correct (or at least reasonably close). By comparison, your 310 hp engine has a BSFC of .555 lb/hp-hr at full power (std conditions). Turns out using fuel to cool the cylinders is quite inefficient... Compression ratio also has a massive role to play there.

I think Elliot Seguin nailed it: To get a from-scratch project to that level of completion requires a personality that is very independent and ignores the nay-sayers. To have it be successful requires a balanced approach of knowing to heed the nay-sayers' advice. The implication of course being that Peter doesn't have enough of the latter.

In fairness to Peter, he did accelerate well beyond his stated rotation speed before yanking it off the ground, almost as if the pitch trim was set too nose-down. The ground-effect tests haven't taken that much runway to lift off. That said, I only saw 420' AGL max (early in the "base->final" turn). The overheat was likely due to having the scoop closed, which is a "WTF?!" kind of decision to me... That's the understatement of the whole project, sadly.

@Hank good point! Here's Peter's post: And one from someone with access to the tower cams: Enjoy!

Whelp, it flew. I imagine Peter needs to buy a new pair of underwear after that first wing drop and subsequent oscillations, but otherwise he's safely back on the ground with an undamaged prototype. BT has more colorful commentary...