GeeBee

I was an EAA President and we had fly-ins and everybody was insured. Sure it is a giant PIA, but EAA headquarters has a lot of staff. Think about it for a minute what is being proposed and even better, say it out loud. It goes like this: Let's have a giant fly-in where the public can attend. We'll have women and children there all about among experimental and unproven aircraft and we'll have no financial responsibility requirements whatsoever. Sound like a good plan?

I'm still wondering how the EAA can allow anyone to be a part of the fly-in let alone a vendor and not have liability insurance. If that is the case, count me out, forever until it changes.

Actually that P-51 was owned by an old guy who worked for Fokker and helped develop the fire through the propeller cam link. He sold it to a guy who then got wound up in a divorce. It was a Cavalier P-51 and had a well restored airframe before sitting for years over on the west side. The real crime at SJC was tearing down the SJSU Aeronautics facility. It had a primo recip and jet test cells. Shame on everyone involved.

Luggage Works are great bag for an airline pilot, but they are too heavy for a light plane. Mine weighs a ton and since I retired I do not use it. It is built for hell, but too heavy for light aircraft. Costco will warranty their Kirkland bag, but the warranty is null and void if you are a professional crew member. They caught on to the flight attendants scam quite a while ago and modified the terms of the warranty. For the Mooney, I like the TravelPro bags. Well built, light weight and I can fit three medium sized units through the baggage door and in the baggage area of my Ovation. There are a lot of similar units out there but the TravelPro seems more durable and the best thing is there is usually a repair station in most major cities with a good stock of spare wheels, zippers and handles to repair them. I've got two complete sets of TravelPros (one for me and one for my wife) that have been on 5 continents over the past 10 years with only a zipper repair to one. Even more believe it or not, I got it repaired while on a trip to Australia in Sydney. That's service.

FL 400 over Greenland

When I was in college, I had to take an upper division technical writing course. My instructor Professor W.W. Woods. A nice old man, suffered from a stroke, shuffled around with two hearing aids in class. Had a career in the military industrial complex writing. Our assignment done day was, "writing a bad news letter". He described the situation presented to him in real life. He was on the B-58 program. They were behind and decided to do a test flight on New Year's Day. The test pilot showed up late, fresh from the festivities the night before. He plugged in his visor heat and left the helmet face down in the seat. It caught the seat on fire and burned ship #4 to the main wheels. Nothing left. Our assignment was to write the letter and tell the program commanding General, how they lost an B-58 to fire on New Year's Day.

Wait until you fly through it. You think you just jumped to warp speed.

Actually there is some new data suggesting the water vapor expelled is 3 times originally calculated and that the over all water vapor is more on the order of a 10% increase. Sadly, many climate models that predict warming leave out the largest greenhouse gas, water vapor and equally troubling is no one is talking about this event in the media even though the scientific community predicted this warming after the eruption.

Not a spot on my paint after Wet Wingologists East.

I just had Wet Wingologists East do mine. First rate work. Maybe a road trip in your future?

#2 is by the oil cooler. So a baffle leak will create more pronounced issues. Obviously the baffle seals are the first suspect. Also check the seal between the engine and the aluminum baffle itself as well as the positioning of the inter-cylinder baffles which are often installed incorrectly. Finally make sure the probe is accurate.

My #1 is consistently the lowest, #2 is second lowest the rest are all close together.

I can identify with the Yellow Freight. It got that way at my airline. They kept coming back for givebacks while management continued to line their pockets. In my case, management created bankruptcy proof pensions for themselves while at the same time demanding pay cuts. You arrive at the point, and Yellow Freight did where it is no longer salvageable on managements terms and you put the whole thing in Chapter 11 and hope for better management. Believe me, the Teamsters at Yellow did their homework and figured out it was a sow's ear and nothing could make it a silk purse. What many don't realize is large unions hire investment bankers too. They advise them on management's plans and if they are worthy of their members sacrifice's when called upon. In my case we went from Chapter 11 to the best paid pilots and the airline with the highest revenue per seat mile in the world. Same people, same airplanes, same hubs, better management. I hope Yellow can pull it off coming out.

I will tell you what has happened. Today's millennial saw their parents jobs shipped to China, the pensions ransacked and their health care diminished after their parents gave years of loyal and valuable service. There is less loyalty to the company nowadays because the corporations in large numbers have shown no loyalty to their workforce. It makes today's worker very cynical and extremely mercenary.

Right to work cannot overcome Railway Labor Act. If you have sections of a plant that all workers cannot traverse, that is a management failure either in culture or discipline. There is plenty of blame to go around. Remember when autoworkers accused of building crappy cars? Then it turned out that when someone discovered "Drucker", the guy the Japanese used, they also discovered that assembly errors are just as much the fault of management through poor engineering and sloppy tolerances as it was the worker. For many years things were engineered and produced sloppily and the assembly worker was relied upon to "make it right". Since we are being anecdotal here, my late wife was a comptroller at a Ford Assembly plant. The first woman to reach such a position at FoMoCo. The workers were being accused of stealing stereos. They even had the stereos caged with alarms. Then they started not installing the stereos but putting them in the truck for the dealer to hook up. Still they disappeared and management continued to blame the workers. My wife said, "These men have good union jobs, I am dubious of the claim". She took to hiring some PI's who discovered homeless in the train yards were stealing them off cars on the rail cars. How? They put the keys in the car and leave it unlocked when they load the car. Duh!!!! My wife was always cheered on the plant floor for that and many other things. Management is more than profit and loss.

Kumbaya is believing unions protect workers. As I said, take the good with the bad. I should not have to tell you any organization operates in its own interests. Where yours and theirs align, take it. It is a wonderful thing. Where they do not, make alternative arraignments. If you belong to a union make sure they align to yours to the greatest extent possible. If they are insufficient in that pursuit, turn up the heat until they see the light. I did. I helped get over 50% of membership to sign cards to be ready to vote to decertify and replace your union. When the heat got great enough, they capitulated to our demands. Somebody has to watch out and sometimes, it is you.

Exactly and make sure it is a Gates. There are a lot of cheap belts out there, but nothing is made like a Gates.

I did not say "a union". I said "we need people watching out for workers". If you hire illegals you're exploiting workers. If you hire contractors without the proper workmen's comp, you're exploiting workers. Capitalism works when there is a plethora of individual morality which turns into a civic morality. We all have to watch out for each other. How can you be so sure what the union will do? That was the problem. I had the seniority. They gave the seat to someone junior to me. It was an out and out violation of the contract.. The reason why the planner defied the contract was because I took a leave of absence which I was entitled to by the contract and when I returned I was allowed to bid for any seat I had the seniority to hold and he personally was not happy. His personal preferences. do not over ride a contract. Unions will do what is in their self interest and they often sacrifice members individual interests to what they perceive "the greater good". The largest example is defined benefit pension plans.

You take the good with the bad. The bad? I was denied a first officers bid by a vindictive supervisor of manpower planning. He placed a more junior pilot in the seat and I flew flight engineer for a year longer losing a lot of pay. ALPA basically refused to grieve my case saying it was "too small" and in any event I got the seat later. The good? I have had my life and all my crew and passengers lives saved by TCAS twice. In one case it would have been a dead nuts hit caused by an ATC error. Now after PSA 182 and Aeromexico 498 the NTSB wanted a collision avoidance system. The FAA wanted to keep it "in house", that is the computers at ATC warn of collision. ALPA fought hard for and eventually won, TCAS an independent cockpit system that gives real time information independent of ATC. A lot of things you take for granted in the aviation infrastructure are there because of pilots unions especially in the middle the last century. On July 20 my area, heavily wooded suffered severe thunderstorms. A micro bust sent large trees hurtling everywhere including through 3 of my neighbors houses. I have 6 large trees threatening my house right now. As I interview tree companies I always request their liability and workman's comp certificates. A good 50% cannot produce workman's comp coverage and I dismiss them. Now you could say, "We have laws!". Yes we do, so a guy loses his arm on a chainsaw, the employer (who has his office In a pickup truck) declares bankruptcy, pays a fine, maybe gets a year in the county jail but the worker never gets compensated for his loss. So yeah, we still need people watching out for workers and as long as there is greed, always will.

I have had #2 relay go dead on me. Replaced it, all was good again. Usually it is the little diode on the coil that goes bad as the rest of the unit is pretty robust.

Likely servo, if it were AHARS you would have a red X over your AI.

Yes on the IO-550 Continental says, 300 degrees CHT minimum for takeoff, Mooney says 250.

Hail

Scroll down to see the damage. https://aviationsourcenews.com/emergency/delta-air-lines-new-york-bound-767-declares-emergency/

Aviation Consumer was the last "no BS" publication. Now they are going to be pushing the latest "must have" POS like everyone else. Comparing it to another publication niche, guns. Years ago every magazine was screaming I needed a 10mm semi-auto. It was "wunderbar" over the old tried and true 45ACP. THEN I was told, I need a 40 S&W because it was "waaay better" than the 10mm even though there is no ballistic difference between the two out of the barrel or down range. Neither are much different than the ol 45 ACP that still punches bigger holes and deeper penetration than the new kids. Good enough for John Moses Browning in 1904 and Chesty Puller in 1944, good enough for me in 2024. Which is why magazines are going broke. There is nothing new despite their hype. Equally so, we are told by Flying we need a new million dollar Panthera which is really just a Bravo with more gear doors to rig and break. No real discernible performance advantage and for 750K differential I can put up with a few less doors and less oohs and ahh on the ramp..