A64Pilot

If you’re uncomfortable doing that often you can take them to a shop that rebuilds alternators, starters etc. They still exist but are going the way of shoe and TV repair shops. In Fl we tell them it’s for our Airboat, gives them plausible deniability

I insured my airplane for what I paid for it, just as the Pandemic was winding down, within about a year I was underinsured, now I think I may be a little over insured, but probably not when you factor in the 20% of so of transitory inflation.

I witnessed an older guy that insured his Maule for what he had paid for it years ago and just kept renewing the insurance. One day he ground looped or something collapsing a gear. No expensive damage and Maule had the parts in stock, and Maule parts are cheap. Easy fix, so he turned it into insurance expecting them of course to pay for it to be fixed, that is why he had been paying for it all those years. Insurance wrote him a check and sold his airplane for more than they wrote the check for, I know because I know who bought it, who repaired it and the original owner bought it from him, after of course having to put quite a lot of his own money into the amount insurance gave him. He isn’t insured now. My advice is to insure it for what you could live with getting for it, forget what somebody says it’s worth, because that number is variable based of course on current market, that by the way I believe is softer than it was just a few years ago

No, your missing the point. What you’re saying is true. But none of that explains the free dissemination to the general public about your where abouts or your activities. My “beef” is the US government freely disbursing what I consider an invasion of privacy and could well be unsafe as in anyone wishing me or mine harm know where I am, and that I won’t be home etc. Like I said there would be a huge outcry if the Government distributed tracking data about your automobile, why is it different for my aircraft? I used to overfly Atl from S to N or vice versa quite often VFR, going directly over the center, perhaps it was due to my heading nearly due N or S?

Fl openly admits it, what bothers me is they use Flight Aware, why that bothers me is that isn’t just Government source, but bunches of “nuts” that build ADSB receivers out of Rasberry Pi’s and then upload the data to Flight Aware and I believe Flight Aware gives them a free subscription to something, unsure as to what. Imagine if you will the outcry if a bunch of “nuts” built license plate readers and uploaded the data for everyone to see on the internet? ADSB the way it’s being disseminated is a HUGE invasion of privacy, one that I can’t fathom why it’s allowed

If what you say is true, then the gear collapse on J bar Mooney’s have nothing to do with the locks and there is no need to replace a worn lock. It’s a rigging, not a worn lock problem. If an over center mechanism is over centered enough then a force attempting to collapse the system just tries to force the system further over center. I don’t know if our gear is that far over center or not. I suspect it may not be or there wouldn’t be an issue with J bar down locks, and I believe there is. I believe your first two sentences in the above quote to be correct. On edit, if something didn’t prevent the actuator from being back driven, then it could back off the pressure holding the gear over centered, once past center it will of course collapse bending rods to do so.

I think the NBS works both ways, it seems if it breaks nothing can get the gear down, so it’s used it seems in both directions

That’s been my understanding too, sort of a mechanical Chinese finger trap, free running in one direction, but maybe that’s incorrect? But IF the rest of the retract system is very similar and the J bar requires a down lock to keep from collapsing, wouldn’t the electrical system also require one? If not, why not? I’m not disregarding the overcenter mechanism / springs in this, I think they play a large part as the tubing itself clearly isn’t up to the task in compression all by itself, but it seems that you need both, the overcenter plus something that locks the movement of the tubing. The gear need that spring pressure to keep from collapsing it seems. IF the actuator didn’t have something that locked it in place then that spring pressure could be lost? Again, I’m not stating this as fact, many times I’ve come up with what seems to be logical theories only to find they were way off base because I didn't have all the data, an assumption got me.

I don’t know, good question. It may be a one way clutch like a sprag clutch, allowing free movement in one direction. I’m guessing that the manual gear system and electric system differ primarily in that one is manual and the other has a linear actuator. The manual requires a down lock of the gear can collapse, we know that, so I’m postulating that the electric system requires a similar lock, but ALL this is pure speculation on my part.

Another thought, IF there were occasional shock loads feeding back into the system, like say crosswind landings as @Shadrach has brought up, and the no back spring is what’s absorbing those shocks, that may eventually lead to a no back spring failure? That force is going somewhere.

On the Mooney, if we accept both electric and manual systems have something that functions similarly to down locks, the difference is that instead of being at the gears they are at the actuating end, meaning of course that there are flexible tubes between the lock and the gear. IF there was an excessive force acting on the gear, and the down lock didn’t fail, then the tube is going to bend. That’s pure speculation with nothing but speculation to back it up, but I’ve heard of a couple of mysterious bent actuating rods on this forum. I say mysterious as there isn’t any smoking gun, but something is causing it. Another speculation is that rigging wise, it would have to be grossly out of rig to get bent, flexing sure, but a bend of that magnitude? I think one indicator may be what is the position of the springs? If there isn’t excessive clearance, meaning that the gear is in proper position with the bent tube, then in my mind that points to rigging? If it was properly rigged with a straight tube, then it would have to be loose now with a bent tube?

They don’t, our VR’s are really primitive things, no three stage charging, temp compensation or anything else, just dumb 14 or 28V plus or minus all the time. But then we don’t really cycle our batteries in normal use, starting pulls huge current, but it’s such a short time it discharges a healthy battery very little. The short period of time the Ammeter is high shows that, the battery is recharged usually before takeoff. In truth Auto batteries and ours are constantly overcharged, but obviously they tolerate it rather well. Old Army helicopters that had Ni-Cad batteries we adjusted the VR twice yearly, in spring and fall, it wasn’t much difference I think maybe a half a volt, that was their attempt at temperature compensation. Wet cell aircraft batteries use a higher concentration of acid than automobiles do. I assume that a Concorde VRSLAB battery is the same no matter the label, that’s what I’ve been told anyway. My Engineering contact at Concorde was Skip Koss, who I believe pretty much designed their AGM batteries, but I’m nearly certain he has Retired as that was quite a long time ago and he wasn’t young even then. Concorde is a family owned and run business, or was anyway. If your talking to someone with the last name Godber, that’s the family name. Used to be everyone’s Email addresses were first name@lifeline.com, not Concorde.com. I never asked why

Still I tip toe around corners and don’t take them at speed because long ago I was told because there are no down locks that we were susceptible to side loads possibly collapsing a gear. Likely BS, but I figure what do I have to lose by slowing down to turn?

Didn’t know that. But back to the TEL thing, even if you could get it and knew how much to add etc, that’s not a legal fuel. Plus I strongly suspect should California find out your putting lead into fuel they would punish you severely.

If you put a lazy susan on the plate, then you couldn’t hurt the truss, and you could turn as tight as you wanted too. I think you’re onto something. I think you need to get the plate much closer to the ground, you could do that by placing the wheels axles well above the plate as opposed to under it, that would also allow you to pay like 4” pneumatic tires on it so it would roll easily over most anything

One of my aircraft in my first troop, 85-25454, I remember it because it was a Big Block Chevy. Anyway it’s assigned pilot was real concerned because at high torque and airspeed, it was terribly loud, he thought there must be something wrong with the rotor system, turned out that the window over the pilots head was flattened, maybe due to heat, but anyway at high air speeds the rotor wash beat on it like a drum head. On other aircraft a thicker windshield can significantly quieten them, I should imagine it would quieten a Mooney some too.

I like nitrogen, but being and old tech diver I put tri mix in my tires I like 78/0/21 Honestly the whole nitrogen thing in automobile and little airplane tires is silly. Nitrogen is preferred in Oleo struts because it has no moisture (corrosion) but in little airplanes it’s almost never used with seemingly no ill effects. Big airplanes often use it because of the pressures they are looking at. N2 bottles start at 3,000 PSI so if yiu need say 1650 to pre-charge an accumulator it’s easy with an N2 bottle, tougher with a compressor. Other than wasting your money putting N2 in your tires doesn’t hurt anything though.

Try cleaning and gapping the plugs, only time I had real issues starting my old 540 with a D mag that’s all it was.

Took me a minute to figure out what that was, I was trying to figure out how it could be a valve stem. I just remove the valve stem core, but you know with GA sized wheels we are more likely to damage the wheel than ourselves. ‘Not saying don’t be concerned, just I think those big Commercial wheels at the pressures they run likely contain 1000 times the energy.

Now that I think about it, are Commercial valve stems rubber? How could they be cut off if not? I’m pretty sure the ones we had on the helicopter were metal. We had tubeless tires so the valve stem was mounted into the wheel half and sealed with O-rings, had a nut on the outside

We had a Blackhawk mechanic take a tailwheel apart with it inflated, she was hurt but not real bad. I always thought she must have been stupid because those last few bolts had to be tough to remove with I think 150 PSI pushing on them, I don’t know how many square inches a Black hawk tailwheel half is but whatever it is, multiply it by 150 to get the force in pounds, big number whatever it is. Commercial aircraft tires and wheels are huge of course and I think they carry about 200 PSI? Truck etc split rings are different, there it’s a literal ring that is pried off of the wheel, I don’t think it’s possible to pry one off of an inflated tire. Their danger comes from inflation blowing one that wasn’t seated off. Old Army trucks had them, when they changed a tire in the motor pool the tire had to go in a cage and everyone had to leave the building, it was inflated from outside. Never heard of one blowing off, but they had everyone afraid of them

Maybe I’m the only one, but I took off in a C-152 in Tx on a very hot day on one mag, yes it was a Dog. I’ve never done it again, called one trial learning Anyway that was a C-152 with full fuel mid day, Tx summer and it did fly, barely, but that was of course on only one Mag, so it lost one plug on all cylinders. In my opinion if it’s worth anything that one plug on a six cyl engine just isn’t enough to cause what I saw on that video, and in truth the pilot should have aborted takeoff because he knew something was wrong before he pulled it off the ground, and he didn’t need any kind of engine monitor, even on a smooth running six, the complete loss of a cylinder will be noticed on a Mag check so I assume either he didn’t know how to do a Mag check, didn’t do one, or more likely just thought one was fouled and it will clean itself off soon, that was I guess his first warning, second was it not accelerating normally. I see a LOT of incorrectly done Mag checks, usually done at taxi because they are in a hurry. Ref flaps, many don’t use flaps for takeoff, I even had the instructor next door tell me I shouldn’t. His point was she will climb better with no flap, and he’s correct. My answer was the POH calls for their use. Why was that takeoff recorded? Do they have some kind of automated camera that tracks and records every takeoff?

On Hartzell spinner screws I think they are “special” if memory serves take a look at one, the screw threads stop about 1/8” of an inch before the bottom of the screw’s head. Regular screws the threads go all of the way to the screw head. I think the Hartzell spinner screws are structural screws and not regular screws. This is from memory and may be wrong, and I don’t know if McCauley screws are different than just regular panel screws or not.

The self locking comes from the nut plate, not the screw. Forgive me, but self locking is a little overrated if you will, for instance most of our engines are put together without self locking fasteners for instance. Proper torque and not self locking is what as an example holds the wheels on our cars. My bet is someone just missed tightening that screw on installation, but if for some reason I were concerned about the nut plates having lost their self locking, which does happen from use, I’d put a drop of blue Loctite on the screws instead of replacing all the nut plates, because I’m lazy. I think our aircraft predate Loctite or we would see it required on some locations. Just my opinion.

It’s not, years ago the Dr that gave us the class on hearing loss that told us about the radio being loud in the morning told us that the reason why was the little hairs in our inner ear that sound moves to make us hear get knocked flat if you will by loud noise so our hearing is impaired temporarily. Over night they don’t experience any loud noises while we sleep and they stand back up, that’s why the radio in the car is too loud in the morning, but also tinnitus can be caused by these hairs being knocked down. That’s why our ears “ring” from experiencing really loud noises like gun fire, explosions etc. Hearing loss comes from these hairs being knocked down so often that they just stay down eventually, and honestly age plays into it as well, often old people who never experienced loud noises get hearing loss but of course loud noise exposure makes it worse, so you young guys are wearing hearing protection now so one day you can hear your Grandkids.