A64Pilot

I’ve used them on windshields literally decades ago. Have to be careful with them Now I think I’d go with a car headlights restoration kit, but I’d talk to someone at a body shop that’s done many first. On car headlights I’ve had great luck with ultra fine machine polish with my 7” Mikita, only saying that maybe very fine paint polish and a soft rag might be the way to go. Start fine exchanging elbow grease for speed that you get with coarser cuts

Giles 202? I had a 1/4 scale Great Planes, best flying big airplane I ever had. On the Mooney, gently try as much as is realistic to reform the material, knowing that if you try for perfection you’re likely to crack it, paint it and ignore it. But I would spot paint it to prevent corrosion if nothing else. Some things cost way more to fix that it’s worth, this is one of those.

With zero facts to go on, that’s my best WAG too. God, how long does it take to spin from FL 170? I’d hate to hear that Cockpit tape, it would keep me up at night.

I’m not so sure. Years ago an AH-64 was slapped to the ground during gunnery training at Ft Rucker from a down burst, front seater was killed from memory, they were most likely at about a 100’ hover. That was roughly 1987 so I can’t find anything I personally was slapped by a down draft at Ft Stewart and overtorqued the snot out of it to stop the crash. I was maybe 50 foot above the trees. The Maintenance Data Recorder that recorded literally everything showed a sudden about 40 kt crosswind right after I pulled collective until the low RPM audio went off. Both times Thunderstorms were near by

Power drops off pretty slowly when ROP when enriching, but very quickly if LOP. In my opinion I like being well ROP of 100F ROP, I know it’s best power but at low air speeds in a climb it’s going to get hotter than I like. Again an opinion but I think your doing the right thing.

When you replace the screws, I’m a fan of blue Loctite here, do not use red.

As an IA I tell people that the majority of the time that damage that’s in the book is not usually a big deal. It’s damage that isn’t in the book that you need to be concerned with, often you can find it by oversized rivets etc., but the fact it’s not recorded sometimes means that it wasn’t properly repaired. Some damage like a prop strike for example may even mean your better off as most wear items in an engine are replaced in a prop strike inspection, (usually)

It’s several factors, but primarily it’s that our combustion chambers etc are essentially the 100 year old Hemi design. Compounded by the fact that our pistons by Auto standards are huge, which means very large combustion chambers, size matters because the speed the flame front travels is fixed, so more time to completely combust in a large chamber. Then compounded by the huge safety margin required, as in 500F cyl head temp, extremely hot intake air and excessive high oil temp etc., plus the absence of any protection system like a knock sensor etc means a relatively low compression engine has to have excessive octane. IF someone were to build a modern four valve head that allows for a Pentroof combustion chamber and ran smaller cy bores then we would do fine on Auto fuel. To get to four valve engines on motorcycles required liquid cooled heads, I assume that would hold true for Aircraft too. In short Auto engines have continued to evolve tremendously, heck Mazda has or will soon introduce a gasoline, spark ignited Diesel if you can image that, where we literally still fly behind our Grandfathers engines. https://www.mazdausa.com/discover/mazdas-skyactiv-x-breaks-cover#:~:text=The SKYACTIV-X engine uses,completely than in conventional engines. https://www.mazdausa.com/discover/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-compression-ignition-engine

I just installed Starlink at home, the new Gen 3 one, that by the way in certain areas like Fl for instance the hardware is for sale for $299. Sale price is based I believe on areas that have excess capacity. Regular price $499 https://www.starlink.com/us/residential But anyway the average power consumption is supposed to be between 75 and 100W, based I think if it’s heater to melt snow is on. https://www.starlink.com/specifications?spec=4 Gen 3 Starlinks antenna is slightly larger but has no positioning motor, and it doesn’t have the big tripod stand, just a “kickstand” However if you want one for airplane camping look at the mini, I don’t have experience with one, but it’s meant for backpackers and I believe will work off of 12V where standard ones need 120-240 VAC, so you would need an inverter, but the mini you don’t and I think of course it’s about half the power consumption. https://www.starlink.com/specifications?spec=5 I’m on the fence as to buy another for the Motorhome or to put my home one in “Roam” and take it with us. Antenna is real easy to mount, I used the pipe adapter and repurposed my satellite dish mount. ‘According to what I have read on one of the camping forums is if you buy one for residential you can take it to roam and back to residential, roam is $150 a month I think, Residential is $120 a month I think, Roam may be de-prioritized meaning in high traffic areas it may slow down some. You can flip back and forth monthly, or turn it off for several months, then buy a month. All this based on what I have read, no experience yet. However if you buy one initially with the Roam service plan it can’t be changed to Residential, doesn’t seem logical and I don’t know if that’s true or not just what I read. Also if you buy at the sale price it must stay Residential for six months or you will be charged regular price if you take it to Roam. I theorize this is to prevent RVers from having it shipped to Fl then traveling all over with it, thereby beating the “system”

If it was a Baron, pretty sure it has bladders. But many things will deteriorate fuel tank sealer, we used it inside the hopper of the Thrush as a sealant where the Stainless Steel braces etc were inside the fiberglass hopper. Something that crop dusters put inside the tank eats fuel tank sealant over time and it has to be re-sealed every couple of years. I don’t know what they put in the hopper that ate sealant, but something does, and most things crop duster carry is heavily water based. Earlier in the thread I posted a pic from my IA renewal where one bladder manufacturer said the aeromatics significantly reduce the life span of bladders.

I still think it’s going to take significant time, and a fleet of aircraft in the great white north and the heat of Arizona etc., and all other conditions, high altitudes etc. ‘My concern is LL will be outlawed, then we will have no choice, without competition the possibility of price gouging exists, As I understand it George will have no control over pricing. Sometimes it takes odd combinations of environmental conditions, operation techniques etc. for things to surface. I wasn’t flying GA at the time, but the Mobil 1 oil I’m sure passed all FAA required tests and how many airplanes had to run it for how long before problems surfaced? Just to use it as an example.

Couple of things here, from my memory it’s one Lycoming that reduced timing, the angle valve. Supposedly and while it’s logical and “smells” right I can’t quote chapt and verse to prove it, but Lycoming found that one engine could reduce timing by 5 deg and still make the spec power. Lycoming has a history of being conservative with their HP numbers so it’s understandable, but unless 25 was too much timing, unlikely as Lycoming aren’t idiots, then a reduction to 20 will reduce power, so bumping timing will give you more power. But as someone that has built many air cooled race bikes and among other things have played with timing, it’s diminishing returns, meaning that yiu reach a point where cyl head temp increases but very little power of any is achieved, burning race gas detonation just wasn’t an issue like it is on normal fuel. Some say it was for one aircraft manufacturer who had cyl head temp problems, who knows. I think Lycoming was either having temp problems or for reasons of achieving greater reliability they reduced timing by 5 deg, but it’s not applicable for every or even most engines. The current STC’s that have been out for decades have water injection on if your above 400F cyl head temp and or above 25” MP. I don’t know about you, but I don’t cruise above 25” MP, or 400 cyl head temp so for me it’s just for a few minutes in T/O and climb that injection would be on, and those numbers are for Premium Auto fuel, not unleaded Avgas which I strongly suspicion is much more detonation resistant than auto fuel, but running premium auto fuel is attractive to me for several reasons, first the cost of course and second it’s availability.

It most most probably would have been fine, just as putting a knock sensor with modern ignition system would work fine. But here is the problem, pulling timing reduces power, now suddenly you can’t make published / Certified takeoff distances or climb rates etc without reducing useful load. However as I keep bringing up and most seemingly ignore is that with water injection I’m sure both 94 UL and even Premium auto fuel would work and meet power requirements, because it has a Looong history of working. But there is a problem with that too, highly boosted motors would require continuous injection to work, and while I don’t know how much water that would take I feel pretty sure it’s significant, so there goes useful load again, or performance should for example you restrict the high boot to say 5 min or something. For me in my NA engine I believe water injection would be my best bet, having spoken with one fuel cell manufacturer he said that aeromatics significantly affect the life of bladders. In fact he contends that even 100LL has increased aeromatics and has reduced life span of bladders. I think that whatever fuel we end up with will take a few years of actual fleet use for us to truly know what will happen, I’ve been in aircraft testing for most of my life before retiring and can attest that you really don’t know until you field a fleet flown in every kind of weather etc to really know what you have, no lab in the world can fully test every possibility, too many variables, for example not every pilot operates their engine by the book for instance.

ALL old motorcycles / outboard motors etc operated that way. It is inefficient, but who cares because it’s not that much power you need to waste. They had rectifiers not voltage regulators, the rectifier did the same job it does in an alternator, that is converts AC to pulsating DC, but it was also the thing that wasted the excess power into heat. Requirement of more power than you could get from a lighting coil is what tripped the change, boats with trolling motors, RADAR’s, bottom machine etc the same, bike with radios, heated clothing etc. I’m not sure how GE and the other turbine engines deal with using a PMA or PMG in GE’s case but they do and it has a very good reliability, in 16 yrs or so being in units with 56 or so engine I never heard of a PMG failure.

What is the extinguishing agent? As far as I know we have no requirement for an extinguisher, so my opinion is unless it posed some kind of hazard the FAA wouldn’t care.

When you dig into dealing with FAA inspectors like I have in the past you’ll learn that these legal “interpretations” etc are not the law, that is to say they aren’t FAR’s. If your apologetic instead or argumentative and if you get them into the teaching mode that plays to their ego and I’ve seen some get away with murder, while the one that argued about something insignificant has problems with future visits etc. But then neither are AC’s and the FAA tends to try to treat Advisory Circulars as Regulation. The honest truth is as much as we hate to hear this, but it depends, what it depends on is who you are talking too, as often as not during aircraft certification meetings I’ve had with the FAA, they were arguing amongst themselves far more than with me. 99% times out of 100, if you try to honestly comply with a reg that will carry you through, I have never seen one get wrapped around the axle about a honest mistake or a difference in opinion, they have too many Private Pilots that sell tickets or something to worry about somebody that adjusted the timing on a magneto or something because they thought they were allowed to. Timing a Mag is not as complex as changing a tire etc.

1989 I think it was I got my IFR / Commercial in a M20AT. It was a school and their rule was we had to slow to flap speed and get flaps before gear, because they were training Commercial pilots, not Mooney pilots and apparently every airplane except Mooney you get approach flaps first, so that of course really meant you had to start slowing well in advance, but honestly it wasn’t an issue, you just had to be slowed down prior to glide slope intercept or you weren’t going to make the approach. It’s just like landing, get slowed well before the threshold and a Mooney doesn’t float and lands fine, it’s simply a matter of becoming used to a slick airframe is all.

I know on my Mooney just accessing the CB to change it is not a simple operation, perhaps mine is different? However asking a bunch of pilots if they are allowed to accomplish a maintenance task is likely to get a different answer than asking a bunch of maintainers if a pilot is allowed to accomplish the task. Of course then there is the guy who says record it on a piece of paper, then lose the paper after a year too.

We are a CAR 3 airplane, not a FAR 23 airplane, as such we don’t need burn certs, to be perfectly within the regs though we would need a no smoking placard. FAR 23 is more stringent, but even if you really wanted a burn cert it’s easy, just send a small sample to a DER that has that certification they will burn test it and send you a cert. The burn requirements aren’t nearly as stringent as people think, it’s allowed to burn just not aggressively or some similar verbiage. I am not a DER so I’m paraphrasing. I think it may have to self extinguish when the source of ignition is removed too, but really don’t know.

The Military “drone” thing runs costs higher than you might think, years ago the Honeywell TPE-10 engine was put back into production for the Predator B drone (reaper) So I called them as Thrush had built quite a few -10 powered Crop dusters and still built a few with customer supplied engines. I got a price, surprised me as it was higher than a -60 P&W and very few if any would pay more for a Garret than a Pratt. Incidentally we supplied the power levers to General Atomics for the Reaper so I have a good idea how many were being built, and it was a number that was much bigger than I thought. I assume they had a power lever for ground maintenance and of course each ground station got one.

In my opinion, no. My reasoning is it can’t be accomplished by “simple means” but then my opinion carries no weight.

Unless you have a gull wing door or something, I see no need to do anything if the door “pops”. I’d probably fly to the nearest airport, land and shut it myself. It doesn’t affect anything, just is noisy is all. Now the Gull wings ones have I believe been torn off, but the one incident I read about it changed nothing about how the airplane flew. Personally I never let anyone touch the door or gear switch but me, even if they are senior in experience.

I’ve wondered that myself as a PMG anyway like used on the GE T-700 series is small, light, simple and I never heard of one fail. It’s just too easy, if it were me they would replace the Mag, but the rest of the components would be individually mounted. The GE PMG had three phases, one powered the engine ECU, the second powered the Ng gauge and the third powered the engine spark igniters, which require huge current, so surely they could power spark plugs at starting RPM? I’m not sure why they called it a generator as it had three phases I believe it made AC power, but the two big 70 KVA AC generators were also called generators eventhough they made AC power and those weren’t permeant magnet. So what makes a thing that produces AC power a generator and not an alternator? Sure why not have bus power as a backup, but with dual independent PMA’s you have the same level of redundancy that dual mags do, or am I missing something? Mag’s of course are powered by PMA’s just may not be called that. Solid state electronic ignition has orders of magnitudes more reliability than point ignition as demonstrated by millions of automobiles running around with then for the last 50 years, so wouldn’t it seem logical that dual independent ones would be even more reliable?

I think as automation and modern “glass” gets better and better there is a tendency to over rely on them, and to not question that maybe it’s doing something you didn’t want it too. Yes I understand these events were most likely human factors failures and the automation was doing exactly what it was told, the human mis-programmed it, but I think pilots are more and more becoming systems managers and less and less pilots and becoming more and more reliant on automation and more accept its infallibility. They are much less likely to back up the systems and monitor MDA etc. I bet there is more chatter in the cockpit on approach and not the level of seriousness there was back when approaches were hand flown. Yes I know automation is safer etc., just think we should have an inherent mis trust of it, the same as I do when someone else is flying, no different. I used to do a LOT of cave diving, of course I used a deco computer for deco stops etc. It was a Shearwater Predator, probably the best there was. The attached photo is from the beginning of its manual, I remember it evertime for instance I let Elon drive our Tesla, sure it’s been perfect so far, but I’m sure one day it will try to pull out in front of a train or something, so I use it, but don’t really trust it.

Not at all. I was passed over for promotion and “Retired”. It was however self inflicted as I wanted to Retire at 20 the whole time, that gives you enough time to build a second Career. You can’t really live on Military Retirement, not very well anyway. I was forced into the Longbow transition and that incurred a service obligation of several years, for those familiar with the Military Promotion process I did not take a DA photo, nor did I review my records for promotion so no way was I going to be promoted, you get looked at twice, then processed out, but as I was over 20 I Retired, more than you would think get passed over and get nothing. Seeing as how the Army passed me over that negated the obligation for Longbow.