A64Pilot

I was over water exporting an Aircraft to Costa Rica and had my Garmin 396 do that, Took me awhile to figure it out. I couldn’t even turn it off, so I took out my 296 backup and it worked. ‘I had to remove and reinstall the battery in the 396 to get it to work again. ‘I used it for years and it never did that again

Ground is through the engine block, but as the starter is the highest amp load there is, there is logic to ground the block through the starter. Have to connect the ground somewhere, why not there? Grounds are most often the biggest electrical issue. ‘Funny story, when the Chrysler K car first came out, a great many of them were experiencing CV joint failure, and no cause could be determined, however after a good bit of research a common thing was found with all of them, they were all produced on the same work shift. ‘Chrysler spent millions on warranty work and determining cause of failure. Anyway the same worker wasn’t torquing the engine ground, so when the engine was started, ground was through the CV joint, this was arcing the balls in the joint which of course caused them to wear fast, and the wear was eradicating the arc spots so cause wasn’t apparent. So, grounding the starter may be a pretty good thing.

One wonders if that would work for a case or two of oil. I like Spruce, Lord knows they serve a need, but $12 shipping for a position light bulb is tough to swallow, I guess I need to try the $250 thing, just build up the wish list first

I’m not disbelieving you guys, but two questions, first carb heat is the simplest thing to rig, nothings easier how could you possibly mess that up? Secondly, why would anyone intentionally disable carb heat? Then how do you stay in business doing that, surely the first off airport landing has you being sued, and there is no way you could defend that, I’m not believing Mooney published anything saying carb heat is optional. ‘Then why disable it? there is absolutely nothing to be gained from doing so, and a whole lot to lose. Back in the day when airplanes with C-85’s etc were used for training and rental, there were a great many mixture controls disabled and I can understand that, but carb heat?

No, that’s water emulsified in the oil. Can only come from moisture of fuel being burnt, so it’s not as much water as it may look like. ‘But I’ve never seen it in an airplane

I was based out of KABY so I would fly up to KFFC myself. ‘I guess what I need to do ideally is develop a list of common hardware required and just make a one time $500 buy

You could do it, first it’s not a spray bottle. it’s a squeeze bottle, I assume like a plastic ketchup bottle but I’d want a glove on, and would it shed ice? People that have ferried Maules to Australia via Hawaii have duct taped a couple bags of lead shot onto the engine cowling to stay within CG with the back full of fuel. ‘Once fuel is transferred from the back, you open the window and cut the bags of lead with a knife to let the shot drain out. So sticking your arm out of a window is not unheard of, but it is unusual I guess. However if you really do keep this as a back up plan, I think it ought to be practiced with just water, maybe start with an empty bottle to make sure you could hold on to it. Maybe even put a dummy cord on it so it’s still attached to your wrist if the air pulls it out of your hand? Army Rangers attach every thing to them with parachute cord, call it dummy cords, that way they can’t lose anything running through the woods and crawling under wire etc. First start with just your hand to see how well that works? ‘I’ll just stay out if icing myself

They are bad, but there are different conditions of “bad”, as an opinion. Meaning that if you had no issues I wouldn’t ground the airplane and change them, but would order them and put them on the shelf for the next scheduled maintenance. Mounts go bad in different ways, some soften up, and a lot of times that’s due to a oil leak, oil will eat rubber pretty quick. But often they sag and sometimes get hard as a rock and even split. My experience with elastomerics is that they don’t cause vibrations, but may allow them to be felt. ‘In other words I’d replace them, and have the prop balanced, because I believe that constant flexing from vibrations will prematurely wear them

There are times we all do that, but the book answer is that there isn’t a fastener on the aircraft that doesn’t have a torque value, if the manual doesn’t call it out specifically, then you use a general torque chart to determine value. I ran an aircraft assembly line for awhile and the only things that were torqued were those specifically called out on the drawings, and there was only a very few items that were. We were FAA inspected of course and they knew it, so I finally gave up.

I don’t understand what your showing me? All I’m saying is that the aircraft manufacturers manual if there is a discrepancy between it and the engine manufacturers manual, the aircraft manufacturers manual takes precedence. Go to the engine manual if the subject isn’t covered in the Airframe manual. ‘Sometimes a manual is wrong too, if so we are supposed to go through the procedure to correct it, it happens. I’ve seen foot lbs called out where inch lbs was correct. ‘A tire manual may for instance call out 30 to 40 PSI, but if the airframe manual says 50, you should run 50. Some think the components manual would be the best data, and you would think so, but using the tire example, maybe the airframe manufacturer determined that 50 PSI reduced the number of prop strikes

Honest question so don’t be offended, but why have it? It seems so many do, and want it. ‘Is is just me or is getting O2 filled a PIA? I seems you have to fly to and from major cities and frequent the fancy FBO’s to get fills, and then pay their price, then the maintenance issue. A portable, even if you use it a lot seems to be so much easier.

The thing that has amazed me is how many people set up camera’s and video themselves going through life. ‘Why for example would anyone set up the go-pro and video a cross country flight? But seemingly many do. But just as confusing to me is that they will post that on You tube or wherever for the world to see. Someone posted a video of people in a Cessna 210 who crashed, to me that whole video was bizarre

I’ve never seen the same serial number component comeback from Garmin, we were a Garmin dealer and installed quite a few Garmin radios etc., and had more faults from new equipment than I would have expected. We never had a bad Bendix/King, but I’d guess the little sl30’s, 40’s, GTX 327’s etc maybe 10 to 20% had some fault right out of the box. ‘It wasn’t unusual to get a new radio as opposed to an overhauled one as a replacement, especially if it was a newly released product, assumption is that there just wasn’t many returbs available ‘Garmin has a employee discount that can’t be beat, there is some paper work and it has to be bought with a personal credit card, and shipped to your house, but the discount price is significantly lower than what the dealer pays. I believe you can only buy two of whatever radios etc per year and they track that serial number forever, so don’t even think of reselling, you can of course sell it, but I would suppose if you bought it today and it went in for repair next month with a different owner, there would be a problem. ‘If you have a problem with the radio, when you call and they ask for the serial number they know immediately it was bought with an employee discount, and even the repair price is seriously discounted. ‘Now I don’t have any experience with the real expensive stuff, just rack mounted lower priced stuff, and with that there is no getting it repaired from Garmin, whether it’s a $2 switch or the whole thing is fried by lightning or something, it’s the same price. ‘The good thing another the exchange is you get your replacement radio fast. ‘If you have the money to keep your airplane upgraded with new equipment as it becomes available, and your the type that likes shiny new stuff and color displays etc. then Garmin is your company. ‘If your the type that trained on a mechanical OBS and an HSI was the hot ticket, and as your familiar with it, 40 year old avionics as long as it’s good and reliable is really all you want or need, then Garmin is not your company. Especially if your OK with keeping your Pubs updated, but don’t want to be constantly updating your avionics I’m old school, retired and can’t pay $20,00o a year to keep up with the latest greatest avionics and honestly am at an age to where I don’t want to.

We cooked the pizza on the boat, we learned a trick in Brunswick Ga. ‘We both prefer very thin crust, and we learned to use a tortilla as the crust, so a pizza then is simple, tortilla, sauce, cheese and toppings, about as much work as making a sandwich. Pigs of course got left overs. If they see the food, they will swim out to the boat, sometimes quite far, I’ve seen them swimming in the anchorage, maybe 100 yds off shore. People frequently get bit etc by being stupid with the pigs, but as far as I know no one has been seriously injured. ‘I thought this might turn bad, but the Momma Sow I guess was in a good mood and it didn’t.

There are other ways to deal with adverse yaw other than a rudder, fries ailerons, spoilers, and simple drag devices like most flying wings, not sure if they should be called spilt ailerons or not. Adverse yaw really isn’t much of a problem for an aircraft efficiency wise, because how much time does one spend turning? If it were I’d assume multi engine transport category aircraft would use asymmetric thrust as opposed to opposite rudder, and I don’t think they do? But there is a lot more to a rudder than adverse yaw correction, try a crosswind landing without one for instance, or how good is yaw stability without one? Ask a Bonanza pilot how well an aircraft with less than optimum size of rudder flies in turbulence. Plus an airfoil at zero lift still has drag, that rudder we seem to want to get rid of for instance. ‘It’s all interesting of course, back in the I guess it was early 70’s and I was young, if you had asked me I would have told you that within 10 years that Canards would become the dominant design, as. they were clearly more efficient, but other than the Beech Starship, what happened with Canards? Beech got rid of the Starship for reasons other than it being a Canard I believe, not so sure I buy the avionics being it either. You can take a standard aircraft and with aileron rigging wash out the end of the wing and likely get close to zero lift in cruise for the last few feet. I know a crop duster with its ailerons deflected up a few degrees is lighter in roll and has a quicker response and faster roll rate, and if they are deflected down a few degrees the opposite is true. So what I’m saying is this is interesting, I would expect to see it applied to ultra high performance sailplanes etc, but wouldn’t expect it to become mainstream

Laminar flow is notoriously difficult to actually occur, even dead bugs will trip flow into non laminar, it’s exceedingly difficult to get a manufactured metal wing in laminar flow for more than a small amount of its chord. This is where a composite material wing, if and only if it’s molds are nearly perfect have us beat, but maintaining molds to that level takes an artist ‘My airplane has a lot of leading edge paint damage from rain, so I assume it’s almost all non laminar, yet I get what’s most often quoted as realistic cruise speeds for a J model, roughly 155 kts true at 65% power. ‘Decades ago, I believe it was NASA that built an aircraft with thousands of slots in the wing, the idea was to pull a vacuum and suck boundary layer air into the wing to maintain laminar flow, it worked and reduced drag drastically, sort of proving how difficult it is to achieve laminar flow On edit, apparently the suction method has a whole lot more history than I was aware of, even back before WWII https://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/pdf/88792main_Laminar.pdf

Short, low power flights, and cold weather maybe. Some aircraft like my little C-140 you just can’t get the oil up to temp in cold weather so all you can do is shorten the change interval. All my airplane flying has been in warm weather, I don’t do icing for example. Sure I’ve been as far North as the Article Ocean, but in July. ‘I tell people that I’m allergic to cold and equate cold to pain, so I just don’t have airplane cold weather experience. ‘I’ve flown in cold weather, just not piston airplanes ‘What kind of Cessna?

It’s not all that uncommon for an engine that has been making metal for the crank and cam to be worn beyond the limits that they can be turned down to, unless caught early and not all are Its similar to brakes on a car, if you change the pads before there is metal to metal, then it’s just changing the pads, but if you don’t, then it’s disks and pads. ‘Now I don’t know this but used to be if you bought a zero time motor from the manufacturer you didn’t get your core charge back until they tore down and inspected and deducted of course for any unusable parts, but it’s my understanding that they don’t do that anymore, if it was running when removed, your getting the full refund. If that’s true and I don't know that it is, and if your planing on running one until it’s making metal, then maybe that’s for you. It’s not all that hard to get to what Continental charges for a zero time motor or more if you have to replace the cam and crank, and you don’t have a factory zero time motor either. Maybe I’m just more sensitive to parts prices as I don’t have to pay labor

I’m theorizing that’s it’s just a tiny bit of water, emulsified with just a tiny bit of oil. I’ve seen it, but not frequently, usually when it’s cold and you go fly just enough to change oil etc.

Oh,and silicone hose and petroleum products like oil don’t mix well. Unkess of course they are Viton lined, not real common, but Viton is pretty much impervious to just about anything.

Oil and fuel for that matter will always have some water in it, called entrained I think. ‘An excess of water in oil will emulsify in the oil and turn it milky, just a little water will have milky strands in the oil. ‘I’ve never seen crankcase oil get that much water in it except for a liquid cooled engine with a blown head gasket or a farm tractor left out in the rain or something, so it just shouldn’t be possible for an air cooled airplane motor to get excess water in the crankcase to the point that it turns oil milky. The crankcase breather tube is metal, and if it’s cool enough from cold weather or hasn’t heated from a short flight, it’s possible for it to condensate moisture from combustion , then that little bit of oil and water can mix and turn milky. ‘Oil and water don’t mix normally, but water can be emulsified in oil from being hot or excessively agitated, like a crankshaft beating it into a mixed state, so hot oil mist and hot moisture can come out of the breather tube and condensate together into an emulsification. ‘The white milky looking coolant you’ll see in a machine shop is often a water / oil emulsification. The test method is to pull the dipstick and look to see if it looks like you have a milkshake in your crankcase, but I don’t think you will ever see that in an airplane

I’ve only really gotten into real ice accumulation once in an airplane, freezing rain, in a C-210 on approach, and what worried me was I couldn’t see through the windshield. I was going to open the window and stick my head out some, but the freezing rain turned into liquid rain and it was gone quickly, but when it was freezing, it was accumulating fast. ‘So what do you do on a low wing airplane with an iced up windshield? Honest question

I would go dark as you can in the back, especially since your down South., I’d also go as thick as you can for the windshield, going to a thick windshield can really quieten things down, and is good for birds too. Actual clear is uncommon, my C-140 door windows are clear as I made them, the windshield looks clear but if you put a white piece of paper behind it you can see it’s slightly green. ‘I personally don’t like the green, smoke is much better in my opinion. ‘when looking at a airplane, often your looking through two windows so it looks darker than it is.

Depends on how you fly and what are your intentions engine source wise. ‘If you want to overhaul, I’d recommend not overflying TBO, the reason is if you TBO, the odds of your crankshaft and camshaft being in good condition are very good, if you wait until it’s making metal etc the odds are they will need to be replaced. It’s not uncommon at all for a first run motor for the crankshaft to check out to new, not serviceable tolerances. So if your the type that believes only fools overhaul at TBO, then budget for an overhaul / exchange motor. ‘The crankshaft as an example has a very hard surface coating, it’s pretty thin though, and as the bearings wear, clearances open up and if the hard surface of the crankshaft is worn through, wear at that point is very rapid.

Didn't watch much, my guess would be carb ice, and he hadn’t experienced it before. Couple of questions though, a comment on some carb heat doesn’t work? How? it’s checked on every run up isn’t it? likelihood of it failing after take off is low, but could happen I guess. ‘My C-85 is a real ice machine, I’ve learned to leave it on for 30 sec or so on run up just prior to take off cause it can ice on taxi. Second was air filter icing, carb heat bypasses the air filter, in fact on short final I go carb heat off, because I don’t want unfiltered air going into my engine on the ground. If you fly an airplane that is bad about carb ice (any little Continental) you get used to it, recognize it and pull carb heat on habit. At cruise power, it will work, it may not at very low power though, pulling it on, on final if you have been conducting a gliding approach it may not work, the reason is the exhaust may have cooled too much. ‘Isn’t a heated pitot a requirement for IFR?