AndreiC

The Lycoming guide refers to counting pieces only when they are big enough. Yours is more like dust. For those you use the total quantity (like fractions of a teaspoonful, as mentioned above).

This is not something that worries me too much. My bigger issue is if a KX155 will last another 5-10 years after fixing the display issue, or if this is just throwing good money after bad. And if people are of the opinion that fixing it is the way to go (which I also lean towards), has anyone tried a KX155 with the updated LED displays?

The problem is that it seems new gas plasma displays (or whatever was original in there) have not been available for about 5-10 years at least. So it is just not possible to replace the display with an original one. I was hoping to get some feedback from the list on how good the LED displays are, that are advertised to be good forever. (I am aware that some KX155 units had bad capacitors, which leaked and ruined the PCBs. The two radios I have in hand now, my old one and the one I got from ebay, both look very clean, so this should not be a problem.)

The avionics package in my 1970 M20E consists mainly of a GNS430W and a KX155 (no glideslope), connected to an ancient audio panel (KA134) and a Telex intercom. The radios also drive an STEC/30, either through GPSS or via the VOR receivers. It all works quite well, and as a CB I am happy to not have the latest and greatest if I don't have to pay for it. Lately, however, I have noticed that my KX155 display becomes unreadable in dim light. From talking to a local, highly respected avionics shop (SkyCom in Waukesha) I understand that most likely the display in it is getting old, and it is will probably die slowly in the next year or so, to the point that it won't work even in daylight. Moreover, my KX155 has some other problems as well, like the frequency knob would not always change the frequency correctly (it would jump around a lot). Thinking I was smart, I bought from eBay for around $1000 a replacement KX155 that was advertised as being in good working order. This new one, however, came with its own host of problems. The squelch button did not work (turns out it is a relatively easy fix), but what was even worse is that in dim light this one, too, is unreadable. It is a bit better than my old radio, but I fear it may also be on its way out. From my research, there are a few options: 1) Bite a relatively big bullet, and send my old radio to the guy at KX-155.com. He said that for $2500 he would go through the whole radio, and replace the display unit with an LED one that should last another 25 years. 2) Bite an even bigger bullet, and replace my audio panel with something like the PAR200B ($3250, plus install cost of around $4500), and get rid of the troublesome KX155 altogether. But I would lose my second VOR receiver (maybe not such a big loss), and I would end up with a lower (6 watt versus 10 watt) transmit power. According to the guy at KX-155.com, the KX155 was the best radio ever built (??) and I would not get anything like that communications quality in another radio. 3) Or be cheap, and buy for $720 from ebay a self-install LED solution for the KX155. I have not seen any reports on how well this system works. In any case I would probably either sell my old radio (hoping to get $500-600 for it), or ask the guy who sold me the radio on ebay to take his back: he was offering a 30 day money back guarantee if one did not break the sealing stickers he had put on. However, my avionics shop had to open it up to see what was wrong with the squelch button. What are your guys's opinions on what I should do? Sometime in the future I definitely intend to upgrade to a modern audio panel (I was thinking the PMA450C), but I was hoping to push that decision back by a year or two, given its high cost.

I had an engine fire happen in the first Cherokee I owned (a 140, carbureted O-320). (To be perfectly correct, the fire happened before I owned it ; but only by a few hours). This plane had been sitting for a while when I bought it, it had been inspected by a mechanic and had an annual inspection, but presumably did not get started at any point in the recent months before I went to buy it. I wanted to get checked out in it with a local instructor (I only had minimal time in Cherokees, mostly had trained in a 152), and when he and I tried to get it started it wouldn't start. We kept priming it, until we somehow managed to flood it; fuel coming out of the intakes (or carb, not sure) caught fire. We managed to start the engine and suck the fire in just as local people were running out with a fire extinguisher. The cowling was all metal; we took it out, looked at the engine inside, the local mechanic deemed it fine, and I flew it home after a couple of trips around the patch with the instructor. (The guy was an old timer, and he alleviated my concerns by telling me that these "modern" engines are bullet proof, he never saw one fail, unlike the ones in the Piper Cubs he used to fly, which every once in a while required him to dead stick in a field to clean up the jets or something like that...) Seems like no damage was done in that fire, not even paint peeling on the cowling or anything. I flew that plane happily for a few hundred more hours with no incident. As an aside, I looked up the fate of that plane (N6085W) recently and it was very sad. Some years later the 70+ year old owner ran out of gas in it and crashed it, killing himself and his son who was in the right front seat. The rear seat passenger, the grandkid, survived with some injuries. Damn fuel exhaustion...

Interesting. What I take from this is that my MP gauge may be mis-calibrated, despite having been to the shop not so long ago. Is there a way to check it out somehow? It is the classical steam gauge with fuel pressure on one half and MP on the other. My CHTs were not a problem at all at the power setting I was at. It's true here in WI temps are much lower than in FL, but I was below 300 dF CHT on all cylinders, I could barely keep them in the green. But my impression from reading the Mike Busch articles (and others), when it is cold outside low CHTs are not the whole story -- you want to control internal cylinder pressures, and when it is very cold outside CHT does not measure this accurately.

It is interesting to compare these numbers for your 1966 E-model with my 1970 (also E). Quite a difference! For example, at 2500 feet, all out, 2200 lbs, my POH lists the top speed of the plane as 186 mph, while yours is 197. Moreover, it seems like in 1966 they would still allow best power mixture at 97% BHP (13.8 gph), while in my plane they want full rich anytime you are over 75% power (18.2 gph in this setting). I wonder which of the two speed numbers are closer to reality. I have heard many say that the numbers were inflated by the marketing departments. Presumably more so in 1966 than in 1970, but it is still not clear to me how realistic the 1970 numbers are still.

How do you guys use the performance tables when the OAT is not standard? My temp gauge is unreliable, but the ground temp (1000 ft) was close to freezing, so I think at 6500 it was probably around -10 C. DA is then 5000ft. Should I use the performance tables for 5000 feet, even though these are calibrated for standard ISA?

Certainly more than 5kts. Closer to 9kts. (152 kts -> 143 kts, calculated by the GPS 3 cardinal points method).

Fair enough. I am a bit more concerned about something else now. According to what I looked up, 25 squared at that altitude is closer to 85% power. So I assume running at 50 rop is not at all a great idea, as I think this is pretty well inside the “red box”. I wonder though how accurate these numbers are. My MP gauge was calibrated about a year ago, so I believe it should be showing correctly. But how can you get 25” MP at 6500 feet? Even without induction losses, you would expect at best 29.92-6.5 = 23.42” best MP. Could I be having a leak in my MP tubing? Or is there something else going on?

Sorry, maybe I was not clear about what I was asking about. To me 11.7 gph to get only 50 ROP seems very high fuel consumption. I was expecting more like 10.5-10.8. But no one seems to be fazed out by this number, so it’s probably ok I guess.

I went flying yesterday to do some more testing of my plane, and I am wondering if what I see is typical, or if I could improve things perhaps by moving my injectors around. 1970 M20E with IO-360-A1A, 600 SMOH, 350 since new cylinders. The difference between what fuel flow I need to run to get to 50 ROP and 20 LOP is quite big. To be specific, yesterday at 6500 feet, 25” MP, 2500 RPM I could fly 20 degrees LOP (on richest cylinder) for 9.3 gph, while to get to 50 ROP on the leanest cylinder I had to push her up to 11.7 gph. Does this spread look high to you guys? Is there any way to check that this is correct? My fuel flow is well calibrated, and I can’t see anything unusual about my CHT/EGT probes. (EDM-700).

I am planning on flying to KMDW (Midway, Chicago) tomorrow for some business that takes me there for 3-4 hours in the middle of the day. The weather is supposed to be nice VFR. Last time I flew there (about a year ago) I went IFR, and the approach controllers took forever until they got me sequenced in, etc. Moreover, the departure was a mess, they had a hard time getting my clearance without a file plan filed by a professional airline flight planning department, etc. So I am wondering if you guys would recommend just going VFR (with flight following) and hoping they let me quickly into the Bravo, or if that is bound to cause a lot of trouble (both with needing to have 10 pairs of eyes to look for the busy traffic around there, and potentially them keeping me a long time outside of the B). Or do you recommend that I go IFR, and just accept that I will be routed all around. Opinions, comments?

@donkaye I understand what you are saying, and it is helpful to know that the plane can handle 25-30kts of crosswind. But the purpose of a self-imposed limitation is so that I don't have to make a decision on the spur of the moment whether to go somewhere else or not. Yesterday I felt, after the fact, that I probably did exceed what I feel should have been my limits. As I said, I landed fine (especially since the wind quieted down a bit once down low, below the tree line), but it was uncomfortable and I would like to learn a lesson from this. Certainly I could have continued another 10 miles to another airport where they have a runway aligned much better with the wind, and I think this would have been a better decision. So I now know that winds gusting to 28 is too much. I am trying to gauge what others set as their minimums in this respect, whether I should set my minimum at <25mph gusts, or <22mph gusts, etc.

This is in line with what I do, I just used the wrong wording to describe my question. The question is roughly at what crosswind component do you end up not having enough rudder authority to keep flying in a slip on final and maintain centerline (with the upwind wing down, and the nose aligned with the runway centerline).