AndreiC

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).

OK, I understand now what you guys are talking about. Rich must of course have landed using the crabbing method. I generally use the slip method, never tried to land crabbing (and straightening the steering wheel right after touch down). I should try it some time, but for now my question is how much crosswind can a short body tolerate for the slipping method (where the rudder authority is the limiting factor)?

I am curious what various people's personal limits are for crosswind component in a short body. Mine is a 1970 E. Reason I am asking is that yesterday I landed in what was reported (at a nearby airport, mine does not report) as 22G28 wind straight across the runway (3000 feet, good asphalt), and it was quite sporty, to say the least. I landed safely, but I wonder if perhaps I should have somewhat lower limits for myself. Honestly it was not so much the continuous crosswind, but the fact that while in a full slip at about 90 MIAS, stronger gusts caused me to sink quite abruptly and required rather big pitch control changes. (I increased the landing speed from my normal 80 MIAS to 90 MIAS to account for the gusts, and I am glad I did.)

Well, I talked to PermaGard and got some slightly better news. They said that their product is relatively easy to apply after the initial preparation and application (so just to maintain it), and for a small plane like mine/ours they would be able to sell it to me directly. They said that just watching a 1-2 hour video that is available on YouTube would be enough to understand how to apply their product, and that one could get a Mooney-like plane in a day of work, taking it relatively easily. So I can, with relatively minimal cost, do the yearly maintenance of the coating, and with that things should last a while. My concern was that I did not want to be stuck with having to pay a specialized contractor to do it every year for a large (~2 AMU) expense. @Marc_B: my plane needed paint correction anyway, the paint was old, badly oxidized and just plain dirty (with dirt embedded in the paint). So that is how I explain the high cost of what I got -- they needed to go over the paint at least twice with their buffing/polishing before applying the PermaGard product. Apparently GulfStream uses the PermaGard product for their planes. Maybe it's not so bad...

Some of you may recall that a couple of months ago I asked some questions about doing a paint correction (i.e., buffing) and ceramic coating my plane. Here is the bind I am in. After a lot of comparisons I found a shop nearby that was willing to do the job for 2/3 of the original quote I had gotten ($3500 versus $5000). However, maybe they did tell me and I did not register, or maybe they did not tell me and I found out only afterwards, but the product they applied is PermaGard, which from what I can tell is a polymer based coating, not a ceramic coat. The plane looks very nice now, but I wonder how durable this product is, and how I can proceed going forward. From reading on the internet, this product needs to be applied every year, or else it becomes useless after a year or two. (This seems to be in contrast to what ceramic shops told me, which was that their product was expected to last 3-5 years, and on the longer side if the plane was hangared.) Two questions: a) Is there a way I can maintain this polymer coating with products available to the general public, so that it lasts me a long time (without needing to pay $2000-3000 every year to get it commercially reapplied)? I know that a ceramic coating cannot be put on top of this without a new polishing and chemical stripping of the Permagard product. b) What products would people recommend using on top of the Permagard? Wax (like WashWax All), or some of the other coatings like Triphene or pther graphene based protectants from Amazon? I am pretty discouraged that I did not do a bit more research beforehand to understand the difference between the polymer and ceramic coatings... Thanks, Andrei.