danb35

Quote: davewilson DO THE JOB RIGHT, and get those tanks resealed with the best epoxy on the market!

Quote: paulbeck What is clicky?

Quote: Kris_Adams

Quote: richardheitzman

Quote: Seth I plan to get my commericial I just haven't yet either. Got my class II medical and it's been a year this month.

Quote: fantom Make certain those inner fuel-cap-rings are changed at every annual. They aren't real easy to switch out and lots of A&Ps skip them.

1. You can do LOP in the climb, but I don't--it reduces available power and slows down your climb. If you had a turbo that would be a different story. 2. At your cruise altitude, I wouldn't go very far LOP--10-20 degrees, maybe. The leaner you go (once LOP) the lower your power output. Watch your cruise CHTs, but if they're OK (380 or less), I'd run pretty close to peak. I normally cruise around those altitudes and just lean to 9 gph, WOT, 2500 RPM. 3. I leave the mixture at its cruise setting until shutdown (and do the same with the prop). If your engine will run smoothly that way I'd suggest the same--remembering, of course, that you'll need to enrich it in the event of a go-around. 4. CHT is the big one. In cruise, you want to see all cylinders below 380 degrees. At those cruise altitudes, you aren't going to be making enough power to damage the engine with the mixture control, but you always want to keep an eye on the temps. If a cylinder is running a little warm for comfort, lean more--when LOP, leaner is cooler. 5. If the engine runs smoothly LOP, it's OK, but usually over around .7 - 1 GPH of GAMI spread is going to be too much for smooth operation. 6. LOP is not rocket science--it sounds like you've got it down pretty well. Once you've gotten used to how your engine runs, you can start leaning by fuel flow, which is a simpler and quicker way to get there (i.e., you know that you hit, say, 20 LOP at your normal cruise setting/altitude at 9.5 GPH, so you just pull the red knob until you see 9.5 GPH on your fuel flow instrument).

Quote: allsmiles I know Fltplan is official! I use it always.

Quote: 201er Are you required to have a current sectional onboard?

Absolute values of EGT are all but meaningless, so the fact that EGT #4 is cooler than the other cylinders doesn't tell us anything of value. For that matter, a CHT that's 25-30 degrees hotter than the others isn't particularly significant either, but those numbers are more meaningful than EGTs. On EGTs, you're really interested in two things: where the cylinder peaks compared to the other cylinders, and what the temperature is compared to normal for that cylinder. The first tells you how rich or lean the cylinder is compared to others (and will give an indication of induction or injector problems); the second tells you if there's an ignition problem in that cylinder. If you had a bad spark plug, your EGT should be about 150 degrees higher than normal.

Quote: allsmiles Yes there is! And I'm not contradicting myself! Perhaps I'm not making myself clear!

Quote: allsmiles There actually is "the" one. DUAT or DUATS is the legal weather briefing from Flight Service.

Quote: allsmiles My feeling is that it depends. If you are replacing it on a condition based schedule, say q 500 hours, I don't think it matters which one you get. You don't have backup vacuum so you probably should be on condition.

Quote: allsmiles However CSC DUATS is the one that is certified by the FAA as being officially equivalent with a briefing received from a live FAA briefer.

Quote: OR75 Inside the IAF, you only need one needle (+ a timer or a DME or a marker).

Sounds like you're convinced, and I don't see it doing any harm--but I'd use 7 quarts instead of 8, as you'll likely lose the 8th quart within a few hours anyway.

Quote: flyboy0681 We had a new Electronics International FT-60 "Red Cube" installed last year and got the K-factor correct the first time.

The correct K-factor varies considerably with the details of the specific transducer and installation. To compute it for your plane, fill the tanks and fly for a while (use at least half your fuel for a good sample). Then fill them again and note how much fuel it took. Then New K factor = (Actual fuel used * Old K factor) / Fuel used according to your Shadin It's often an iterative process, but this is the math for it.

Quote: aviatoreb Its 50% rule right? You need to construct more than 50%. I think it is not uncommon for some classic airplanes that a rebuild from the ground up can be officially called "built more than 50%".

I can't really see any negative effects to this, but I don't see much (if any) upside either. The concern about corrosion, I think, isn't that the avgas itself will corrode the bearings, but that it could wash away oil which would allow them to corrode. Easy answer to that is to run the engine once you change the oil. If you change the oil warm, I'd also expect you'd get the vast majority of the old oil out--I don't think you'd get an appreciable amount extra by just pouring avgas into the sump, letting it sit, then draining it. You would get extra oil out by running it with the avgas in the sump, but that seems like a bad idea on many levels. I've known some folks who have done that (on cars) with diesel fuel, which at least has some lubricating properties, but even that seems quite risky.

For R&D, once you finish the test plan you return the plane to its certified configuration, and then you get a normal airworthiness certificate back. You can't keep non-certified mods in place and return it to certified status, and while you're in E-R&D status your operating limitations are restrictive. If your test came up with the appropriate data and you're able to obtain an STC for the modification, then you can keep it.

Quote: 1964-M20E I guess that is pretty much what we are discussing allowing owners to declare their factory built airplanes which are 10, 15 or 20 years old or older to be experimental or some new designation that allows us to work on them and do modifications on them that may or may not have been “certified”.

Quote: Wildhorsesracing My lack of knowledge of the Regulations might be showing here, but can I not declare my Mooney M20C to be experimental and do all I want to the airplane?

Quote: rob So while I understand and in some ways agree with owner-assisted annuals, my experience has been that you get what you pay for. And while I am mechanically inclined, I am not an airplane mechanic and don't know enough about airplanes or mooneys to trust myself to the inspections. YMMV.

Just finished the annual on '48Q yesterday. Like the last two, I helped out, and this year there were only a couple of very minor squawks. My bill? $525. If you're reasonably handy with a wrench and a screwdriver, this is a good way to learn more about your plane and save some money. That one-piece belly pan would sure be nice, though...