jlunseth

All I can tell you is that I wasted some time doing the 5 minute cooldown 13 years ago when I first got the plane, and the temps were no cooler than if I just taxied in and shut down. I had the turbo OHd right after I got the plane and that is now roughly 1700 hrs ago. The plane had 600 and some hours on it and it now has 2380. As the engine went over TBO I started to worry about the turbo, and about once a year I forget to put the mixture full in for takeoff and the temps get up there before I catch it (the JPI tells me I have screwed up). All of that, so I have had my A&P borescope the 1700 hour turbo the last couple of years during the annual and he says he can’t see any reason to OH it. Works for me I guess. Bear in mind that for probably the last 1000 hours my cruise setting most of the time has been 34”/2450/11.1 GPH lean of peak. That means that the turbo is working harder than if I were at 30 or 31” for a ROP setting. So I was always concerned I would see premature turbo wear but that has just not been the case.

This is interesting. I have had not problems with water and I shake the wings often. I don’t shake them trying to get water out, I never thought of it that way. I shake them whenever I am taking a long trip and want to be sure I have absolutely full tanks. I don’t shake them vigorously because that causes big air bubbles to come out, spraying fuel on the wings, more like rythmically. Don’t know that would make any difference. During the summer flying season I probably do this two or three times a month. If it helps, maybe we have hit on something. It probably also helps that more than half of my fuel comes from Thunderbird, at Flying Cloud, and they have quite a bit of fuel sales volume, so in the 13 years I have been there I have never seen fuel in the tank of my K, just in that J I flew a decade or so ago that had bad O rings. I still sump every single time.

This puzzles me because I have had my plane for 13 years now and never any water. Zero. So much so that I have to work to keep the discipline to sump after every new fuel load. There was a period maybe a decade ago where for about a year I put isopropyl in for most flights. The recommendation was to do that in turbos because at high altitudes even during the summer we are flying constantly in temps that are well below freezing, but I never saw a problem and have discontinued the practice. If I had water hiding in the tanks it might have gotten cleaned out while I was doing that, and never returned. The biggest problem is the O rings for the fuel caps. The caps sit in a slight well, as everyone knows, and if the plane is outside when it rains, water pools up in that well and will find its way into the tanks. I flew a J some years ago that had quite a bit of water in it for that reason. My caps are in good shape and I have kept them that way, so no water. Just have never seen any at all. No engine stumbles because of it either. I fly in the rain quite a bit in the summer too. Paul Beck at Weep-No-More redid my tanks 13 years ago. Did a superb job and maybe the quality of the reseal leaves fuel no place to hide. A big difference may be keeping the plane in a hangar. Except when I am on a trip somewhere, the plane is always hangared. It is not rained on much, maybe a few times a year. Based on that experience I wonder if your fuel source has water in the tank so you are constantly having some introduced? Might want to talk to them.

I second what Paul said. I have the TSIO-360-LB in a 231. I have never done anything to cool down the turbo except to taxi in after landing and shutdwon. The engine, which has a Conti TBO of 1800, currently has 2380 hours and since it is 20 years old, will be replaced with Factory New this Year. My turbo was last OH’d at about 700 hoiurs, so it is at roughly 1700 hours since OH on the turbo. I don’t know, maybe mine was a better that average OH. Either that, or turbo cooldown is an OWT. You do need to lean aggressively on the ground but that has very little or nothing to do with the turbo.

Yup, there is that!

I still will go for two independent AI’s, if one goes south I will figure it out. If you have even one analog gauge such as altitude or airspeed you will know pretty quick, hopefully in less than the 30 second lifespan of VFR pilot in IMC.

Most of them are of the ”look, I flew my airplane” type, some with gimmicks involved. “Look, here I am talking to ATC.” “Look, here I am landing an airplane.” Boring. I have watched a few and can’t stand more than a minute or two of the engine droning and some person babbling. I would rather go fly my own airplane and maybe learn something. There are a few, just a few, that really teach something.

I vote with hammdo. Looks like a firmware update to me, not a nav data update. Though that’s the first time I have seen a computer say it wants new firmware. Usually if the old is working you can leave it alone. Pretty sure you need a shop to update.

A few years ago I decided I wanted to try landing at KMSP, and I figured they might want me to keep my speed up so I thought I would practice some fast approaches. I picked a cold December day to do it. I took off from KFCM and flew about 25 miles to KGYL for some landings. The trick would be keeping the engine temps up during fast approaches. After the first one, I took off from KGYL intending to go to another airport. On takeoff I saw suddenly low oil pressure and I believe low oil temps also, so I immediately turned around and did the shortest approach I think I have ever done. There were oil stripes about 18” wide down both sides of the plane, coming from the cowling. Got a mechanic out there and the diagnosis was that moisture in the air/oil separator had frozen blocking the engine’s ability to breath (vent crankcase pressure) and the engine was blowing oil out every available orifice. The air/oil separator was thawed, put some oil in the engine and it was good to go. That is my shortest ever flight. The moral of the story is that if you live in the cold north you have to not only get the oil temp and pressure up, but you have to let the engine warm the engine compartment some, before takeoff, cause there are things in there that really don’t like to be below freezing temp. Keep your cowl flaps closed at all times and don’t get in a hurry in the cold air.

Yeah the problem is if you have two of something just because one might go south and all of a sudden they disagree, then which one is right? Now if you network the two of them so they can talk to each other, is one going wrong and taking the other with it? What if you can’t see anything so can’t cross-correct with the Mk I eyeball. Gotta be an engineer of sorts so you can figure it out.

Very good to know. I worried about the issue when the instruments first went in the plane but the more I use it the less concerned I am about a check ride and having to fly a true VOR.

Unless, of course, you are on a check ride and the DPE requires you to fly a standard VOR. I want to be able to practice one for that purpose. If I were flying a trip in real life it would be extremely unusual to have no other approach to fly than a VOR, and if I had to fly one I would surely use the VNAV+V out of the 750, it would be simpler. Rbp, yes, I do understand ADSB. Yes, I should be able to see the same targets on the 750 and on Foreflight. What I am saying is that it does not actually turn out that way and it is not a configuration issue. Also, if I tap a target on Foreflight I get a whole host of helpful information out of Foreflight, such as altitude, route, heading, airspeed, tail number, aircraft type, etc. If it’s a Skyhawk doing 125 kts off to my right, that is a whole different thing than a G5 or even a Cirrus, I will pass the Skyhawk long before we converge, but I will have to hope the G5 passes me and is looking.. Tap again and it goes away. Lucky to get relative altitude and a course vector from the 750. Plus there are the occasional traffic alerts that essentially shut the screen down unless I clear it.

Well, in that case the 750 is a terrific instrument. I have mine connected to a 345 for traffic and a GDL69A for XM weather. I also use Foreflight on an iPad and it gets ADSB via a Stratus. The 750 is really slick. I have had mine for a year or more and am still finding new features. It does for navigation and instrument flying what a good engine monitor like the JPI 930 does for engine operation - puts you in a completely different league than the old factory instruments. It is certainly possible to fly instrument with GPSs like the 430 or the 355 that do not have a map, or not a very useful one. It is a whole different ballgame to be able to see what you are actually doing relative to an approach plate. There is nothing like a picture. I find I can dial in an approach on their 750 in about half the time it took with the 430. Relative to Foreflight, I like the traffic display on Foreflight better than the one on the 750. The 750 misses targets compared to Foreflight, and it is more difficult to determine a targets distance and threat on the 750 than on the iPad. I mentioned this on another thread and someone said its a configuration issue. Nope. It’s not. That’s the old “blame the pilot” excuse. That said, the traffic on the 750 is passable. The weather I get on the 750 is exceptional and better than ADSB on Foreflight. Having flown in GA aircraft not as a pilot but sitting right seat and actually flying the plane way back in the VOR only days, weather on the panel is a massive safety improvement in my opinion. If you travel with your Mooney as I do with mine, it is sometimes important to see the weather ahead, say, 400 miles, so you can make some alternate plans in case, let’s say, you are approaching KRAP from the east in the middle of the summer and there are some of the typical Tstorms that are beginning their afternoon walk to the airport. You can’t get that with ADSB on Foreflight, but you can with the 750. I really like the ability to enter and select things via touchscreen, much faster to get a radio frequency or loading a waypoint than the old dial-up method on my 430. You can create holds pretty much anywhere with the 750, which was possibly only with a great deal of button pushing on the 430. Holds are rare in real life, but I seem to get one about once a year. All that said, there are some things for which Foreflight is just nicer. For example, I will go out and fly approaches VFR by myself. I do it just to constantly walk through all the procedures. When I do, I want to see traffic on a georeferenced approach plate. Foreflight does a slick job of that. You can bring a plate up on the map view and make the plate semi-transparent. All the traffic will show up on the plate. You can do the same on the 750 but the plate is opaque and the traffic display is not as good as on Foreflight so I prefer Foreflight for that particular use.

All I know is supply is way down, even with the economy in worse shape than it was a few years ago. If you go back just five years, a look at controller would have disclosed around 15 or more 231’s for sale and if you watched long enough, they weren’t moving and prices needed to be dropped by the seller before they would move. Now there are typically just a handful available, and at least part of the handful are projects - either runouts or planes with old electronics or both. Which says good things for the fleet actually because people are buying those and returning them to serviceable condition. After 2008 there were acres of hangars with for sale signs, now it is hard to find an inexpensive place to keep a plane. Somewhere along the way demand rose sharply and all the inventory began to sell out. Economy? COVID and the airline issues? Not wanting to have to wear a mask everywhere you went? Electronics making GA safer? Maybe even the trend towards more women taking lessons and not fewer men, which keeps the pilot pool at least stable. Getting control of fuel and hangar prices are the two weak spots. Probably all have played a role. It’s a nice place to be in if you are an owner already.

I also learned the hard way that you don’t check the gascolator by using a pin-type sump cup to push the valve open from below. The valve does not work that way. In my case the valve jammed open and spilled a couple of gallons before I could get it closed. You have to pull the ring from inside the cockpit with a container below and then you have to find a place to properly dispose of the fuel. It is so complicated I don’t bother anymore, I do check the wing sumps.

I don't think you were taught wrong, but the fly in the ointment for me is that partial panel needs to be in relatively quiet conditions. If you get in turbulence or strong up and down drafts even without much turbulence, it is pretty easy for things to get out of control without an upset. You can pretty much forget about plus or minus two hundred feet. Been there done that a couple of times, it was awhile ago, don't want to again. Would rather do what I can as the owner to make sure I will always have a working AI.

The anticipated time to install the dual reversionary 275's in my aircraft was two weeks. One 275 was already in the plane, it was a 275 ADI that had been installed as a backup, so the existing King vacuum AI got removed and the 275 was installed in its place. The 275 ADI I already had in the plane had been intentionally purchased in the version that could act as the primary ADI in place of the King AI, it just wasn't being used that way at first. When I got it, I was anticipating putting a second 275 HSI in, in the dual reversionary install and that is what was done. The second 275 was installed in place of the King HSI (256). The 345 had already been installed and a GTN750 Xi was installed previously also, so they were only involved in the dual reversionary install in the sense that the 275s had to be connected to them. There was a slight variation from normal, my aircraft has an Icarus SAM GPSS and I wanted to keep it, so the 275 system was wired to work with that. I also had a backup, plain, ordinary vacuum AI installed in the TC hole. However, the backorder time for the new 275 was 16 weeks. That was back in the very end of April 2022 so it may have changed, but you should find out. It was delivered in August, so about 16 weeks. The 275s are nifty but they do take some getting used to. I went up a few weekends and flew practice VFR approaches, all types, to see how the 275s were going to work with the AP and there were definitely some differences. The 275 manual is not all that helpful. PS it did not turn out to be two weeks but that was because the shop got COVID in the middle of the job.

Thanks, I have played with the traffic settings, but it is not the commercial airliners at 25k+ that I am concerned about. Compared to the Stratus and Foreflight, the 750 and 345 miss targets at or near my altitude, and it is much easier from the Foreflight display to determine distance, course and altitude threat. I just get a much clearer picture than on the 750. And then, of course, the 750 feels obligated to interrupt the nav screen with a traffic warning when I am on final at one of our parallels at Flying Cloud, and there is an aircraft on the other parallel. So in the middle of landing I need to either clear the warning or ignore. I hate to disable the warnings entirely, but you would think Garmin could come up with a better way of displaying the warning than to block the nav screen. The Foreflight display is just much better and that is the one I rely on. I am thinking maybe I should just take traffic off of the nav display on the 657.

Don’t have a shop for you, I am in Minnesota. Mine is good and they keep to schedule, although this last time they got COVID so that really slowed the project down. Not their fault. In the past two years I have put in a GTN750, replaced a KT74 with the 345 so I could get traffic on the panel, and installed dual reversionary 275’s. However, with the system failures we have been seeing her on the site with all electronics, I did not ditch the vacuum, in fact, I installed a new pump and hooked it to a standby AI, not fancy, but it will keep the plane upright. One of the failures was a 275 system that the pilot thought was dual reversionary and it was not, he got a red x screen on the ADI, the Flight Aware log looks really bad, may have entered a spiral before getting himself out of it. Not sure what the Rocket’s alternator is, the problem in my 231 is a single alternator and if that goes, and it has, then there is no power. The 275 manual warns that backup battery life is quite a bit shorter in cold temps, and I live in MN. The display of traffic through the 345 to the 750 is disappointing. I get much better traffic with a Stratus 2 and Foreflight on my iPad. Compared to the iPad, the 345->750 misses targets and also does not give me a good handle on distance to target on the map page, have to go the the traffic page for that, and then I am out of the map page. Not great when flying approaches. I send the approach plate to the map page on Foreflight and get both the plate and very good target resolution for traffic. I rely much more on Foreflight for traffic and basically ignore what displays on the 750. The 275s are nifty looking and probably I saved myself some future cost in overhauling the old King HSI, but the King was easier to use. I am fine with the system as it is, but probably should have stopped at just installing one 275 as a backup AI, with all its other information. I am not where I can access my emails with my avionics shop for the install of the dual 275s but will be later and will let you know what the intended schedule was. They would have made it I am sure, but for COVID, they always have and excellent work. Modern Avionics, now AV8, at Flying Cloud.

Why not try Wisconsin Aviation? I don’t know the firm itself, but they bought the system that Bruce Jaeger designed. Bruce is a very meticulous fella. He was my commercial instructor and owned Willmar Aviation for a long time. I believe they supply parts and kits, Bruce did. The system was much more moderately priced when Bruce was doing it, I don’t know much about their current prices except what is on line.

It’s not the plates that are the concern. It is the validity of any reading from the accelerometer in the portable devices like the Stratus that report attitude information, such as in Foreflight. I keep my iPad with Foreflight and plates in a kneeboard, works good.

The portables only work safely if they are in a fixed mount, bolted to the structure of the aircraft. Laying on the glare shield, suction cupped to a window, RAM mounted or taped to something are all recipes for an upset in IMC. Get in turbulence, have the portable move, and you will find that the plane is upside down even if it isn’t.

I should have mentioned that when you do your missed, you put in full power and move the mixture to full rich for the climb, cowl flaps open. When you level off you are going to have to remake your approach speed setting, which is my 24.5/8.8/2450. Once you do that you can leave the fuel knob alone again. You definitely do not want to put in any full power settings without also going full rich. I thought I said that in the prior post but maybe not.

One possibility is to leave some of the electronics unconnected from rest of the system. That’s what I did with my 430AW. I left it in the panel but it is connected to its own CDI and not connected to anything else. If the GTN/275’s/AP go down together I have the 430AW and the CDI for navigation. I could have connected it to the system so if the GTN went down I would be able to drive the AP with the 430, but I would sacrifice safety. I also have the vacuum AI. So what if I have to hand fly, I will be perfectly safe with functioning instruments. Even if all electrical goes out I will have the vacuum AI. I put in a new pump this summer. After lots of actual IMC and reading about others’ system failure, you start to think about these things and ignore some of the marketing.

One of the issues you discover when you have installed some of these all-electronic systems is that there are peripherals and information sources that are required, or required to enable features you thought you were going to have. They are also connected to other electronic devices to form the system. You have to be an electronics engineer to understand what risks you are taking by installing a particular device and what could happen if one of the peripherals or information sources goes down. It is way to easy, if you do not have the electronic engineering background, to focus on marketing about individual features and think they are going to solve your problem. Yes, a four hour backup would be nifty even if the actual life after five or ten years in the aircraft is down to half. But what else is there that could bring the instrument down. There is, after all, a red “X” page in the manual for the G5. Why is that? If it is connected to another device and that device fails or the network connection fails, is there the potential for unexpectedly bringing down the whole system? Was it a design error or maybe an installation error? Do you really care since you are the PIC in the air dealing with the problem and it is your life on the line, not the designer’s or the installers. I have installed, over the years, a 430AW to drive the AP, then a 750 GTN Xi to drive it instead, then a backup AI 275, then dual reversionary 275’s. Each time there have been gotchas and/or pilots on our site have experienced unexpected system failures that were not anticipated, sometimes in IMC. There is nothing like a good, old, second something that is not part of the nifty system and is a completely different technology. Don’t get me wrong. My installer has been magnificent. The issue is that when you install a bunch of components on your panel they become a system, and nobody other than you has really taken responsibility for insuring the safety and redundancy of the system.