Jerry 5TJ

Unless you bought the shares on margin....

Yesterday (while droning along at 15,000’ with George flying GPS direct) I turned on the ADF receiver. Yes, it’s still installed. Of the 6 nearest NDB stations (helpfully listed by the GTN750) only 2 were actually operating. Pilot radio navigation skills aren’t that useful when the navaids have been neglected or shut down.

I made an animal rescue flight yesterday. Baltimore to Boston area to southern Virginia & home. I did not think any ATC Center in the Northeast knew the the phrase “cleared as filed” but that’s what they said. And, I got my requested altitudes, too, instead of being kept down low and almost skimming the waves. Few frequency changes, either, also very unusual. Each controller is working a much larger area.

Exercises to do on long cross-country flights while George is flying: (1) Program a waypoint ahead, add a hold to the GTN750 at that waypoint and then delete it before arriving at the hold. Get creative and challenge yourself: “hold SE on the 123 radial, left turns, 7 mile legs.” Extra points if you can figure out the hold entry yourself, but if not, don’t despair, the 750 can determine that. (2) Fly using VORs instead of GPS for a few legs. The GTN750 will actually do that (amazing), but I had to relearn the button pushes. (3) For real amusement, see if you can find a working NDB and try to fly to and from it. Imagine you’re Ernie Gann flying AM21. (4) Tell NY Center you want no-gyro vectors to your destination near Lincoln, Nebraska & let me know how it goes.

These planes are half a century old. Most of their logs entries are terse, handwritten and incomplete. NDH means, to me, only that no damage was logged. Current condition is the most important part of your evaluation of a plane and it is hard to fit into a spreadsheet. I have owned both an E and a C model. I feel they are about equal in real-world performance. If you find an excellent airplane of either model get it under contract without delay and do a thorough inspection. Good hunting.

About 1990 and armed with a Lotus spreadsheet program I went back through the logs of my 1964 E and found over the years at least three different mechanics had made errors in their W&B revisions. Plus there were many changes logged which should have gotten W&B revision but didn’t. And there were some items installed with no log entries.

Sellers invariably offer their sub-standard planes at absurd prices while buyers undervalue your superior aircraft.

My iPad mini is mounted on a salvaged cover. The iPad is held by the clips at the 4 edges. Velcro fuzz on the back of that cover is epoxied in place. Velcro hooks are on the center of the yoke.

In short, not by visual examination. The two antennas operate in the same frequency band. An avionics shop with a ramp test set can probably sniff out which is the transponder antenna.

The accident Malibu was flying at 6,000’ and it probably had no on-board radar. Cloud tops in the area were reported at around 18,000 but this pilot chose to stay lower. Perhaps he wished to minimize strong headwinds, or avoid ice. It might have been a better plan to get higher and have better visibility. He could have climbed into the lower Flight Levels before reaching central Georgia. As for ATC vectors - I feel there tends to be more leeway in the low FL as almost no one is flying there. In any case you can say “unable” to any ATC request and go wherever you need to remain safe. But if you can’t see where that safer path lies then you are in a stressful place.

Looks like you have a slight bird problem there at the tie down.

Suggestion — Try it in flight and see what is actually hooked up on the emergency buss. The list of powered equipment in the AFM may be incorrect if avionics upgrades have been done. Also if you really need electric power from the standby system you should increase engine RPM. The standby alternator output current is maximum at highest RPM.

Speculation: Our next big avionics upgrades will involve megabit data in flight.

I have a home-made mount for the iPad Mini. It’s attached to the yoke with Velcro and offset to the right allowing for me to easily reach the left handgrip. The Mini is a better fit than the larger tablets.

Number of different aircraft seen in 24 hour intervals for the last month: This is in the Baltimore-Washington area, a very busy part of the world.

I have stopped in-person flight training with my students. It was my personal choice, one that is in line with general guidelines. The Maryland Governor yesterday issued a directive that (vaguely) exempts aviation flight training from shuttering. MD Directive 3-23-2020 But most flight schools in the area are shutting down all but solo flight activity.

The federal government has a list of critical infrastructure areas. CISA List Aviation including repair, operations, fuel and flight schools are specifically listed. Obviously you should practice all due care with social distancing and sanitation. But solo flight and even flight training appear to be permitted.

If you own a vintage Mooney you will never lack for projects.

My longest-ever Mooney flight was around 5.4 hours. I was at 12,000’ MSL over 4 of those hours. Hand flying, no AP, no wing leveler. And no oxygen. After landing (Perfect VMC) I sort of oozed out of the plane and into the FBO. And this was 30+ years ago. The pilot of the Newhall crash was 10 years older than I am today. I can easily imagine he was tired.

We flew 4 rescue cats, each in a medium size crate, Baltimore to Austin in January. They sang a few cat songs during taxi and takeoff then settled down. Active ANR headsets (on us, not on the cats) muted them fine.

I find I have had to urge the average A&P mechanic to be more picky when working on my planes: They have been conditioned by CBs to ignore the “small stuff.”

And Signature at Heathrow doesn’t even pump 100LL, either.

Some models do that, true. That design can lead to issues and it is worth checking to see if a part of the autopilot system is (improperly) powered by the dimmer bus. Last week I flew a plane with a recently-installed uAvionix tailbeacon. The new ADS-B hardware is powered by the Nav light circuit. So the Nav lights have to be on all the time, which makes the annunciator lights impossible to read in daylight.

A GoPro mounted under the wing.

The Swift company claims their goal is a fully-compatible 100LL replacement. I hope they can achieve that. I would want the reassurance of a fuel STC for my airplane and engine before pumping the tanks full and departing into the blue.