Mooney Round The World Flight Project Amelia Earhart 1937 2017

[peevee]

11 minutes ago, jetdriven said:

i wouldn't  want that stuff hanging off my airplane. There's probably 5 knots of drag from those wires passing vertical to the base of the fin. 

Wait till you see the piss tube

[jetdriven]

3 minutes ago, peevee said:

Wait till you see the piss tube

Not just the drag from the piss tube, but the piss all over the Belly of the airplane. Like the oil and the exhaust trail that's on the he belly, but piss is immune. And it doesn't cause corrosion anyway. 

[LANCECASPER]

7 is neutral on the pH scale. The average urine is 6.2 which makes it acidic, but it can be as low as 5.5 and still be considered normal. I would definitely consider urine corrosive and clean soon after the flight.

 

[MooneyCFII]

Urine is corrosive. Nasty stuff if it just sits there. I never found any urine residue on the belly but I haven't looked too persistently. When I use the relief tube I normally follow it up with water to rinse the inside of the funnel, the tubing, and the venturi. I didn't want the relief tube stinking up the cockpit. 

(Don't you just love these frank conversations?)

 

Edited August 20, 2017 by CFII
forgot something

[HRM]

Well, this topic has spun out...

That said, nice commentary by Popular Mechanics: Why Amelia Earhart Still Matters.

[MooneyCFII]

 

21 minutes ago, HRM said:

Well, this topic has spun out...

Yeah, probably. My flight is over. Perhaps the operational questions would be good here or even in another thread. I know *I* learned a lot from the flight, starting with why I picked a 231. A 252 would have been a slightly better choice but the differences are pretty small, especially when one slows down to achieve better efficiency. 

21 minutes ago, HRM said:

That said, nice commentary by Popular Mechanics: Why Amelia Earhart Still Matters.

Yes. It doesn't matter if we ever find her. It was her attempt that was important. For me it was walking 30,000 nm in her shoes to see what it was like. Much of my flight was NORDO. Most of my flight was without useful weather information. It was literally me and the airplane against the elements. OK, I had GPS, satphone, working HF, etc. But that didn't help me actually make the flight. It only kept me in touch with others. It didn't help me with weather. I had to figure that out on my own as I was flying. I think, in some small way, I *NOW* understand, and in ways that were not possible before. I did my best to bring people along with me but there is no substitute for sitting in the cockpit for 10+ hours at a time, wondering if you are going to be able to punch through the weather and get where you are going. No one can help you. No one can make the decisions for you. 

[thinwing]

On 8/19/2017 at 9:00 AM, CFII said:

Today we have Iridium, SPOT, GPS, Stormscope, RADAR, Satellite-based weather spotting, and a host of other things that make a trip like this easier. Hey, I love HF. My first choice was to put the antenna on the top but the Mooney's pivoting tail with the 11" travel at the top of the vertical stabilizer made crafting a reliable, long-lived antenna very difficult. What I have on the belly is pretty darned robust. Only a gear-up landing is going to take it out. OK, it won't work well on the ground but I don't care. On the ground I have other means to communicate.

So, after evaluating all options I decided to do what I did. Bonnie modeled it and determined it would work adequately well. In fact, it works better than the models suggest it should. 

Anyone contemplating installing an HF, I recommend talking to Bonnie. After all, it is all about the antenna.

I personally think Jose top mounted design looks like crap!...I think if I ever get arround to mounting my icom ic-7000 in the Bravo...I would use Bonnie s design...it just "looks better" and judging by your qso s...it appears to function just fine...thanks for sharing ..kpc K6ZK 

[MooneyCFII]

19 hours ago, thinwing said:

I personally think Jose top mounted design looks like crap!...I think if I ever get arround to mounting my icom ic-7000 in the Bravo...I would use Bonnie s design...it just "looks better" and judging by your qso s...it appears to function just fine...thanks for sharing ..kpc K6ZK 

I think that a top-mounted antenna will work better, at least on the ground. Moving the wire farther away from the airplane makes it a lot easier to feed and it makes for a more efficient antenna. The losses in the wire increase at the low impedance caused by the wire being so close to the belly. OTOH the small gauge wire that José uses is going to experience a lot of resistive loss too. It probably all evens out in the end. 

One thing I do know, his will be cheaper than mine. I paid a fair bit for aircraft antenna parts from Dayton Granger. My antenna probably cost $1000 in parts, not to mention the stiffeners in the belly skin to carry the loads from the stand-offs. 

[Piloto]

It cost me $50 on parts an half a day to install. I have used it on ferries with good results. At the ferry destination the antenna can be removed in less than half an hour. I use the tail small custom access panel for the feeder insulator so no holes on the fuselage. At the open end I attach the insulator to one of the top access panel screws on the wing. When the antenna is removed there is no traces.

José

[ArtVandelay]

I be interested in other operational ?s like:

Fuel, how did you rig the fuel tanks?

On the super long flights, did you worry about oil consumption?

Did you filter via a funnel the fuel along the way, was it necessary?

What did you do for weather sources outside the USA?

Could or did you use a satellite phone in flight?

Did you carry an spares,parts?

Thx

 

[carusoam]

TJ, great question regarding fuel purity in far away places... there was an issue on Brian's flight...

Best regards,

-a-

[MooneyCFII]

On 8/25/2017 at 9:16 AM, teejayevans said:

I be interested in other operational ?s like:

Fuel, how did you rig the fuel tanks?

I did the Monroy extended fuel conversion. That increases the capacity of the wing tanks from 72 to 110 gallons. That by itself is almost enough in my 231 to do the leg from Hawaii. Normally that would be the longest leg you would ever encounter. I also added a 100 gallon TurtlePac ferry tank in place of the rear seats. Potentially my fuel capacity was 210 gallons. At 18 gph during climb (fully loaded it would take me 1 hour to get to FL230 at 90% power) and 9gph cruise at 60%, I had 22+ hours of fuel. I never used the full capacity of the TurtlePac but came close on the longest flight. I use 3 hours as my minimum reserve for a long flight. So for a 17 hour flight I would want 20 hours of fuel on board. 

I applied for and received approval (form 337) for a permanent modification to allow the ferry tank to be plumbed into the right tank fuel plumbing. I have a second fuel selector in the side wall just behind the door that allows me to select between right wing tank and ferry tank. It is a nice Andair selector with markings for "Right" and "Ferry". Both the feed and return lines are plumbed through this selector. So to use fuel from the ferry tank I would select "right" on the main fuel selector and "ferry" on the secondary fuel selector. I had no trouble using all but about 1 gallon from the ferry tank.

There are no transfer pumps. I don't trust transfer pumps. People have gone down when they couldn't transfer fuel in flight. I like that I select a tank, including the ferry tank, and that tank feeds fuel to the engine using the standard pumps and plumbing. Even if I lost my electrical system I would be able to burn all my fuel and get to where I could land. 

On 8/25/2017 at 9:16 AM, teejayevans said:

On the super long flights, did you worry about oil consumption?

No. Think about it. Even if your airplane burns one quart ever 5 hours, my 17.5 hour leg would only burn 3.5 quarts. That would be no problem. As it is, I know I get 12-15 hours per quart when the engine is running for extended periods at normal operating temperature. 

On 8/25/2017 at 9:16 AM, teejayevans said:

Did you filter via a funnel the fuel along the way, was it necessary?

I did have a filter in my own electric pump. All fuel came from sealed barrels directly from the refinery. No partial barrels. There should have been no contamination. 

As it was, I do think I got contaminated fuel somewhere. The one place where I think it might have happened was 100 hours prior to the actual problem so I tend to discount that. Where the contamination came from will forever be a mystery. 

Would filtering the fuel have solved the problem? Maybe. There just wasn't very much contamination. But there was enough to cause a partial restriction of the fuel screen in the gascolator and to get caught in the fuel screen in the flow divider. It really was a tiny amount overall. But, to quote Mercutio, "Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch; marry, 'tis enough."

On 8/25/2017 at 9:16 AM, teejayevans said:

What did you do for weather sources outside the USA?

The quality of weather sources varied greatly from place to place. Africa was pretty minimal. In other places (Oman, Pakistan, India, Myanmar, Thailand, and Singapore) the weather information was pretty good. Still, I am dependent on weather forecasting and not much enroute weather. In Singapore, Australia, and NZ ATC was able to steer me around weather. In the rest of the world I was pretty much on-my-own.

Now that is not as bad as it sounds because the tropics do not tend to have frontal systems, only random CBs. But there are a LOT of CBs out there. 

So I found my eyes and my Stormscope to be of great use. Most of the time that was sufficient. However I did end up penetrating a CB just before it became mature and the lightning started, so it did not show up on my Stormscope. I was upset by severe turbulence during that. I am glad that I teach upset recovery. I was rolled to about 120 degrees and 30 degrees nose-up during the upset. 

One of the things I did try was to use others on the ground superimposing my ground track on the satellite IR charts and trying to steer me around the worst of the cells. That did not really work. I can only guess it is because of the delay in getting the satellite IR charts out there. I am guessing they are on the order of 30 minutes late -- useless for avoiding cells. I ended up using my eyes and my stormscope to penetrate the ITCZ. 

On 8/25/2017 at 9:16 AM, teejayevans said:

Could or did you use a satellite phone in flight?

Yes. I used an Iridium phone. I equipped the aircraft with an Iridium antenna on the top of the fuselage. It just looks like another GPS antenna. I opted for the IridiumGO which uses my smartphone as a user interface. My smartphone interfaces through the audio panel bluetooth interface thus giving me 4 effective coms, i.e. VHF1, VHF2, HF, and satphone. 

On 8/25/2017 at 9:16 AM, teejayevans said:

Did you carry an spares,parts?

Yes, some. I had spare plugs, and a pretty decent toolkit, which I ended up using rather extensively. I had oil filters, safety wire, etc. I debated carrying a spare magneto and opted not to, which turned out to be a bad decision. Next time I will carry a spare mag and a buzz-box to be able to set mag timing. 

On 8/25/2017 at 9:16 AM, teejayevans said:

Thx

 

Good questions. 

[Piloto]

Of course all those spares are useless unless you or a nearby mechanic can fix the problem. On my way to Spain I met a Navajo pilot at Santa Maria LPAZ waiting for an engine cylinder. He has been there for one week waiting for the cylinder that he will replace himself. I found myself on a similar situation at Cartagena on a C421 on my way to Quito were it failed to retract due to a hydraulic valve in the nose. Tapped a couple times and fixed the problem. Same plane would not pressurize and the oxygen bottle was empty so I had to dodge the mountain peaks by radar at night with no GPS.

José

[Jerry 5TJ]

5 minutes ago, Piloto said:

.....so I had to dodge the mountain peaks by radar at night with no GPS.

José

Glad you're still with us, José. 

[MooneyCFII]

44 minutes ago, Piloto said:

Of course all those spares are useless unless you or a nearby mechanic can fix the problem.

Being able to fix one's airplane in the field is a useful skill. I have overhauled my own engines on occasion. Changing props, mags, jugs, or fuel system components isn't that big a deal. I can't think of a field repair on my Mooney I would not be willing to undertake myself ... under the watchful eye of a licensed A&P, of course. 

But there are a lot more people out there with FAA A&P licenses than you might expect.