Moving video

Not aviation related but I felt this was worth of posting. As I understand, this was put together by a 15 year old young lady. Granted, I'm somewhat biased as my Dad was an Air Force pilot but watching this made me think more on the subject of supporting our troups so I thought I'd pass it along.

One chapter down in ASA CP written test prep.

One chapter down (basic aerodynamics), nine more to go. Lots of highlighting. Good thing that I bought that new 4-pack the other day.

So far, so good. I've had a few "Um...I have no idea" thoughts as I read through and attempt to answer the questions. I definitely plan to read through relevant chapters of a CP text or buy the FAA publication FAA-H-8083-25, Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge. I'll be borrowing my partner's Gleim CP text and brushing up on the aerodynamics stuff in short order. The stack of books continues to grow.

I've found a couple of websites that look like they'll be good candidates for practice tests. I haven't tried either of these yet but plan to do so fairly soon.
http://exams4pilots.org
http://mypilottests.com

It must have been a bad day at the ASA printing facility as my FAR/AIM showed up with a 25 page section upside down. Kudos to Amazon.com though. The return process was painless. They paid for return shipping and had a new copy to me in a matter of a couple days.

It's not all books/no flying. I'll be learning some of the commercial maneuvers from one of my partners who just recently earned his CP certificate.

Next up: Aircraft Systems...

A new piloting journey

I've just taken the first small step towards obtaining my commercial pilot certificate. Granted, it's a small step (ordered & received written test prep book plus an '08 FAR/AIM)...but it's a step none the less towards my transition from PP-ASEL to CP-ASEL.

All I need to do now is start studying for the written test and I'll have accomplished my goal for '07. I figure I'll take the written test in early '08 and start the flying portion in late winter or early spring '08. There is that small matter of my CFII and whether he'll be located in California or Oregon but that's ok. First thing first: study for the written test, pass it and have it out of the way.

I do have two nice advantages that I plan to exploit. One: A nice complex aircraft at my disposal. This is one of the reasons I bought into the Arrow and after nearly three years of ownership and several hundred hours flying it, things are extremely familiar and comfortable. Two: One partner just recently received his CP-ASEL certificate so I plan to use his knowledge to learn the maneuvers in our plane.

I'm hoping to post more about my experience progressing from PP-ASEL to CP-ASEL. For the immediate future, I'm sure this will not be very exciting since it quite likely may involve rants about written test questions and such. :-) Blah...I promise it will be more exciting some number of months down the road.

New prop, one less AD & great customer service

This past December, I was lamenting our options in dealing with AD 2006-18-15, the repetitive eddy current inspections on our Hartzell prop hub. Our prop had been through three overhauls and it likely would not have made it through one more (prop shop did some measurements while on the plane and it was a matter of how thick the paint was as to whether or not it could go through another overhaul).

We considered repetitive inspections as well as priced out our options for 2-blade replacement props. We'd ruled out 3-blade options mostly due to the increased cost. After posting about it on Usenet, I received an e-mail from Kevin R. at Hartzell telling me about their 40% discount on a replacement prop and hub. As it turns out, this was about $1400 less than what a local prop shop had quoted me for a 2-blade McCauley prop & hub. My partners and I pondered the options and decided to go with the Hartzell option.

This past week we had the prop installed and it looks and works just fine. Yea for us! AD 2006-18-15 has been terminated. One thing I wanted to mention is the great customer service response from Hartzell. I'd been a little soured on them due to a pretty lame response to my questions of their guy at their booth during the 2006 AOPA expo. My experience in dealing with Hartzell for the replacement prop, however, dramatically turned my opinion around. Kevin provided all of the information for ordering the prop as well as answering a bunch of questions about returning the old prop. It was a very positive interaction and in the end, we received exactly what we were looking for at a substantial discount.

Milestones

Aviation milestones come in various forms. There are certificates, ratings, aircraft/people/hours flown, owning a plane, flying to new locations, or just learning to do something a different way. Some milestones are small and seem insignificant while others (like passing a check ride) are absolutely HUGE. Whatever the milestone, I've always enjoyed them at the time as well as when I crack open the logbook for a peek backwards in time.

A few days ago, I did just that with my logbook. Part of this was prompted by knowing that I'd recently added another digit to the "hundreds" column of my total flying time. After realizing that I'd added another 100 hours, I started thinking about where I'd been and what I'd done in that time.

I remember my first 100 hours (nearly 80 of which involved getting my private pilot's license). When I hit that first 100, it was a nice little milestone in the same year that I earned my PPL. Sure, not a big deal but, it was fun to reflect on the fact that I'd spent 100 hours untethered from the planet and doing something that I enjoy beyond measure.

Taking a look through my logbook, this last 100 hours in the air has taken me to quite a few wonderful places and let me do several great aviation related activities. I've had a chance to:

• Fly my youngest passenger ever, a 3-year old. He now talks about airplanes all the time and calls me "Captain Jack". I've already apologized to his folks for their future expenses getting Anthony's pilot's license :-)

• Flown another Angel flight, this time to Santa Monica enabling a cancer patient to get some regularly scheduled experimental treatment.
  

• While on the Santa Monica trip, I just had to stop by Van Nuys. Didn't get a chance to land on 16R but that's ok, it was very cool just being at such a great GA airport.

• 2006 and 2007 Oshkosh trips. There's just something about traveling a long distance via spam can. Along the way, I've stopped in some out of the way places, found some great spots to eat, and met several great folks.

• Flew into the 2007 Salinas Air Show and hung out right in front of where the Snowbirds parked.
  

• Participated in two young Eagles events where I've had the privilege of flying 17 kids, a couple of whom had never flown before.

• Stayed mostly IFR and night current. At the moment, these are two areas I need to work on :-) I guess that's what happen when a few months go by with little flying activities.

• Continued to hone my aircraft ownership skills via performing oil changes and whatever else I'm legally allowed to do on an airplane. I doubt I'll ever become an A&P but it sure is fun learning more about what I fly.

Looking ahead a bit, I'm hoping to celebrate a couple more milestones in the near future. I hope to start working on my commercial pilot certificate perhaps early next year. I also plan to complete the next phase of the FAA's WINGS program in lieu of a BFR. I figure it's money well spent getting some recurrent training.

So, yeah, it's fun looking back a bit and remembering things along the aviation journey. If you haven't done so lately, crack that logbook open and remember where you've been and what you've accomplished.

Seven more Young Eagles

Today was our second annual "airport day" at my home field and I had the privilege of flying seven kids as part of the EAA Young Eagles program (www.youngeagles.org).

It's amazing the different reactions kids have when flying. Some are very excited and ask tons of questions while others hardly say a word (until they are back on the ground and talking to their parents about how fun it was). Today I had kids on both ends of the spectrum. Sometimes I had to ask for it to be quiet so I could hear on the radio and at other times, I was the only one talking as I pointed out landmarks.

Another 1.6 hours in the logbook but a very special 1.6 hours as I had a chance to share my love of flying with seven kids ranging in age from 8-12. Three of these kids had never been in an airplane before and I was lucky enough to be their first pilot. Now, *that* is very cool. I'm not sure who has more fun, the kids or me.

If you ever have a chance to participate in something like this, jump at the chance. Even if you have to rent an airplane, I guarantee that it will be some of the most enjoyable flying you'll ever do.

Field replacing an alternator

While I'd hoped to post some Oshkosh related items during the trip, that...um...never happened :-)

The trip great as usual. We stopped in a few new places this time which meant we found a total of three new airport dogs to pet. No new airport cats to report though.

Everything was going well with the airplane until approximately 50 miles from Oshkosh when I notice a low voltage indication on the engine analyzer. I go through the drill of cycling the alternator but nothing changes...still reading right at 12 volts where it should be 14-14.1. At this point, I'm not too terribly worried since I recently installed a brand new battery and it's a wonderful VFR day. I do, however, shut down COM2, transponder, and the DME. When arriving at Oshkosh, one never knows when you might be required to hold due to arrivals being temporarily closed.

All goes smoothly with the arrival. Well, there was a Cirrus pilot who got a little concerned (unnecessarily so) about the tight arrival spacing. I was #2 in our flight of 6 and tower called the base turn and cleared my friend ahead of me to land. All of a sudden, the gal in the Cirrus, on maybe a 2 mile straight in final (likely an IFR arrival), says to the tower "You can't do that, I'm on final...I'm going to have to do a 360". Tower responds with "Mam, unless you see something I'm not, I don't see any issues here". Never mind that her doing a 360 in either direction would have been a bad idea due to the current arrival flow. I'm listing to this as I wait for tower to call my right base and clear me to land on 27. My brother picks up the Cirrus, we extend somewhat downwind until tower calls our base and everything works out fine. Sure, the spacing was tight...if this had been a normal airport but this is Oshkosh, you're expected to land on the numbers at the same time someone else is touching down maybe 2000 ft. in front of you. Ah, but I digress...

We setup camp in the North 40 and the next day, I start to investigate our alternator problem. It turns out that the ring connector to the main output stud had broken off due to being old and somewhat rusty. After breaking off, it sat there and arced such that the stud was worn approx. a third of the way through. The stud was also very loose. And, to add insult to injury, we found a crack in the alternator housing. End result: we decide to replace the alternator. It may very well have been the original and I know it had been rebuilt at least once in it's lifetime.

Fortunately, I have a friend who lives about an hour away from Oshkosh and who does a ton of his own maintenance. He is also logging time towards becoming an A&P. He shows up with tools in hand and the first thing we do is crimp on a new ring connector. I then spend a couple hours visiting the vendor exhibits and decide on buying a new Plane Power alternator. Yikes, $450. Ah, but it comes out of the partnership maintenance fund so it's "free"...as in "already paid for". Very cool :-)

The next day, we have the alternator installed and I crank up the plane and verify that it puts out 14 volts with everything electrical turned on. Life is good. It gets even better though as I have another friend who is an A&P and he shows up for a party the next night and says "I understand you need a sigh off for an alternator installation". Why, yes...yes I do. We wander over to the plane, he takes a look, and writes up a logbook entry for me. It sure is nice to have friends in aviation.

Just getting started...dropping the lower cowling:


The installation in full swing:

The rest of the show was great and the trip home uneventful with the alternator outputting it's normal 14-14.1 volts the entire way home.

Oshkosh preparations

When I start pulling the camping gear down from the garage storage, it's officially Oshkosh preparation time. Bright and early this morning, me and my airport dog in training hit the garage and did just that. Out came the step ladder and down came the camping gear. Airport dog in training was more interested in chewing on sticks in the front yard. He has no idea that his world is about to change when I disappear for 11 days.

Today was a banner day in the Oshkosh related mail department. The last of the ordered charts arrived in the mail...one more thing to check off the "to-do" list. All I need now is a North Central AFD and I'm set. Well, that and print out a bunch of NOS approach plates for a bunch of airports. Last year I ordered and hauled way too many bound NOS charts. This year, I plan to print out whatever I think I'd need based on planned gas and overnight stops. Not only do I kill less trees this way, I haul probably 6-7 less pounds on the 3000 nm journey.

Even better in the package receiving department, my Aircraft Spruce order showed up today. The main component of which is a new Concorde RG battery for the Arrow. Our old battery is on its way out and I really don't want to get stuck somewhere on the way to/from the Left Coast to Oshkosh with a dead battery.

It's time for some serious hangar rat duty. Battery replacement, mounting a fire extinguisher, replacing wing tip screws/washers with new stainless steel hardware, troubleshooting the copilot side PTT switch not working, and gluing on the pilot side right rudder pedal rubber pad. Oh yeah, tonight may be a late one at the hangar but that's ok, I'm long overdue in the hangar rat department.

Another item checked off the Oshkosh to-do list was updating the W&B spreadsheet I've perfected over the last couple of years. I still have to plug in a couple of final numbers but, for the moment anyway, we're approximately 100 lbs under gross with full fuel. Life is good :-)

T-minus 13 days until launch. If I can, I'm thinking about adding blog entires along the route.

Wing skin crack repaired

Ok, so here's what the fix for our lower wing skin crack looks like:


My friendly A&P suspects oil canning of the lower wing skin. Sounds like this can be caused by a couple of things. Walking on the wing walk area for one and putting the plane on jacks for another. This type of repair is somewhat common for Arrows. There was another one in for annual, sitting right next to ours and it had both sides done. Now I have something to look for when crawling around other Arrows. Reminds me of my brother and how he pokes around homebuilts looking for things that other folks (like me) would never notice.

The plane is out of annual and I performed the required test pilot duties this afternoon. The funny thing is that I was planning to have a friend fly his plane back to my home airport so that he could fly me back to the airport where we had the annual done, I could pickup my car, and go home. All was well and good until we hop in his plane for the return flight and it won't start due to a solenoid problem. So, we put his plane in my hangar then flew back back where we had the annual done. Hopefully the stars will align tomorrow such that he can get someone to look at his plane and we can get our respective babies back in their normal nests. Not that another excuse to go flying is a bad thing :-)

Wing skin crack...ah, it must be annual time!

It's been far too long since posting anything. Add to that the subject of this post and...well...I'm not sure what to say...other than owning an airplane is always an adventure :-)

After a trip to Redding, CA Friday for an eddy current inspection on our prop hub (another subject altogether...but I'll resist the temptation to digress), one partner and I were crawling around under the Arrow cleaning stuff up a bit. I was under the right wing wiping out the wheel well and generally cleaning the goo off of the landing gear. I started working inboard of the gear, wiping off dirt and grime when I came across this:


The crack is in the forward wing skin, just forward of the rivet line attaching the skin to the spar. It is approximately three inches in length. At the moment, I'm getting some initial feedback from various friends and owners associations. Overall, however, the jury is out on a final solution for fixing this. Judgment day will come next week as we drop the plane off for the annual inspection. Fortunately, we deal with a great repair shop so I'm confident that we'll get the strait scoop on how best to proceed. Bah...just when we were hoping for a more reasonable repair bill than last year when two wing ribs had to be replaced as a result of performing a Piper service bulletin (the dreaded SB1161 for any Piper owners out there). We were on the bleeding edge of that one and it was a rather costly repair. Thank goodness for a partnership and cost sharing!

Here's to hoping for better future posts.

When parts leave the airframe

Reading John's post about the possibility of a window departing the airframe reminded me of a time when, shortly after takeoff, it was rather obvious that we'd left something on the runway.

I'd flown a co-worker to Minden, NV for an...um...offsite breakfast meeting to discuss how we should approach some software development tasks. Ok, that wasn't it at all. We purposely planned to fly out for a quick breakfast and Minden was the perfect location as I hadn't taken the Arrow on any high altitude/mountain flights. A great way to start the work day, BTW.

Fast forward to the takeoff roll leaving Minden. Everything is normal, positive rate of climb, gear up, turn left 20 degrees on departure, starting to think about the 1000 ft. AGL checks when my co-worker says "We lost the oil door back on the runway". Huh? Sitting up a little more in the seat reveals a nice D-shaped hole in the cowl. Yep, no oil door. Suddenly my mind is filled with questions and it's time for some quick piloting decisions. Do I return to look for it? Do I keep going? Wait, what if it hit the tail/stabilator? Crud, a new oil door is a couple hundred bucks...argh...time to go back to the airport, take a look at the plane then try hunting down the oil door.

We return to the airport, shut down, checkout the plane, then start the oil door hunt. Fortunately, there was no damage to the airframe (well, other than the funny D-shaped hole):

A guy working the glider operations stops by in his truck, says "hop in, we'll drive down the runway to look for it", and off we go. 10 minutes later we see it off the right side of the runway, barely scratched. Our new found friend in the truck calls up a mechanic and after force fitting a piece of hinge wire in place and applying the appropriate amount of 200-mph tape, we're good to go. "How much do we owe you?" I ask. "Nothing" is the reply. Amazing.

As we're crossing Lake Tahoe on the return trip, I have visions of the door flying off to a watery demise. I keep a good eye on the door and it doesn't move.

Thinking back, I don't know exactly when the door came off. Likely, it was just about at the point of rotation. I didn't even see it. My co-worker saw a flash of white as we were about to rotate.

So, stuff leaving the airframe is never good. I'm fortunate that it I found my wayward part. I'm more fortunate that the wayward part was something small. I'm most fortunate that there was no damage to the airframe such that keeping the shiny side up and the dirty side down was a challenge.

Not quite one-six right

I recently had a chance to fly down to Southern California for the first time. Since the initial destination was Santa Monica (KSMO), I figured my logbook needed an entry to Van Nuys (KVNY). While I would have loved to hear "Arrow , cleared to land one six right", I had to settle for the "...three four left" version followed a minute later by "...switch landing runways, cleared to land three four right".

Note to self...next time, park somewhere on the East side of the field but we wound up at Million Air since we didn't really think ahead as to where we should have parked. Ah, next time...

Now, if I could just find my camera and post the only picture taken the entire trip...#2 behind a G-IV.

A few random flying pictures

A recent visitor thought I needed more photos...so, here you have it, a post with a few random flying pictures.

My ride, a '71 Arrow-200

11,000 MSL, before sunrise, headed to Palm Springs


Departed Lancaster, climbing to 10,000 so I can pickup my IFR clearance back home.


The entire valley, from Bakersfield to Sacramento is fogged in. Nice to know that I could get down through the overcast if I needed to.


Oshkosh towel rack, 2005


Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe. From a few years ago on a clear winter day. One of my favorites.


Short final, South Lake Tahoe, flying a a rental '67 C-172