Archive for December, 2008

More IFR Training Yet Another Oil Change

Tuesday, December 30th, 2008

Scott is still hard at work with his IFR training. I got my BFR done after a few hitches. My first planned instructor got sick, the second instructor got rained out even with a 0% chance of rain that day - although the ground portion was completed, and finally the last instructor got the prize of getting paid to ride an hour in our RV.

Another 25 hours have passed, so the requisite oil change was completed. Scott had the day off, made a random afternoon decision to fly while he was out and about, flew over the office but I missed him, and completed the oil change while he was out there. He added some tape to the oil cooler and the cowl louvers. Of course, we had to test it all, so we went for an hour and a half training flight. Flew down to San Marcos to shoot the ILS approach and talked to Austin. It was a busy evening in the Class Charlie airspace, and I had quite a light show since it was night. The tape proved to be a bit much, so some of it will be coming back off. We also learned that if the NAV frequency was for an ILS, it will take priority of the guidance even if the EFIS isn’t set to NAV.

We have a 4 day weekend with a decent weather forecast, so there should be some RVating to be done. Probably some rivet pounding, too.

Happy New Year to Everyone!

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Results of the Oil Cooler Baffle

Monday, December 22nd, 2008

Friday found us at the airport for an evening flight. We needed to borrow the 2-story ladder from our hangar mate to replace one of our flood lights, and this was a good time to for him to meet us out there. A little airplane talk and a new light bulb later, we found ourselves up in the air.

The installation of the oil cooler baffle works just as smoothly in flight as on the ground. We saw in increase in oil temperatures of about 6-8 degrees. Not a huge increase, but nothing to sneeze at either. Scott has some more modifications in mind, plus a piece of tape, and we should be good to go for our winter season and some of these huge temperature swings.

This particular night sky was an amazing sight. The weather has been humid with on and off fog, mist, low clouds - all the fun winter weather stuff. Most of the clouds had moved out for the evening, but the high moisture content was still in the air. Off in the distance was a cloud bank that gave the appearance of mountains peeking out the top of low clouds. That is the clouds looked like the mountains. The high moisture in the air was absorbing / reflecting the lights from the city below making it appear as if it were white clouds around the mountain bases with the mountain peaks (the actual clouds) poking out the top. Sorry - a bit had to explain in words. I imagine this isn’t something I will see often, if ever again.

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Adjustable Oil Cooler and Freezing Temps

Tuesday, December 16th, 2008

Scott has been hatching a plan to build an adjustable baffle for the oil cooler. A post highlighting some success of blocking off the back of the oil cooler instead of the front gave him some new data to work with. The weather over the weekend consisted of high winds and low ceilings, so he started to put his plan in action. After some head scratching and card stock manipulation out at the hangar, out came the tools, scrap metal parts, the recently resized carb heat cable (just long enough for this job), and off to the garage - oops, shop. I don’t even recall too many inappropriate words coming out of the shop. Add to that aluminum shavings on the floor, and it must have been a good day out there.

Not wanting to have the airplane down any longer than necessary, we trudged out to the hangar Monday night after work in freezing temperatures to assemble the creation. Now, I moved to Texas for a reason, and freezing temps wasn’t it. I was wondering what in Hades I was doing in an uninsulated, unheated hanger with the wind howling outside in the middle of December. Then I remembered - Flying is Fun and we have to take care of 4822C so she takes care of us. OK - focus back. After 1.5 hours and a few trips under the instrument panel, the contraption was attached and working. The question now is to see how it wears.

Sorry - no pictures until the next oil change. The batteries in the camera were dead.

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