The worlds longest annual begins…

So what might end up being the world’s largest annual has begun. Thankfully, the IA (aircraft mechanic) who works on my airplane is great about letting me do a bunch of the labor. Thankfully, I enjoy working on the airplane, but I do tend to spend a lot of time in the hangar during annual inspection season. This year, I’m trying to catch up on a number of little things:

  • Recovering the flaps and ailerons. The flaps take a lot of abuse because they sit so close to the ground during landing. One of the ailerons was slightly twisted, likely because someone wasn’t careful during the fabric shrink last time they were recovered, so fixing that should help in getting the airplane close to rigged correctly.
  • Sending the hydraulic powerpack (the thing that makes the gear and flaps go up and down) out for overhaul. It was seeping a little bit of hydraulic fluid out of the flap pressure adjustment, so it was time to send it out. Unfortunately, getting it out from under the front seats is a bit of a pain since it just barely fit in the first place.
  • Installing the service kits for a couple of old service letters that raised the fuel drains flush with the bottom of the airplane so that they wouldn’t get ripped off in the event of a gear up landing.
  • Replacing all the engine gauges (which needed overhaul) with a JPI EDM-900, which will free up some much needed panel space and give me exhaust gas and cylinder head temps for all 6 cylinders. The EDM-900 also gives fuel flow and fuel totalizer, meaning that I’ll be able to be much more precise in fuel management.
  • With the engine gauges by the left seat pilot removed, there’s space for the autopilot out of the way so that radio bay where it lives now is available for, well, radios. At the same time, since I had to remove a bunch of wiring to get the EDM-900 installed (and the old stuff out), I’m going to wire the nav input for the autopilot to include a selector for both nav radios. When we installed the radios a couple years ago, we only wired the autopilot to the VAL nav unit because the other unit was a King KX-145, which wouldn’t drive the autopilot. It’s since been replaced with a Narco Mk-12D, which is both a better receiver than the VAL and can drive the autopilot. So more wiring fun…
  • Since I’ve got most of the wiring bundles ripped apart to clean up the EDM-900, I’m also taking this opportunity to replace the 53 year old circuit breakers with modern breakers. In addition to being calibrated properly, they’ll all be pullable so equipment can be disabled in flight. The main bus was a poor design, so that will get updated as well. Once it’s done, the main bus should be able to handle 60 amps (it was originally designed for 35 amps) when I replace the generator with an alternator in the future.
  • If we’re not horribly behind come April (when I hope to do the annual inspection), I’m also going to try to deal with the fact that the horizontal stabilizer and elevators aren’t quite rigged correctly.

Obviously, quite a list. I started a couple weeks ago with the removal of the flaps and ailerons. They’ve now been stripped of fabric, sanded, repaired (the trailing edge of one of the flaps had some corrosion), and now varnished. I still have a coat of varnish to apply, hopefully on Wednesday. This weekend will start the actual covering process. Hopefully I’ll be able to get the fabric glued down and the first shrink done so that I can start stitching the following weekend.

On the EDM front, the panel’s stripped as far as needed and I’ve started pulling the wires that are no longer needed. The alarm light is installed, just so that I could claim I’ve installed something :). I’ve generally figured out where I’m going to put all the sensors and wire bundles, but it’s going to take a little while to get everything in place. Currently, the panel looks a little rough:

Empty panel

2012 Flying in Review

A winter storm is (literally) blowing through central New Mexico tomorrow, so it looks like my flying is done for 2012. It’s been an interesting flying year, with 37.7 hours and 46 takeoffs and landings through the year. The year started with a fun trip to Crested Butte to visit Pete, which involved some nice winter flying in the Colorado Rockies. Flying a pattern in Gunnison involves a downwind right up against the mountains, which was really cool. After some pretty serious engine work, I took the Bellanca to South Bend in July, got weathered out of flying to OSH, had a blast at OSH, and spent 9.5 hours dodging thunderstorms, bumps, and headwinds in one day flying home. The fall saw me buying my partner out of the Bellanca, so it’s all mine now :).

The start of 2013 brings a lot of work on the Bellanca. I’ve wanted a full engine monitor for some time, but panel space is a major problem. So after trying a lot of mock-ups, I’m going to install an EDM-900 primary, which will replace a lot of the aging instruments in the plane. The flaps and ailerons were painted with Emron before the Stits STC changed and the paint on the flaps has taken some abuse over the years. Combined with a bent aileron and it’s time to recover the wing control surfaces. Finally, the hydraulic powerpack is off to overhaul. So it will be a busy spring with maintenance, but hopefully some good flying time later in the year. The EDM-900 should also help run the airplane much more efficiently than I can with the single EGT/CHT today.

106.8 hours in the Bellanca

After a long hiatus, I’ve decided it’s time to resurrect the blog.

A little under 3 years ago, I bought a Bellanca Cruisemaster 260 with a neighbor. The Cruisemaster 260 is the last of the Cruisemaster line, also known as the Cardboard Connie due to its triple-tail configuration. The Wikipedia Page has more information about the Cruisemaster line (although not much). The short description: fast, fun, good capacity, plenty of power.

We decided to take the plane to Airventure this year, and I flew the plane out to South Bend for the month of July to deal with some midwest travel for work and see the ‘rents. We ended up not flying to Oshkosh due to weather, but it was still fun to fly out to the midwest and stretch the plane’s legs a bit. The flight home was a bit of a disaster, taking 9.5 hours of flying over 14 hours of daylight, most of it in bumps of nasty headwinds. But it ended with me crossing the 100 hour mark in the Bellanca. I almost know what I’m doing in the plane these days!

Rusty Blindness

After the 6 weeks in Bloomington and Canada, I needed to do a currency flight at the Aero Club. I went up with Mike on Wednesday after work. On the way home, I did some hood time and tried to shoot an ILS approach. Unfortunately, they were using 26 & 30, so the tower said no to the approach. But I did spend 30 minutes or so under the hood. I was a bit rusty, but not nearly as bad I was afraid I would be. Really need to find a safety pilot and get my currency up again. Oh, and I won a free hour of flight time from the club at the safety meeting. Woo!

200.7 hours in the air

Since I’m going to be in B’ton for the month of august, I got checked out in BMG’s Cessna 172SPs this morning. Did the usual slow flight, stalls, steep turns and all to get used to the plane. Then did the landings, which were a bit rough but workable. The plane wanted to float a lot more than either the T-41 or the XL2 does, so that took some getting used to. The flight also crosses the 200 hour total time mark for me — woo. Now to find some clouds while I’m out here to get the instrument ticket wet.

Flying Updates

Ok, I’ve been lame again. Perhaps busy is a better description.

June 1st, I got my instrument rating in Alamosa, CO. The flight was long and painful (it was 90+ degrees and the Liberty XL2 is not good with two people and high density altitude). We started with the ILS 2 approach from the DME arc, which would cover both the precision approach and the DME arc requirements. Flew the arc perfectly, despite some monster up and down drafts. Turned onto final approach, went to verify the approach signal and got silence. The ILS was out, which would be a problem, as a precision approach is a requirement for the checkride. We switched to a partial panel GPS 2 approach to cover the partial panel requirement, and I nailed that approach, went missed, and setup for the VOR-A approach, to cover the circling approach requirement. While we were climbing up to 10,000′ to start the approach, Jim (my examiner) called the airport manager on unicom and he agreed to go try to reset the ILS (it’s old and if it gets wet, apparently it sometimes trips a breaker). While on the outbound portion of the procedure turn, we caught a strong downdraft that had me at Vx (best angle of climb speed) and still losing altitude. I got out of that, made the turn, got caught in an updraft, was nose down, power back, and climbing. I didn’t really want to give that altitude away, so delayed my descent until I was sure I wouldn’t catch the previously mentioned downdraft. I crossed the VOR at about 9800′, despite a minimum crossing altitude of 9300′. I then made a stable, 800 fpm descent, hit minimum descent altitude before the missed approach point, and made a perfect pattern to land. We went missed and headed to the east to do some unusual attitude recoveries, during which we got news the ILS was back up and running. The examiner also expressed concern that the crossing of the VOR high was a failure situation, but agreed to continue the exam to completion. I then flew a very solid ILS approach to decision height and made a descent landing.

The FAA has some interesting rules on exams. The examiner has two options if the examinee does something that results in a failure — he can either continue the exam or end it right there. At the examiner’s discretion, he is only required to retest the part the examinee failed (and not everything else). Also, the retest can occur immediately (it used to be 30 days), as long as the instructor provides instruction in the areas of deficiency. We got on the ground, and had a fairly intense discussion about the situation. My position was that the altitude is a minimum, and as long as I made a stable descent, I was ok. His position was that it’s an assigned altitude to guarantee you make a stable descent. I was at 9800′ at 3:36 from the MAP and MDA is 8020. So I had to lose 1780′ in about 3.5 minutes (approach was flown at 90 knots), which is just a bit under 510 fpm. Recommended stable descent altitude is 800 fpm. Now, if I was a jet, I’d need to be much closer to 9300′ at the VOR, but I also wouldn’t be fighting the turbulence quite so much because I’d be in a properly powered Jet instead of an underpowered XL2.

Long and short, I had two choices. Appeal the examiner’s opinion to the FAA or agree to take the fail and retest. The examiner said he’d retest immediately, so I took that approach. The 45 minute discussion about whether I passed or failed was proof to both the examiner and my instructor that I understood the issues and both were equally unsure about the rules, so we all felt that the remedial training had occured. Anyway, I knew I could nail the approach, so I just took the retest option. Flew a single, picture perfect VOR-A approach to a landing. I was now an instrument pilot.

Yesterday I finally dealt with the fact that I had let my T-41C currency at the aero club expire. Flew down towards Belen, did a practice emergency landing down to 100′ or so at Mid-Valley (can’t actually land there due to aero club rules), did 2 landings at Belen, then went back to the Sunport. Uneventful, beautiful flight. It was good to fly after almost 6 weeks on the ground. When the instructor was filling out my logbook, he asked about the fail. I explained, he looked at the chart, and said “that’s a minimum, not an assigned altitude. You were fine as long as you made a stable approach.” Another instructor hanging around the office said the same thing. So I feel better that I was right after all.

As of yesterday, I have 197.4 hours total time, an instrument rating, and T-41C currency. I’m thinking about getting checked out in either the C-182 or C-182RG (retractable gear), as they’re a bit more roomy for taking people up (but also a bit more expensive). The RG would require a complex endorsement, which would take 5 hours or so of time.

Instrument Knowledge Test…

59/60 questions answered correctly, for a 98%. Missed a question on holding pattern entry, which is weird, since I can really do those in my sleep. Looking at the test bank, I’m wondering if I missed a “LEFT TURNS”, which flipped between a teardrop or a parallel. Either way, it’s done and I should practice holding pattern entries, since they’ll be on the oral part of the practical test.

20″ iMac, Windows XP, and games

My 20″ 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo does a lot of things really well, especially now that it has 4GB of memory. I almost always have a Windows XP VMWare running in one of my Spaces windows (which is awesome, BTW). It runs compiles plenty fast, X-Plane runs like a champ, yadda yadda. However, I’ve had sub-par results with certain games when running Windows XP under boot camp — namely Starcraft and Microsoft Flight Simulator X. I’ve finally found a solution, and it wasn’t all that hard after some searching on Apple’s support forums.

With Starcraft, the problem is that the game is too old, really. It runs full screen 640×480 256 colors. The iMac runs 1680×1050 32-bit color. The drivers provided by Apple for the ATI Radeon HD 2600 don’t support 640×480 in any color depth or any resolution at 256 colors. I was able to kind of fix the problem by creating a hardware profile that disabled the Radeon video driver, falling back to the default VESA driver. But that rendered Windows pretty much useless for anything but Starcraft when booted in that profile.

With Flight Simulator, it just didn’t go fast enough. FS is pretty demanding on the card, particularly when flying a plane with a G1000. Frame rates would quickly drop below 15FPS, which is pretty much unflyable.

This discussion on Apple’s forum got me started down the path to upgrading the video drivers to ATI’s latest greatest. The drivers won’t install by default due to a weird part number on the iMac chips, but they will work. Here is a post with instructions on how to install the video driver. I’d recommend downloading the Catalyst Control Center package for the drivers, then follow his instructions. After the driver is loaded (and you’ve rebooted), go to C:\ATI\SUPPORT\\CCC and run the Setup application in there to install the Catalyst Control Center, which allows you to tweak various settings. One of the more important settings is in the monitor properties, where you can set the card to “Preserve Aspect Ratio”. Now, I get better frame rates in Flight Simulator, don’t have to do anything special to run Starcraft, and the aspect ratio for Starcraft is correct (I get black bars on the right/left of screen, but it’s better than everything being stretched). Much happier now — should have figured this out months ago.

Instrument Lesson: More approaches

Had a 7:00am flight today in an attempt to get back down on the ground before the winds got insane, which they’ve been doing all week. Flew three approaches — ILS 22 AEG, ILS 8 ABQ, and a VOR 8 circling to land on 3. The VOR 8 was partial panel, with the AI and DG failed. The flight was pretty uneventful — didn’t have any problems with either ILS, and nailed them pretty well.

The VOR 8 approach was a full procedure turn approach, starting from over the city. Headed out to the VOR (west of the city, 10.2NM from the end of runway 8) to start the approach, which starts by heading west for a couple of minutes, then turning around to head back to the airport. The turning around is called a procedure turn, and involves turning right (generally, sometimes left) 45 degrees or so, going that direction for a minute or so, then making a 180 turn to head back to the approach course, then turning onto the approach coarse. It looks something like this.

The wind at 8000′ was already picking up, and was coming basically directly from 300, which is the direction we were heading to start the procedure turn. So when we made the 180, we got pushed across the approach course and ended up way out of the way. We were doing the approach without the GPS moving map or position information (as you would in a plane with a VOR/DME but no GPS), so it took a minute to figure out where we were and how to get back where we needed to be. Eventful, but we managed. The rest of the approach was smooth and made a nice circling to land landing on runway 3.

1.0 hours of simulated instrument flight more completed, 2.9 hours remain. Also need 1.7 hours of cross-country PIC. Instrument knowledge test scheduled on Monday afternoon.