What Did You Do To Save General Aviation Today?

[geaton196]

Replying to topic... I'm 62 and am working towards my A&P. I'm a low-time pilot but will begin to rectify that

Way to go! You enrolled in an A&P school? I'm also low time ppl, building a Rebel, but really want an A&P

 

[PiperCruisin]

Doing many fixes and upgrades to an old Piper Cherokee I bought. People don't take care of a lot of these old planes because they make some monetary justification to neglect them and hope they still get them from A to B without incident. I figure I don't own it, I'm just the current caretaker. As far as monetary justification goes, it is still 90% of the performance at 15% of the cost of new.

 

[Victor Bravo]

A cleaned-up, air-sealed, and mildly tuned Cherokee can do remarkable things. Art Mattson proved that out very clearly.

 

[Pops]

A cleaned-up, air-sealed, and mildly tuned Cherokee can do remarkable things. Art Mattson proved that out very clearly.

Wife and I did a lot of traveling around the U.S. in the Cherokee that we owned for 5 years. Nice airplane. I have flown almost every year of the 140's and 180's and the Warrior's and Archer. My favorite is a 1969 Cherokee 180.

 

[davbrown135]

Way to go! You enrolled in an A&P school? I'm also low time ppl, building a Rebel, but really want an A&P

Started down that path, then through serendipity found an A&P/IA that was willing to mentor me. I started just last August. Long way to go but am enjoying every minute. It's amazing how much you can learn in a short time. I've worked on a dozen different aircraft, from a Lancair to a Piper Aerostar 601. The A&P thing is my fourth career. I've retired as a USAF KC-135 Navigator, as a network administrator for the state, and as a program manager for a major IT company.

If you want it, go for it!

 

[PiperCruisin]

Wife and I did a lot of traveling around the U.S. in the Cherokee that we owned for 5 years. Nice airplane. I have flown almost every year of the 140's and 180's and the Warrior's and Archer. My favorite is a 1969 Cherokee 180.

Added Hoerner wing tips and doing full gap seals + powerflow exhaust. Was wanting to get an apples-to-apples comparison and did some sawtooth flights to establish the baseline, but doing an IRAN on the engine and going to higher compression pistons. It did not seem to be producing full power and high fuel consumption. A&P thought it could be a worn cam. It was one of those low time engines, 500 hours, last overhauled 25 years ago! People getting benched and letting their plane sit for decades...

 

[pwood66889]

"Started down that path, then through serendipity found an A&P/IA that was willing to mentor me. "
You will not regret getting that rating, Dave!

 

[PagoBay]

This is the Pacific Island I was deemed "stranded on" by the young HBA flyer VB in one of our past exchanges. That is Cocos Island, in the lower left.
Our local flight school out for fun. The south and east corner of Guam is our Practice Area. Pago Bay is ahead about due east of PGUM. I was in the hangar on the return and was shown the video. So I suggested a screen shot for pic of the week.

 

[Juanserapiloto]

Missed (Due to climate...) mi ULM flying class today.
That, make the world skies safer for at least one more week...

Just joking, as my class got suspended due to a terrible forecast (Hard winds, heavy rain...)
And, there is almost no clouds in the sky, and the wind is close to 0...
(Just 2 hours past my "class time")

You all are lucky guys (And gals...

Kind regards.
Juan.

 

[pwood66889]

Attended a meeting of the Carrabelle Flying Club and got WINGS credit and a hot dog!

 

[Toobuilder]

A buddy flew his Cessna 425 in from the Pheonix area, picked me up, and we made a short hop over the hill to look at a Rocket project. He has a new Rocket, and I now have cabin class turbine twin time logged (what a ride!). It was a good airplane adventure day.

 

[Mark Z]

That 425 is a great airplane.

 

[Toobuilder]

One of my managers at work is building a RV-4 (and a Bearhawk, and flies a Pitts S-2B and a Bonanza), so I took him up for a motivational flight in the Rocket yesterday. He lives at an airpatk 4 miles away so I flew over to pick him up. We have a newly painted displaced threshold on out runway. Its at 300 feet from the end, and I've always suspected that I could get off before the stripe, but never tried it. Turns out that the Rocket was airborne easily before the line with a little flap and a max effort application of throttle early in the process. I estimate that I was off in 250 feet, and probably 20 feet AGL by the 300 foot stripe.

So I flew over and picked up my Manager, threw him in the front seat and spent an hour cruising around at 202 KTAS in economy cruise.

The Rocket is no Valdez competetor, but a sub 300 foot takeoff roll and a 200+ knot cruise is nothing to sneeze at.

 

[Victor Bravo]

As mentioned earlier, our EAA chapter is trying to save general aviation by creating a chapter airplane build program. It's not just a "youth project", it's an "old guys, middle aged people, young adults, parents, and youth... all working together" project.

One of the discussions on HBA played a big part in this, when we talked about the fact that the adults have the money for aviation, not the kids. So I figured the old guys (who you lookin' at?) have the expertise and experience, the young kids are who the foundations and corporations writing grant checks want to help, the parents prevent this from becoming a drop-off day care center, and the middle aged people have spending money and represent potential new pilots, airplane builders, and chapter members.

We approached the Zenith Aircraft Company, and after seeing what our plans are... as of three days ago they have very generously agreed to support us. Because our chapter members have a fairly good range of skills in relevant areas (I'm a grant writer/fundraiser, we've got MBA's, accountants, project managers, aircraft mechanics, etc.) there's a good chance that how we do this project, our documentation, our "how to" notes, our methods of planning and project management... will become a useful template for other chapter and group build programs.

So the first step was to make room in our chapter hangar. Our hangar has a lot of vertical space, so we're building a half-size second floor "mezzanine" 9 feet up. We're using commercial "pallet racks" along the back and side walls of the hangar. This gives us the support for shelves/workbenches at the ground floor level, load beams to support the mezzanine, and even shelves/workbenches on the top floor.

Here's the first few pallet racks going up today, thanks to the extreme generosity and huge commitment of time and effort from Chapter 40 (and HBA) member SteveL:

 

[TFF]

Freezing right now but a couple of weeks ago got to flying status our old Enstrom Helicopter that was damaged in a training landing 8 years ago. The project was not supposed to take this long. Just about the only thing not taken apart, repaired, or replaced was separating the fiberglass off the cabin structure. It was almost truly 100% taken apart. Not show quality but way better than most this vintage.

 

[malte]

Over the Weekend I held another two Seminars with AOPA Germany. The ropics were an introduction into European (EASA) Maintenance Regulations for Pilot-Owners on Satureday and on Sunday I held a workshop for the development of an Aircraft Maintenance Program.

Many maintenance companies do not inform pilot-owners about the possibilities to be involved in the maintenance of their own aircraft. Contrary to popular belief, the possibilities are much bigger even on certified aircraft (that still dominate the European Aviation Culture).



Furthermore, in the AOPA letter 01/21, my 4th article on aircraft maintenance was published this weekend: https://aopa.de/wp-content/uploads/AOPA_Letter_01_2021.pdf In this issue I explained how to perform a functional check on your airspeed indicator with a few items from the home-improvement store.

 

[Mark Z]

Getting paperwork filed for FAA inspection. Roll out ceremony should coincide with the end of our school year

 

[Doran Jaffas]

Okay mine is going to sound really trivial. I just redid the original wheel pants on my Tailwind. Repaint, restriped and did some fiberglass work. In comparison to the RV wheel pants I like these better so I'll probably keep them on. in the process of redoing the RVs and just going to make them like a blank so anybody that ends up with them will have to do their own hole drilling and mounting. My plans are to replace the windshield as is 20 years old and it's starting to show some age. Planning to put a frame around the side window so I can open them in both doors. Replacing the plexiglass as well. eventually I'm going to do a repaint on whole airplane but it really looks pretty good right now so that's in the future. I'm waiting to hear from Ed sterba on a completion of my propeller that he is building for me. I'm planning on liking the performance better than the one I have on which is really a climb prop so that one will get sold when I get Ed's in my possession. Like I said kind of trivial compared to a lot on here but a lot of little bits of labor here and there on an airplane I truly enjoy.
Oh yeah, did a little spring cleaning in the hanger as well.

 

[Twodeaddogs]

I did a Permit to Fly inspection on a delightful Piper Cub and later got to fly it. On St Patrick's Day. Grins all round.

 

[Mark Z]

Presented tools for an aspiring aviation maintenance tech headed off to TSTC