A Hole in My Pocket - The First 100-hourly
I have not been looking forward to my first 100-hourly. A couple of comments from the mechanics indicated that I might have some problems in one of the other cylinders, so I've been a bit worried about what they'd find. I don't want to find out I've bought a dud, not that I think I have.
I put together a list of issues I wanted them to look at during the service. This list included:
- A new set of cowling screws
- the left hand fuel tank drain point sticks in the open position. After checking fuel, if you don't pull the thing back down, it continues to slowly drain the tank.
- Fuel Tank caps have leaky seals. Simon told me to watch for water in tanks after any decent rain.
- EGT Gauge not working
- Turn Coordinator - not working, and I get the "Turn Coordinator Power Failure" light go on
- Right Hand Seat push-to-talk switch broke, last time I pressed it.
- Fuel Gauges - not sure if they're working. On the flight back from Narrogin, it seemed that one of the gauges was showing empty the other day, when the tank had 30Litres.
- What is the story with the ADF and VOR?
Glen Caple, the Chief Engineer gave me a call during the day. He started to describe how it was going, and suggested I came down to have a look. The next day I decided to ride my bicycle, which is about a 25km distance. When I arrived, Glen showed me through what they'd found.
It was quite disarming to see Squibby so dismantled. Everything was taken off or opened up.
Cylinders
- Three of the four cylinders (the originals - remember I've replaced one) all had bad wear around the exhaust gasket. The gaskets have gone, and the resulting leak has worn away some of the metal on the cylinder, meaning it would have to be built up to get it to seal properly.
- The cylinders did not exhibit the scoring marks you would expect for cylinders so recently overhauled.
- Glen said they can build up and repair these cylinders, but for the labour, might be better off getting another 3 of the re-conditioned ones.
Tailplane
- They pulled enough straw, grass and leaves out of the tailplane to fill a pillow! A bird must have got in at some stage, I'm not sure where. I thought it might have happened while the aircraft was sitting at Narrogin, but the guys were pretty sure it had been like this for ages. They were pretty amazed at how much kept coming out.
- There was a corroded plate inside the tailplane - probably the nesting wouldn't have helped this. They are going to rebuild this.
Exhaust System
- This was very badly worn. Quite old. Cracks, wear, etc. They are getting it fixed up.
Tyre
- The right-hand main tyre had a big flat spot, on what is otherwise a relatively new tyre. The wear had gone through the rubber, and two layers of canvas. It was just about down to the tube. It must have landed with a brake locked on. Glen told me always to have my heels on the floor when I land.
Windows
- There were two windows they said were not OK. They've stopped some of the cracks by drilling them, and they've organised replacements.
Forward Section
The mechanics said they're going to clean up the wiring in the front section, to stop chafing and unnecessary wear.
Log Books
Glen couldn't believe the state of the log books. He said lots of the sections had not been filled in at all in recent years. Each time he wanted to know whether a particular AD had been carried out, he had to scour the entire book and read it, whereas there is a section at the back where it was supposed to be summarised.
It looks like the books were kept in order until about 1981, then something changed, and they weren't maintained very well.
I should point out that this does not reflect badly on Simon, the previous owner. As I understand it, he only purchased Squibby in the mid-to-late 90s, so this all happened well before he came on the scene. I'm imagining that subsequent LAMEs despaired, and didn't make the effort to get the books back in order, so the problem continued.
One of the reasons I'm really glad that the Royal Aero Club is maintaining Squibby now is that I have a lot of faith in them. After all, they maintain quite a large fleet of trainers, and have an excellent record - certainly the club aircraft are always in good shape. Glen was horrified by the books, and will do as much as he can to clean them up. Also, he was clear that a lot of the problems they were finding would have been evident at previous 100-hourly inspections.
I've got a theory that it's better to use the Aero Club LAMEs than other ones. This is because they're paid a salary, and are not in business for themselves. They have an entire fleet to maintain, so they don't need your business. So they're not going to suggest unnecessary work, just to make an extra buck. Nor will they cut corners. I definitely got the impression that they were not impressed with the maintenance state of Squibby - they said that it needed to be maintained with more care.
So, what am I to make of all this? Simon made it very clear to me that I was buying an old aircraft, so it's going to have maintenance costs. I knew it was not going to be perfect, and I knew I was buying it for a good price. I am and have always been happy that Simon was completely up-front and truthful with me. The things they're finding wrong, either Simon told me about, or he wasn't aware of. So I've got no complaints about that.
But I'm not looking forward to the bill. I stretched myself a little bit getting this aircraft, and we don't have much up our sleeve for a big bill.
I also spoke to a man named Alan about the electrics. He is not with the Aero Club, but his company does a lot of electrical work for them. He told me that the ADF and VOR were originals, and were un-maintainable. They are so old that it's just not worth trying to fix anything on them - they just need to be replaced if I want them to work properly.
I had heard avionics were expensive, so I asked him for a quote to replace the VOR & ADF. Actually, I'd really like to get Squibby up to IFR standard, so I could do an instrument rating one day, but I didn't ask about that - I was feeling a bit fragile. To my horrow, he quoted $10,000 for replacing the VOR and ADF. Turns out they'd need to re-do the entire radio stack, and there would be a lot of labour - they'd effectively be re-wiring the entire aircraft. I did not expect it to be cheap, but I was shocked by this figure. I think on the back of hearing that all the cylinders are looking poorly, I started to feel a bit sick.
Also, I accidentally hear him later talking to his mates about Squibby, he was not describing it very flatteringly. He was describing it like I'd bought a pile of crud - I heard him saying "it's even got a manual lever on the floor, to operate the flaps!"
I wasn't that happy to hear him speaking this way, but then, I'm really happy with Squibby, so what do I care what he thinks? I love Squibby - I like manual flaps, using a big lever. I like that it has big old avionics which can't be maintained. It has character. One day maybe I'll get a nice shiny aircraft - but for now, this is perfect for me.
Grounded
Because Squibby has been out of action so much lately, I've been getting frustrated. I've done two hours flying in the last two months.
Kim keeps catching me reading flying magazines. After I'd told her yet-another-interesting story from my latest issue, she said "I had no idea how into flying you are. It's so cute!"
The frustrating thing is, we're coming up to the end of summer, we've had months of great flying weather, and I've been on the ground.
I investigated flight simulators. I figured I'd go in and buy Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004. I did some research, just to see if I could get a musketeer plugin for it. I couldn't find one, but I did come across x-plane, an alternative simulator which I had never heard of it. What attracted me to x-plane is that someone in the Beech Aero Club has made a Musketeer sport model which is compatible with X-plane.
http://beechaeroclub.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=111
I tried out x-plane, but didn't really give it a fair go. I don't have a proper yoke control or joystick, so I was playing with keypresses, and found controlling the aircraft quite difficult. Also, x-plane was timing out the demo after about three minutes. As a software developer myself, I'm always interested to see how other people do their demos - there's a fine line between good frustration, enticing you to go out and buy, and bad frustration, causing you to uninstall from your hard-drive.
Although Squibby is not IFR-equipped, I have always thought that I would like to do an instrument rating one day. I think a flight-sim would be a good way to practice this sort of thing. I found a few IFR-special training programs, such as IP Trainer and IFR on Top (http://store.tailwinds.com/iptrontopifr.html). I thought maybe these would suit my purposes better.
Ultimately, I figured I'd also need to buy a control yoke as well, to make it all work nicely, but with Squibby in the hangar and costing who-knows-how-much, I am reluctant to keep going out and buying more toys. Kim is very generous and patient, but I want to show a bit of restraint.
Instead, I went out and bought a book on Instrument Flying. It was much cheaper, and should keep me busy for several months. Now I can learn the theory, which should satisfy my curiosity without the need to actually practice it.
We're In Print
Simon submitted an article to Australian Flying about our adventure. His article concentrates on our oil-management and decision-making.
We're in the March-April 2006 issue, and the section called "I learned about flying from that". They've done a pretty good drawing of Squibby.
| Click image to enlarge page 1 |
| Click image to enlarge page 2 |
I wrote about this incident here