Skip to main content

Rite of passage

 As they say, you're not really an airplane owner until you've cleaned a nest out of your plane.

Actually, I don't know if anyone says that. But maybe they should.

After work today, I went out to the airport to see if I could a) verify whether or not there was actually a nest in the tail of the plane and, b) clean it out if there was. Fortunately, my plane has two inspection panels on the sides of the fuselage just in front of the stabilator. I was able to remove them and, sure enough, there was a nest right there. It was mostly twigs and some soil. I pulled out what I could by hand, and made sure that there wasn't anything interfering with the stabilator cable and pulley. To clean it out thoroughly will require removing the tail cone and the aft ballast weight. This must be done by an A&P because the stabilator needs to be detached. Some Musketeers have a two-piece tail cone that can be removed without having to do that, but mine isn't so equipped. I'll ask the mechanic to do that when it goes in for annual.

Fortunately, there were no birds, eggs, babies, or even eggshells. Either the female hadn't yet laid any eggs, or the babies had already left the nest and the shells had been cleaned up. I'm not an expert on bird behavior, but a cursory search of the interwebz indicates that birds do remove eggshells from their nests so either possibility could be true.

When I put the plane away after flying it this past Saturday, I left the stabilator in the full pitch up position, rather than in the full pitch down position as normal. This reduces the size of the openings on either side of the tail cone where the stabilator passes through, and through which the birds had been passing. There were droppings on the top of the stabilator, but it did appear that the birds hadn't gone through that opening. They might have gone through underneath, but I couldn't tell one way or the other. After cleaning out the nest, I left it in the full up position again. I may go out there later this week with my off-brand shop vacuum and see if I can pull any more stuff out of there. I also have some anti-corrosion spray coming from the big A which I can spray in there which will hopefully arrest any corrosion that might be occurring. I don't know how effective it will be without having fully cleaned everything out, but it can't hurt. I'll ask the A&P to spray some more in there during the annual. I'm hoping that some sort of anti-corrosion substance or coating had already been applied before I bought the plane.

It also appeared that the birds hadn't left many, if any droppings inside the plane. I was hoping that would be case, thinking they wouldn't want to foul their own nest. I think what I was smelling in the cabin on Saturday was the soil that they'd brought in rather than guano. Next time I go out there, I may bring a can of air freshener and spray some in the cabin.

I know I should have taken some pictures, but I was so focused on getting the job done and going home that I didn't think about it until I'd removed most of the material. Oh well.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My engine is so pretty

I went out to the shop today to take a few pictures of my engine and plane before the engine is remounted. The baffling and some other stuff has already been attached to the engine. The engine mount is not back yet. Since the nose gear is attached to the engine mount, the plane is currently sitting on the main gear, and a couple of supports just behind the firewall, and under the tail. Here are a few of the photos I took. The engine looks lovely, to me at any rate, especially since I know those are new cylinders.
2 comments
Read more

Flying when you must

The previous post was titled "Flying when you can." Today the weather was so nice that there was no question about whether or not I'd go up. Today is Saturday, and if you have weather this nice on the weekend, at this time of year, you can't not go flying if it's at all possible. I'll probably go tomorrow, too. I hope so. With the work that was done during and after the annual inspection, my plane is finally fully functional. As far as I know, everything on it works. The intercom is even behaving itself, with a distinct lack of loud static during the last couple of flights. The shop didn't say if they did anything specific to fix it but either they did when I last asked them to take a look at it, or it's somehow sorted itself out. Hopefully it will work just fine, at least until I decide to replace the audio panel with one that has the intercom built in. As noted above, the weather today was absolutely gorgeous. I flew north out of Harvey Field up past...
1 comment
Read more

Night flying

One of the things I've wanted to do since I got current is to go up at night with an instructor for a refresher flight. While I can't do that in my airplane, I can still do it on one of the flight school's planes so I made a reservation for this evening to spend some time with an instructor in a 172. While the weather looked a bit iffy, it was good enough to go flying. I met my instructor at the appointed time, 7:00pm local time. The first thing we did was go out and perform the preflight inspection on the plane while there was sufficient daylight. After that, we spent about half an hour or so in his office going over the things to be aware of when flying at night. Once that was done, we walked out to the plane, got in, started it up, and headed out. We headed north for a while as we discussed the unique aspects of piloting and navigating at night. For example, using the horizon as an attitude reference, and recognizing the presence of poor weather conditions. The weather i...
1 comment
Read more