Feeling better about the situation

I went out the shop today and spent about half an hour or so talking with the shop manager about my plane. Much of the work is done, but some remains. The trim tab has been installed, but apparently the rivets are not ones they normally have a large supply of, as they're waiting for one more before they can finish the installation and paint it. Currently that rivet hole is occupied by a cleco. Some things still to be done are fixing the wing root seal, replacing the landing light bulb, and fixing the red interior light. He thinks it's not the bulb, so fixing it will be a bit more involved, but hopefully not too hard.

Regarding the metal in the oil, he said it appears to be steel, so he doesn't think it's from the bearings. Rather, it could be from a gear, or possibly the cylinders. Either way, it's not like it's going to blow up or anything. The original plan was to run it for a time on the ground, then check it again. However, he is now recommending that I fly it for two hours or so, and then he'll bring it in to look at it. If they can't get to it right away, I'm okay to fly it more, just as long as I get at least two hours in. That shouldn't present a problem. I feel better about the situation than I did when I first heard about it.

He estimates it will be done sometime in the middle of next week. Hopefully the weather the following weekend will be nice and I can get that flying in as soon as possible.

Comments

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.

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...

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...

A Man and His Airplane

Search This Blog