Aging like fine wine

I forgot to include it in the previous post but, when I was speaking with the mechanic a couple days ago, he commented that the airframe is in very good condition. Because my plane was originally used as a trainer, it has a lot of time on it. In fact, it has over 12,000 hours total time on the airframe. There are a few other planes in this line with similar time, but most have far less.

One reason it's still in good condition is that, when it was used for flight training at the University of Illinois, it was also used for mechanic training so it was maintained to a high standard during that time. And it has continued to be well maintained since then. Another reason is that Beechcraft built quality airplanes. They may not be the fastest, but they're solid. So, even though the engine needed overhauling, and it could use some paint, the bones are very good.

I have no reason to believe that this airplane will still be flying in ten or even twenty years time. I don't know how long I'll have it, but it's entirely possible this will be the only plane I ever own.

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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

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