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Never regret

The weather was nice and clear today, although it was rather cold. But it wasn't below freezing so I took the plane up for about an hour and a half this afternoon.

There are times when I'm not sure that I really want to go flying. But something I've noticed is that I've never put my plane away after a flight and thought to myself, "I wish I hadn't gone flying today." There are times when I've decided not to go, either because I'm not feeling well or because I'm not sure the weather conditions will remain VFR, but whenever I have gone, I've always, always, been glad I did it.

Before my last flight a couple weeks ago, I put a quart of oil in because it was down to about 6.25 quarts as measured on the dipstick. I flew for two hours that day. Today, when I checked the oil during my preflight, it read 7 quarts. So I lost about a quarter quart of oil in two hours. And based on the oil consumption rate I'd been seeing recently, it's very likely that some of that loss was not due to burning, but rather it being blown out of the engine. The conventional wisdom for Musketeers with O-360 engines is that anything over a certain amount will be blown out, which is why you never fill it up to the 8-quart maximum.

All this is to say that break-in continues to go well, and oil consumption is about where I expect it to be at this point. I've also now put exactly 12 hours on the engine since I got the plane back from the shop, according to the Hobbs meter. At 20 to 25 hours, I'll have the oil changed and we'll likely switch from mineral oil to regular ashless dispersant oil. Then, at the following oil change, I expect we'll resume sending samples to Blackstone for analysis.

No pictures from today's flight as I just wanted to enjoy being in the air.

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