Approaching the annual

I know I haven't been posting much, but that's mainly because nothing much of note has been happening. I've been flying, but not really going anywhere in particular. The engine continues to run very well, and the plane is still solid. I was hoping to do more "destination" flying this year but, for whatever reason(s), it didn't really happen. Next year, hopefully....

On the horizon, though, is the annual inspection. It's already scheduled for mid-December, since the last annual is good to the end of that month. I've also arranged for it to be an owner-assisted annual. I'm told that every airplane owner should do this at least once and I can certainly understand why that is the case, even before I do it. I will be learning about my airplane in a way that nothing else will match and, incidentally, save some money at the same time. I'm looking forward to it.

Leading up to the annual, I have been compiling a list of squawks that I want to take care of. With a plane this age, there are always going to be some. Nothing major, nothing that affects airworthiness, but items that I want to get fixed regardless. Hopefully, the annual itself and any fixes that need to be made won't be terribly expensive. Last year's annual was sort of mixed in with the engine overhaul, as it was done at the same time as the engine was re-installed. This year it will be standalone.

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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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