St Louis Flying Club

Club Newsletter - 18 September 2000

From The President - By Mike Piccirilli

Dear Members,

I flew our plane down to Gastin's Resort, on the White River in Arkansas, this past month with John Heilmann. The plane was fine (didn't use Com 2 to keep the heat down). I strongly suggest you fly down there if you have the chance. Very nice grass strip, nice restaurant, cabins, and lots of boats for fishing. The strip is down in a valley (basically a one way in, one way out strip).

I'm looking forward to our meeting on Thursday. Below is my agenda:

Treasury report (how much, are current dues and hourly fee sufficient?)
Open Discussion, Identify Issues. Assign Next Actions
- Avionics: Placement of radios, avionics cooling fan, replacement of radios, headset connections, microphone issues, tracking of each avionics issue via a root cause analysis, does it make sense to remove the ADF and replace with a combination GPS moving map/communication radio (recurring database cost)?
- Paint touch up: Wing leading edge, cowling, wheel pants ($1,500-$1,600)
- Seat Refurbishment (Slip Covers?)/Carpeting
- Autopilot: Does anyone have experience with this type of autopilot in another aircraft? Do they all work as crappy as this one? Does it need to be repaired? Does anyone use? Should we just remove it (including the servo)? Save the weight and gain the panel space.
- Add backup vacuum system or add backup electrical gyros (see the following paragraph)
- Buy new aircraft incorporating all our desires?

I received an emergency AD dealing with the oil filter converter plate gasket. I reviewed it with Randy. We determined that it was not applicable to us do to it only applying to engines built, overhauled, or filter converter plate being added after 4/1/99. Randy is going to do a little more research on it as it made no sense that new aircraft needs to change these gaskets every 50 hours but our 10+ year old converter plate doesn't need any attention!

Happy Landings, PIC

From The Treasurer - From Marlin Sipe

The Adjusted Treasury took a nice jump this month, putting us ahead of the game for saving for the Annual. Now hopefully there won't be any expensive repairs, and we'll be in good shape.

Last month we didn't have any fuel charges on the credit card. This month it's $320. Seems like they get delayed and arrive in bunches.

Maintenance Corner - From Marlin Sipe & Randy Skyles

Is anyone else having problems opening the lock on the backage compartment door? Heilmann and PIC tried their keys last weekend and could not get it to open. If someone has a key that works, let us know and we will get some new keys made. If other people are having the same problem, we will get a new lock.

The Oil Analysis results from the oil change on 8/19 were received and are shown below. All the values look normal.

Sample	Date	Hours	Aluminum	Iron	Copper	Nickel	Chrome	Silicon

1	9-Aug-96	50	18	47	4	4	156	6
2	30-Oct-97	54	16	52	4	4	204	3
3	19-Jun-98	47	18	51	1	4	160	10
4	23-Oct-98	45	12	39	4	5	219	5
5	15-Apr-99	31	11	39	3	5	145	8
6	15-Aug-99	60	12	45	3	8	287	8
7	15-Apr-00	52	13	45	4	8	207	8
8	19-Aug-00	50	13	45	5	6	207	6

ChartObject Oil Contaminants

PAST NEWSLETTERS