St. Louis Flying Club Newsletter - 19 April 2003

From The President - By Mike Piccirilli

Dear Members,

There has been alot of flying club e-mail activity this past month; Annual preparation, insurance renewal, DG precession, and airport security stickers. Hopefully you have all replied to Todd regarding the insurance questions and to Marlin rearding the security stickers. Thanks for the calanders Todd!

The annual is all set for next weekend. I hope to be able to spend some time at Smartt helping out and I see from the e-mails that most of you will be able to support it also. Unfortunately, the treasury is not flush with cash at this time. The March statement showed us under the desired amount and the Artifical Horizon needed to be paid for also. We might have to have a special assessment to cover the difference. Because of this financial situation, I have not made any preparations for paint touch-up or interior enhancements, at this time. They can be put off.

I want to thank the members who worked on the compass correction issues in relation to the DG precession concerns.

Looking forward to seeing you at Smartt Field!

Happy Landings!
Pic

Treasurer's Report - by Marlin Sipe

Fuel Cost - I see on the latest fuel receipts from JetCorp that the price has gone up to $3.05/gallon. Applying the same formula we have been using to set the hourly rate, it should be raised $1 to $48/hour. With Pic's approval I will start using that rate on next month's bill.

Fuel prices at the CAF self-serve pump at Smartt went up to $2.40/gallon, which is still a good price. I asked at C-D when I was over there a couple weeks ago, and it was still $2.25, although "it should probably go up." I've been topping off at CAF whenever I stop to eat at the restaurant. Maybe we can leave the tanks low next week, and buy a bunch of the low-priced fuel at C-D.

Treasury Status - The Adjusted Treasury actually dropped $5 to $587, because of limited flying last month (less payment this month) and just the timing on fuel bills. This means we will probably come up short paying for the Annual. With Pics approval I'll take the difference between the $587 and the actual Annual cost and include it next month as an extra assessment to bring things up to zero to start the new year.

Yearly Flight Times - As I have done in the past, here's a list of hours flown by each member over the past 48 months.

Flight times for the past 48 months

Member Hours 2002-2003 Hours 2001-2002 Hours 2000-2001 Hours 1999-2000

Ganahl - - 2.7 1.9

Graklanoff - - - 7.3

Heilmann 15.2 15.3 11.8 6.4

Michal 8.0 17.7 24.0 22.5

Piccirilli 8.4 4.0 6.7 9.3

Russell 4.1 5.6 5.8 9.1

Schubert 25.9 36.5 15.8 -

Sipe 49.0 47.4 38.4 41.5

Skyles 7.9 8.4 14.2 12.2

Maintenance 5.4 3.8 1.1 1.5

Total 123.9 138.7 123.1 111.7

Maintenance - by John Heilmann

Compass Adjustment - The compass was swung and new compass correction cards were applied to the compass. Most of the readings are right on with the worst reading being 5 deg off (10 deg off is the max allowable). The compass errors were probably the cause of some of the DG procession sqwaks we've had over the past few years.

Master Switch - Marlin reported that the master switch was not working correctly. When trying to check the overvolt warning light, he could not get the right side of the master switch to move independantly of the right side. A ground check indicated that the switch was working intermittently. We plan to replace the master switch at the annual inspection.

Annual Inspection - The annual inspection is scheduled to start on Friday morning, April 25th and will hopefully be finished by Saturday evening. Some of the known maintenance actions are to:

replace the right main tire
replace the spark plugs
replace the master switch
replace the fuel line from the firewall to the carburetor

If you know of any other maintenance actions that need to be addressed at the annual, please send Randy an email.

Oil Analysis - We received the oil analysis results from the March 15th oil change. The values look very good with no high or abnormal readings. The graph below, which normalizes values to reflect 50 hours between changes, indicates engine wear is back down to a low level, especially the Silicon or dirt readings. The affect of using Avblend is shown starting with sample 11 below.

Oil Contaminants

Sample Date Hours Alum 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

9 10-Feb-01 54 14 46 5 5 116 7

10 7-July-01 56 13 57 3 6 124 13

11 26-Oct-01 45 10 44 3 4 83 14

12 28-Apr-02 57 14 56 3 8 165 4

13 15-Mar-03 55 12 56 3 7 108 6

Cirrus Open House

Cirrus Design will be holding an open house at Thunder Aviation on Friday, April 25 from 3-7pm and on Saturday, April 26 from 9am-5pm. Cirrus will have their Mobile Show Room (53' semi-trailer) with an airplane you can sit in and test dream.

BFR/Medicals Due - by Todd Michal

Thanks for keeping me up to date on your medical and BFR changes. According to my records, here are the only items due in the next few months:

Upcoming expirations include:

Todd Michal - Medical in May 2003.
Randy Skyles - Medical in June 2003.
Mike Piccirilli - Medical in June 2003.

FAA Private and Instrument Test Questions

See how much you remember from your FAA Private Pilot and Instrument Rating Written Test by taking a quick 10 question test. Submit your answers and you will receive the correct answers and your score. (Don't worry, only you see the test results and your score.) This is a quick and easy way to keep familiar with the FARs. Use the links below and try to get a 100%:

The links above take you to Kip's FAA written Test Preparation Site. This site can be found directly at: http://w3.one.net/~kip/faatest.html

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