"St Louis Flying Club Newsletter"

St. Louis Flying Club Newsletter - 23 April 2006

From The President - By Todd Michal

Dear Members,

It's exciting to see the avionics upgrades progressing so rapidly. The rebate and any additional amount we get from the sale of the old radio's should help defray the unexpected cost of overhauling the turn coordinator. The compression test on the cylinders came back very positive (see John's note in the maintenance corner). Hopefully with this good news we will be able to delay the cylinder overhaul/replacement for at least another year.

Thanks to all that have helped so far with the upgrade and annual inspection work. John, Marlin, and Mike McBride helped out with the annual inspection this last weekend (I hope John took pictures!). Special thanks to John and Marlin for the numerous hours they have spent on the avionics work. Their dedication has saved the club thousands of dollars.

With any luck, N20843 may be flying with new avionics before the next newsletter!

Happy Landings!
Todd

Treasurer's Report - by Marlin Sipe

Fuel at JetCorp is up 10 cents to $4.30. This means the hourly rate will go up $1 to $58 next month.

Although there are now 8 members, it was decided to keep the dues unchanged until the upgrade is done and we have the new insurance quote. At that time the dues will be adjusted as appropriate for the new fixed expenses.

John has a credit for the new avionics and clock, but there will still be expenses for wire and cable, connectors, some other misc hardware, plus the hardware for programming the GPS data card, GPS database subscription, etc.

The Adjusted Treasury assumes each person paid only their expenses, so the extra that each member paid is not reflected there. Since we are now showing the avionics as a large expense paid by John, the Adjusted Treasury is negative $6017. To try to keep things making sense, I'm showing enough of a special assessment ($755) to cover that shortage so far. This uses up some (but not all) of the extra $820 that each person paid early. As a result, some people still show a credit balance. By this time next month, we will hopefully be done with expenses (new avionics, Annual, Turn Coordinator repair, etc.), or at least know pretty close what remains. At that time, there will be another special assessment to bring the Adjusted Treasury back up to zero again after those remaining expenses. The total of the extra assessments will include not only the upgrade, but also the Turn Coordinator and Annual Inspection items.

If you have a credit remaining, there's no need to pay anything this month. You can wait until the bill next month when you will again have a balance due. Everyone keep in mind that the remainder of your extra $820 is paying (or helping to pay) your dues and flight time this month. The alternative (which you can do if you want) would be to still pay dues ($75) and flight time this month, regardless of your balance, which would maintain more of a credit balance to cover the assessment next month. It all works out the same in the end... pay now or pay later.

Near the bottom of the bill I am showing the avionics cost as a club asset to offset the expense until the new plane value is evaluated, so that the share value will at least be in the ballpark of being correct. At some point (next month or 2) will will evaluate the actual value of the plane with new avionics, which will give a more accurate share value. Things are just in flux until this whole project is done.

Maintenance - by John

Turn Coordinator - Marlin sent the turn coordinator in for overhaul. Century Instruments called and said they need to replace the rotor in addition to the other normal overhaul parts and that the total cost should be under $400. They should be finished with the overhaul this week and will ship it back.

Avionics Upgrade - The avionics upgrade is well underway. The old avionics and associated wiring has been removed and the new GPS antenna wiring has been routed. We will be replacing all of the old COM, NAV, Transponder and Marker Beacon coax cable with new RG-400 cable to maximize performance of the new avionics. A second music input jack is being added to the rear seat area. The cooling fan has been mounted in the center lower console area and will provide cooling to the GPS and Transponder. The new clock was installed and powered up this weekend. The FAA approved the installation data for the clock and a Form 337 will be submitted when the installation is completed.

Annual Inspection - Thanks to Mike McBride's help, we started the annual inspection on april 15th and completed the majority of structural inspections in the wing and tail section. Mike removed the wing leveler actuator from the right wing and cleaned and lubricated it. The left tire had flat spots with no tread and a new tire and inner tube were ordered. The remaining inspections for the annual should be completed this weekend. We had good results with the compression test with the results/trends shown below:

Cylinder #1 - 76
Cylinder #2 - 77
Cylinder #3 - 70

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