"St Louis Flying Club Newsletter"

St. Louis Flying Club Newsletter - 22 February 2005

From The President - By Mike Piccirilli

Dear Members,

I wanted to thank John for putting out the recent note on my adventures with the engine "roughness". I had taken the day off on Friday, Feb 11, and had planned a cross country to southern MO. I told John that the engine roughness came on so suddenly that it was the first time I can remember very actively looking for landing spots with this plane. Through playing with the carb heat and mags, I isolated it to the left mag. As I was headed back to Spirit, after I gained a couple thousand more feet, I tried switching back to both and couldn't noticably feel any roughness. So I left it on both and decided to get some touch & gos in. On my last downwind, I switched to the left mag and felt some roughness, so I felt good that we had an isolated problem with that mag or with the spark plugs on that mag. When I taxied in, I pulled to the side of the ramp and did an engine runup at 1700. Low and behold, only the normal mag drop. Time to turn it over to Randy and John!

After John researched it and found out the mags were both at about 10 years old and had 1,000 hrs, it made sense to replace them. The package deal with the hire harnesses made even more sense. Bottom line is that the parts will cost about $1,050, or $150 a member. I see this a separate maintenance issue so I have authorized a special assessment to cover the cost. .

Happy Landings!
Pic

Treasurer's Report - by Marlin Sipe

The Adjusted Treasury took a nice jump this month from $980 to $1338, partly because of the low flight time (low fuel cost) this past month. This still leaves things looking real good for the upcoming Annual.

A special assessment of $150 per member is included this month to cover the new mags. The cost of the new mags came to about $1043, plus some shipping. The expense will be shown on the bill next month when I have the final numbers. Also, this way the expense and the assessment payments both happen at the same time, keeping the Treasury from being way off for a month.

The fuel price has gone up again, to $3.65/gallon. This means the hourly rate will go up $1 to $53/hour next month, with Pic's approval.

Maintenance - by John & Randy
Inspection Records

Magneto Change - With PIC's report of engine roughness, we did some research on our current magnetos. The Left hand magneto was replaced back in 1991 and had about 1240 hours on it. The RH mag was overhauled in June 1995 and had about 950 hours since the overhaul or 1350 since new.

After discussion with Mike and Randy, we decided the best course of action was to replace both mags due to their high time and length of service. There is not much difference in the cost to overhaul slick mags and the the cost to buy new slick mags. We also replaced the harness as it was not much more than the cost of two magnetos when purchased in a kit. The new magnetos were installed on Feb 20. The RH Mag is a Slick P/N 4370, S/N 04102318. The LH Mag is a Slick P/N 4371, S/N 04102628. The harness was a Slick M4001 and MAG gaskets were P/N M3426 .

Oil Change - The mineral oil used to break in the number 2 cylinder was changed on 20 Feb. We now have Phillips X/C 20W-50 oil in the aircraft. The next oil change is due at a tach time of 3953.2 hours.

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