"St Louis Flying Club Newsletter"

St. Louis Flying Club Newsletter - 27 January 2007

From The President - By Todd Michal

Dear Members,

It was good to see you all again at the annual meeting. It has been exciting to watch the transformation of the plane from a warn 1970Õs model into a modern Ògood as newÓ bird. Our decision to repaint the plane will finish this transformation. We will need to finalize the color and design for the paint job in the next few weeks, so if you have a suggestion for the design, please get it in soon. The minutes from the meeting will be included in next months newsletter. My trip to Texas went off without a hitch. The new avionics were great (my wife even enjoyed playing with the GPS!). We put eighteen hours on the plane and had great weather. ' After many years of good use and several repairs by several member's wives, our old cowl plugs have been replaced. John purchased new plugs embroidered with the plane N number.

Happy Takeoffs!

Todd

Treasurer's Report - by Marlin Sipe

We are now paying $4.20 per gallon at JetCorp, which matches Millionair. It's actually set at retail minus 80 cents. If the Millionair price goes up, JetCorp will raise our price along with it. The Adjusted Treasury took a hit this month, dropping from $956 to $447. This is because of the high flight time this month, and the associated fuel expense. Next month when the flight time is paid, the Adjusted Treasury will see a huge increase, more than recovering.

Maintenance - by John

Fuel Step and Handle Kit - At the annual meeting, Mike McBride asked about the possibility of adding the fuel step and handle kit to our aircraft. There is a kit available (AK172-168J for roughly $500 that adds steps to the lower fuselage and struts and handles to the upper fuselage. The installation takes about 15 hours as doublers are required to distribute the loads. Even with doublers, these installations are prone to cracking and Cessna has issued a service bulletin (SEB 05-2) to inspect for fuselage and skin cracks near the steps. With the cost and significant installation effort required, it is probably best to use the small folding ladder we have or get a smaller, more portable ladder to carry in the baggage compartment if needed.

Exterior Paint - We are currently looking at the following two paint schemes. The top photo is patterned after the 2002 Cessna 172R and the lower picture is patterned after a 2006 C-172 SP. I talked to the paint shop and they said they could do either paint job and the cost would be the same although he said the curved design would take more effort and take longer to do. Please let me know your first choice, and if you are OK with either choice.

For the paint colors, these designs would use Jet Glow Matterhorn white for the overall aircraft and the following accent colors. The Khaki color matches the interior color and goes well with the blue and red shades. These colors on were scanned off of the Jetglow color charts and converted to a jpg so they don't match exactly but are close enough to get an idea what they will look like.

Engine Heater - Installation of the engine heater was approved at the annual meeting. I plan to put the plug in the front engine baffle so it can be reached easily when removing or installing the engine cowl plugs. I may hold off buying and installing it until the fall to see how the paint, WAAS upgrade, and annual efforts go.

WAAS Upgrade - We are currently on the waiting list to get the WAAAS upgrade installed in our GNS-430. We will also need to replace the GPS antenna on top of the aircraft with the new WAAS GPS antenna and get an update approved by the FAA for our Supplemental Flight Manual.

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