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St. Louis Flying Club Newsletter - 31 January 2025

From The President - By Steve

Dear Members,

I want to thank Brian Williams for his work on securing our insurance coverage for 2025. As is usually the case we received only one quote from our current carrier and have similar coverage as last year, albeit at a higher rate than anticipated. Please see TJ's section on what we are doing to keep our dues at the current level for now.

Thanks to John, Larry, and Damien as they work to replace the hydraulic pump in the Arrow (See maintenance section below). The weather is not cooperating but they are working through it. The weather has not done much for our flying hours either as each airplane only flew a couple of times in the last billing period.

Looking forward to Spring!

Steve

Treasurer's Report - by T.J

BILLING STATEMENT

Comments:

  • Thanks for the receipts and please be sure to send them as soon as you fly.
  • Please let me know if you have any questions or comments.

BALANCE SHEET

  • We have paid for our 2025 insurance in January so prepaid assets have increased with a corresponding decrease in cash related to insurance.
  • See dues discussion in the section below, but given the overall cost of insurance, the officers have elected to collapse the avionics/improvement funds so that dues can be held flat for the foreseeable future.
  • All other balance sheet items have not materially changed.

Dues

  • Dues for 2025 are as shown in the table below.
  • Given the increase in insurance, as shown on the balance sheet, the improvement funds have been collapsed, and we are no longer contributing to improvements through dues. Future improvements, if any, will be funded through available cash, or an assessment.
  • Please let me know if there are questions.

   Maintenance - by John

N202CR RV-7A

  • Oil Change The RV oil and filter were changed on 1 February. The filter looked clean with no metal found. The secondary air door was found damaged when the control arm bolt wore through the door. A new door was fabricated and installed.
  • Seat Back Support Larry fabricated a new seat back support. The old support was damaged and would no longer fit in the slot to support the seat. We think this was caused by the seat backs accidentally being swapped during the condition inspection and the seat backs supports not fitting as they should. We marked the back of the seats so we will know where they go in the future.

N20843 Cessna 172M

  • #1 Cylinder EGT Probe - On February 4th, Damien helped replace the #1 EGT Probe.

N2242N Piper Arrow IV

  • Landing Gear Pump -We had a report that it seemed to take longer for the gear to extend and retract than it used to. The gear was working OK but just took a little longer. Shortly after we had a report that the Gear in transit light would stay on, even when the gear was raised and the pump turned off. We were finally able to resolve this issue by adjusting the nose gear up switch position. While verifying the fix in flight, the Landing gear failed to retract. We were able to verify this issue on the ground and traced it to a bad pump.

    We ordered and installed an overhauled HYC5005 hydraulic pump and it worked great retracting the gear once and extending it once. After that it would no longer work. We spent a day trying to figure out why the pump stopped working and replaced the old pump relays thinking that maybe the cause. We ended up calling the company that overhauled the pump and they said to try hitting the motor with a rubber mallet and see if that would get it to run. Sure enough, after a few taps with the mallet, the pump would run and retract the gear. We had to hit the pump motor each time we wanted to raise or lower the gear. Not wanting that to be our final solution, we ordered a new overhauled pump today and it should arrive on February 6th. Hopefully this one will work better and we can return the aircraft to service.


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