"St Louis Flying Club Newsletter"

St. Louis Flying Club Newsletter - 23 July 2008

From The President - By Todd Michal

Dear Members,

My wife suprised me last week by asking me to fly her to South Dakota. Usually she would rather drive so naturally I jumped at the chance. Charley gave up his scheduled time to let us make the flight (Thanks Charley). The new equipment worked great! With the engine monitor I knew exactly how much fuel we had at any time and was able to easily find the optimum mixture setting. The GPS came in handy as well letting us fly direct and save some additional time. The only piece of equipment we were lacking was on board weather information. We ran into thunderstorms on the way there and on the way back. On the way out, we diverted to Des Moines and spent the night to let the storms pass (we paid the extra fee to keep the plane in a hangar and out of the storm). On the way back we had to divert again to avoid a line of storms. It was a great trip and I look forward to the next time I can convince my wife to fly!

Happy Takeoffs!

Todd

Treasurer's Report - by Mike McBride

The treasury balance fell by about $400 in the past month, and is now at just over $535. The adjusted treasury is still in the red at ($400), a $300 improvement from last month. The financial dynamics can be a bit mysterious, with fuel bills coming in out of sync with member payments, and I have not had the opportunity to dig into the factors that reduced the treasury balance as of yet. I also have not had time to update the fuel consumption statistics; however, on the 10+ hours I logged on the trip to Louisiana, using the leaning recommendations in the Cessna manual and the procedure described with the JPI, I was burning between 8.5 and 8.8 GPH at cruise (2400 to 2450 RPM).

Fuel prices at JetDirect are at $6.58 retail; with our discount, and at 8.5 GPH consumption, hourly rate is at $74.00 for the month.

Fly safely!

Mike

Maintenance - by John

Oil Change - The oil and filter were changed on July 22 at 4309.6 hours. The cost for an oil change is roughly $125 broken down as follows:

8 qts of oil - $45.00
Oil Filter - $31.00
Avblend - $26.00
Oil Analysis - $23.00

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