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St. Louis Flying Club Newsletter - 31 July 2016

From The President - By Charley

Dear Members:

Well, AirVenture at Oshkosh is in full swing and two of our three aircraft headed up on Tuesday! This is the first year of our new lottery system and we are undoubtedly still working out some kinks in that system. A couple of you have had questions about how the system works and please keep those coming! As discussed at our May meeting, the system is not perfect and we will likely need to make improvements along the way as we gain experience with it. Thanks for your patience with the new system, the goal is to minimize limitations on our schedule while maintaining an orderly process for reserving aircraft for a historically high demand event at Oshkosh. Be sure to send T.J. you suggestions for improvement.

John reported that there were a couple big announcements at Oshkosh that we were hoping for. The Garmin G5 now has an approved STC that allows the G5 to be installed as the Primary Attitude Indicator in all three of our aircraft. The STC approves connecting the G5 to the Static and Pitot system so that it will also display reference airspeed and altitude information. The other announcement is that TruTrak is working on an autopilot STC for their Vizion and ECO systems with a Cessna 172M as their test aircraft. TruTrak expects the autopilot STC to be approved by Sun N Fun next year (April 4-9, 2017). TruTrak says the FAA is pushing this STC even harder than they are in the hope it will reduce loss of control accidents in legacy aircraft. John is looking into the details of these systems and will providing more detail in next months newsletter.

A big thank you to Geoff Gallaway who volunteered to take over responsibility for cleaning supplies at our last meeting. As a reminder, you can either drop Geoff a note if you see a cleaning supply getting low or in need of replacement or you can pick it up at the pilots shop and submit your receipt to Pic for reimbursement. A big thank you also to Larry Wehrman for changing the flat Arrow Nose Tire and tube on the Yellow ramp.

Last year we switched over from Plexus to Lemon Pledge to be used on the windshields because Lemon Pledge is recommended by the Cessna Pilots Association (Tech Note 42) and it is much cheaper. You can also safely use the blue juice from Wash Wax ALL to clean not only the body of the aircraft but also the windscreen and any other Plexiglas part of the aircraft. The red juice from Wash Wax ALL is for heavily soiled or greasy parts around the landing gear or other areas that may get heavily soiled and require more strength to clean successfully. There is a plain water spray bottle you can use to soak stuck on bugs to make them easier to remove, it’s also good for a pre-clean of the windscreen with your bare hands if there are a lot of bugs to keep from creating scratches.

In an effort to make it easy / simple to clean aircraft, we have also provided brightly colored microfiber cloths for cleaning windows and plain white cotton rags for cleaning the body of aircraft in addition to the above cleaning supplies, all of those items are paid for out of our maintenance fund. There are two bins for dirty rags for when you are finished using them so that they can be rotated while a batch of rags are being washed. As an important note, if you accidentally drop a rag, especially the microfiber rags and debris becomes stuck…throw the rag in the trash. They are cheap and it is almost impossible to get small debris out of the rag and it will scratch a windscreen.

Technically the “cleaning supply” position also takes care of regularly washing the dirty cleaning rags. Typically we all pitch in. When we see a container full of dirty rags someone will take it home (or to a Laundromat depending upon your significant others tolerance for that sort of thing) and wash them and then return them clean to the cabinet. The person responsible for the supplies always appreciates the assistance and it ensures we always have clean rags. Feel free to pitch in any way you see fit and many thanks to those who do so often!

Jeff Evitts sent me a flyer for a Trivia night to benefit Wings of Hope on October 29th at CBC High School. Jeff has offered to organize a group to attend, tables of 8 are forming now for $200 apiece and it looks like the event will be a lot of fun. A copy of the flyer can be found here. Please drop Jeff a note if you would be interested in attending and thanks Jeff for organizing a group to attend this event for a great cause!

Do you have a question to be answered? Typically I try to include information in this message that originated from questions I, or other Officers receive throughout the month. If you have a topic that you are wondering about please drop one of us a note as I’m sure someone else has the same question you do!

Talk to you all soon!

Safe skies,

Charley

Treasurer's Report - by PIC

Members,

Fuel costs have plateaued at $6.00 which also brings the monthly average to $6.00. This raises the hourly rates to $63, $78 and $103. We received the billing for the Citabria Garmin G5 (Electronic Flight Instrument), which was approved at the May meeting. I split it's cost between the remaining funds we had for Citabria upgrades and the general improvement fund. We should also be able to sell various components (vacuum pump/gauge, DG and T&B) that the G5 will replace. I upped the Citabria value by $1,000 for this upgrade. The monthly dues remain $119 and the share value came back up to $10,632.

   Maintenance - by John

N8746V Citabria 7ECA

• G5 - The G5 display that we ordered for the Citabria finally arrived. Garmin said at Oshkosh that the demand for the G5 has been very high and there is currently a 6 week backlog. The recently approved G5 STC covers the Citabria 7ECA and I am looking to see what is required for the STC installation.

N20843 Cessna 172M

• Oil Change - The Cessna oil and filter were changed on 16 July. The oil sample was submitted for analysis and the results will be provided in next months newsletter.
• Spark Plugs - The Cessna spark plugs were replaced with new Tempest UREM37BY plugs on 16 July as the old plugs had 500 hours on them. The UREM37BY plugs are designed to be more resistant to lead induced fouling issues. The UREM37BY plugs are approved for all three of our aircraft which is great from a spares prospective.

N2242N Piper Arrow IV

• Nose Tire - On 23 July, the nose gear tire was found flat at the yellow ramp fuel pump. I was up in Wisconsin and Larry was able to replace the tube and tire with the spares we keep in stock and the plane was returned to service in the afternoon.

Copyright © 2016, St. Louis Flying Club, All rights reserved. Last updated July 2016 .