St. Louis Flying Club Newsletter - 23 July 2006

From The President - By Todd Michal

Dear Members,

While searching for a switch to repair the autopilot, John found a great deal on a Cessna autopilot identical to ours on E-bay. He purchased and installed it in the plane. I'm anxious to see if this unit performs better than our last one. John has also sold our last old Narco Comm radios on e-bay. It didn't bring in much money, but it was good to get rid of them.

The club store is now open. Check out the link and place your order. John has already placed an order and says that the merchandise is high quality.

The plane is getting a lot of use. The schedule is looking fuller than I've ever seen. This should help to boost the treasury. This past month Charley and I went up and satisfied the insurance check out requirements. He's good to go and I see he's scheduled to fly this month.

Happy Takeoffs!

Todd

Treasurer's Report - by Marlin Sipe

The Adjusted Treasury is finally back in the black at $41. I think the major expenses are done now, so our balance should continue to build from here, unless something unexpected comes up. The sale of 1 of the old COM-11A radios gave us $117, which helps. The last old COM-11A sold on eBay for $51.00 (minus EBay Fees) to a pilot in Australia. We still have the marker beacon lights and ADF receiver to sell although they will probably not bring in too much income.

Last month the fuel price dropped by 5 cents. With car gas going up so high, I was expecting a big jump this month, but it has only gone back up 5 cents to $4.65. The hourly rate remains at $60. I stopped at St Charles County airport for lunch today and filled up at $4.03 per gallon saving over $10.00.

Maintenance - by John

Oil Analysis - We received the oil analysis results from the oil change on 13 May (annual inspection) as sample 19 below. There was an increase in some readings but all the values are well within normal ranges. The affect of using Avblend is shown starting with sample 11 below.

Oil Contaminants

Sample Date Hours Alum Iron Copper Nickel Chrome Silicon

1 9-Aug-96 50 18 47 4 4 156 6

2 30-Oct-97 54 16 52 4 4 204 3

3 19-Jun-98 47 18 51 1 4 160 10

4 23-Oct-98 45 12 39 4 5 219 5

5 15-Apr-99 31 11 39 3 5 145 8

6 15-Aug-99 60 12 45 3 8 287 8

7 15-Apr-00 52 13 45 4 8 207 8

8 19-Aug-00 50 13 45 5 6 207 6

9 10-Feb-01 54 14 46 5 5 116 7

10 7-July-01 56 13 57 3 6 124 13

11 26-Oct-01 45 10 44 3 4 83 14

12 28-Apr-02 57 14 56 3 8 165 4

13 15-Mar-03 55 12 56 3 7 108 6

14 23-Jul-03 50 12 56 3 6 112 3

15 31-Dec-03 58 16 28 3 3 57 10
16 25-Jul-04 49 12 31.6 3.2 2 54 5

17 20-Feb-05 41 12 26.9 6.2 9 36 8

18 6-Aug-05 54 10 22 4.4 4 32 7

19 13-May-06 40 10 35 3.9 5 46 5

Autopilot - We purchased a new used Navomatic 200A autopilot on Ebay and test flew it on 23 July. The pull turn and trim knobs worked and the Direction hold button worked very well. Marlin set a GPS course and then pressed the Dir Hold button to see how well it would stay on the GPS course (the auto pilot wasn't getting its tracking info from the GPS). The autopilot held course for over 15 minutes and we were right on the GPS course the whole time. The NAV Capture button did not seem to work too well but the NAV Track Button held the VOR#2 course for the limited time we tried it. The good news with this autopilot is that there is none of the jerky motion we had with the old unit. It holds course very smoothly. For the main use of holding course for a time so you can check charts, etc., I think this unit will do very well. When I get the new placards for the avionics master and overvolt light, I will repaint the autopilot black to match the color of the other avionics.

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