St. Louis Flying Club Newsletter - 21 June 2008

From The President - By Todd Michal

Dear Members,

Thanks to Mike Russell for renewing the insurance policy. The insurance rate stayed exactly the same as last year.

The new engine and fuel flow monitor is already helping to reduce the hourly costs as Mike reports below. If you are just up flying around with no place to go, it makes a big difference if you reduce the RPM from 2450 to 2100 and lean it. It can easily be a difference of 2-3 gallons an hour.

Paul had an extra refrigerator and it is now in the hanger stocked with beer and soda. We need to work out a way to keep it stocked. It will be nice to come back after a flight, especially during the summer months, for a cold drink. Thanks Paul for setting this up.

Happy Takeoffs!

Todd

Treasurer's Report - by Mike McBride

Flight time was strong in the past month, with almost 18 hours logged. Fuel consumption has fallen back to the 8 GPH range; with fuel currently at $5.41 per gallon, the reduced consumption lowers the hourly rate to $68. Fuel at Sycamore is currently running $0.30 per gallon less than it is at JetDirect, so please refuel using Sycamore for now.

Club insurance was renewed this month, as was the GPS database subscription. Both expenses were covered by escrow funds. Our treasury balance rose to about $925; adjusted treasury is negative $705, largely due to pre-payments for flight time, and should rebound next month into positive territory.

You will note a new section on the monthly statement for fuel credits separate from other member credits. This is part of the implementation of fuel reimbursement at the on-field rate for all off-field fuel purchases. If you have any questions about how the reimbursements are being handled, please let me know and I'll be glad to take you through it.

Fly safely!

Mike

Maintenance - by John

he center electrode was starting to

Spark Plug Change - We changed the spark plugs on 15 June. They had over 500 hours on them and it was time to change them. With the new engine monitor, I want to get good baseline data for our engine and new spark plugs will help eliminate bad data due to marginal plugs

Engine monitor installation inspection - While changing the spark plugs, we also did an inspection of the engine monitor installation to see if 20 hours of operation had affected it Everything looked good with no indications of leaks at the sensor locations or fuel flow transmitter. You may notice the CHT and EGT on cylinder #4 is slower to rise and is below the other cylinders at low RPM. This is due to some leakage past the rings (blow by) which was also indicated by the lower compression result (66/80) on cylinder #4 at the annual. The CHT and EGT come up to normal at higher RPM so it is not an issue. We will check the compression on cylinder #4 in another 10 hours to see how it is holding.

Oil Analysis - We received the oil analysis results from the oil change on 4 May shown as sample 24 below. There was a decrease in most 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

20 6-Aug-06 37 7 33.5 3.1 4 31 8

21 28-Oct-06 44 8 42.3 2.9 6 39 7

22 21-Mar-07 53 8 24.6 2.2 3 25 7

23 19-Nov-07 45 14 36.6 3.2 3 34 7

24 4-May-08 44 8 17.6 2.7 2 21 10

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