St. Louis Flying Club Newsletter - 19 June 2009

From The President - By Todd Michal

Dear Members,

It was nice to see a reduction in the monthly dues down to $85. It is not often that you can see a reduction in costs when it comes to aviation.

I had a nice trip to Arkansas last week. We had a hefty head wind on the way out that took over 3 hours but only 2 hours for the return trip. I had time to figure out the engine monitor, and I even used the traffic monitor for a good part of the trip. It was actually nice to have the traffic monitor on the cruise portion of the trip. A couple of times the traffic monitor alerted me to planes that I probably would not have even seen without it. They were several miles away, but still it's nice to know that it will point them out.

With Paul's trip to West Virginia and my trip to Arkansas, we put over 20 hours on the plane this month. Hopefully we will continue to have some good flying weather during the remaining summer season.

Happy Takeoffs!

Todd

Treasurer's Report - by Mike McBride

Our financial position has improved significantly, due to the reduced insurance premium that Mike Russell secured for the upcoming year. In addition to eliminating our treasury shortfall, the insurance savings also has significantly reduced our monthly dues. Based on feedback from the membership, this month's statement shows a $10 per month reduction in dues, with an additional $5 per month per member going to the improvement fund. The adjusted treasury is adequate to cover the upcoming insurance premium payment.

Fuel prices have risen by about $0.50 per gallon, and are now at $5.28 per gallon retail at JetDirect; that puts our hourly rate at $59, up $3 from last month. If you can find cheaper fuel, as Paul did on his recent trip, you can effectively reduce that hourly rate; Paul saved himself $33.50 in fuel, reducing his effective flight rate by almost $4.00 per hour for those legs.

Thanks to Mark for renewing the GPS database again this year, as well as ensuring that the GNS 430 is updated on time every 8 weeks. It is really nice to be able to get into the airplane and always have a current GPS database!

The plane has been flying great; hope everyone gets a chance to get out and enjoy some time aloft.

Fly safely!

Mike

Maintenance - by John

Oil Analysis - We received the oil analysis results from the annual oil change on 28 May 2009 shown as sample 27 below. 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

25 22-Jul-08 51 6 19.3 2.5 3 21 10

26 2-Dec-08 42 5 17.9 1.8 3 24 7

27 28-May-09 35 4 17.8 1.9 3 18 10

...