St. Louis Flying Club Newsletter - 29 June 2015

From The President - By Charley

Dear Members:

I’m pleased to welcome our newest member, Geoff Gallaway to the club! Geoff is excited to get started, please introduce yourself if you see him out at the hangar. By now you have also seen that we have another member interested in the last spot for the Citabria membership expansion and I expect to have that vote finalized soon. Additionally, Bob Zbylut has indicated an interest in selling his share. We do have another party interested in buying Bob’s share and you will see a vote for that member soon as well.

Congratulations to Don Hamblen for being the first member to get his tailwheel endorsement and meet the insurance checkout requirements in the Club's Citabria.

As we have several new members and I have received questions over the past month, I thought it might be good to clarify our new member voting process. Once a prospective member has been interviewed by myself or a delegate, and met another member or two, typically for a tour, that prospective member is put forward to the club for a vote. Provided the prospective member meets our minimum experience level as outlined in the bylaws (currently a PP), and there are no prohibitive violations or other issues indicated on the application, the member vote is assumed to be on an exception basis only at that point. If there is something known about a prospective member that would preclude us from offering a membership, the vote is the time to raise it to the group. All flight experience requirements in our club are currently governed by insurance requirements which are 100 hours PIC for the Arrow and 200 hours PIC for the Citabria. The other requirement is that the new member perform a check flight with a club instructor, the successful completion of which is solely at the discretion of the checkout pilot. Please let me know if you have questions or suggestions about the process as it is outlined in our by-laws.

I have also received questions regarding training resources for our shiny new Garmin 750! John has posted the manuals to the club website in the aircraft documents section, additionally the Garmin website has several really good familiarization videos that you can watch. The only thing to remember with the videos is that we have a separate audio panel and although the 750 can operate as an audio panel, we have a separate Garmin intercom / audio panel installed in the Arrow. There is also a GTN-750 Training iPad app that can be downloaded from the iTunes store for about $5. The app is very similar to the real thing and you are able to activate a moving map simulator to see how the system reacts to approaches and other navigation functions as if you were in the aircraft flying. One last option is to run the avionics in the Arrow in the hangar to get familiar with system inputs on the ground. The battery minder installed on the Arrow will allow you to run avionics in the aircraft for a while without draining the battery to unacceptable levels. You can use the engine monitor to monitor the battery status while using the system.

One last item, you should have received Steve Heidenreich’s note by now regarding the new key card system installed at the TacAir gate entrance to the County T’s. I believe that the system is a proximity card reader and you will need to hold your card up to the reader to open the gate. As a reminder, the key card is registered in your name, if the card becomes lost or damaged, you will need to contact Spirit Airport Administration to obtain a new one. Thanks to Steve for coordinating the assignment and mailing of cards! Talk to you all next month,

Safe skies,

Charley

Treasurer's Report - by PIC

Members,

Fuel prices have crept back up to $5.84 raising the hourly cost to $59, $77, and $101. Remember, you can save substantially by refueling at the Self-Serve pump (~ $1.30 less per gallon). The dues stay the same at $120 and the share value dropped about $100 to $10,744.

Pic

   Maintenance - by John

N8746V Citabria 7ECA

• Oil Filter Adapter Installation - On June 5th, We upgraded the Citabria to add a Casper Labs oil filter adapter and oil filter. With the oil filter installation, we can now go 50 hours between oil changes instead of the 25 hours we could go without a filter. The circulating oil should be cleaner and reduce engine wear over time.
• Oil Analysis Results - The oil analysis results from the June 5th oil change were received and the results were normal. The next oil analysis will show the results with the oil filter installed which should reduce the amount of particulates in the oil.
  

N20843 Cessna 172M

• No maintenance issues this month

N2242N Piper Arrow IV

• Marker Beacon Inop Charlie reported that the Marker Beacon audio was very low and the lights did not illuminate on his practice approaches. Troubleshooting indicates there is too much signal loss in the transition from the coax cable to the Audio Panel connector. New coax cable was ordered and will be installed within the next week or so. The Marker Beacon Lights are placarded as INOP until the new coax cable is installed.
• Panel Lights - Charlie reported that the dimmable instrument panel lights are inoperative. He said they worked fine on his initial flights after the avionics upgrade but stopped working on a subsequent flight. Troubleshooting indicates that it is a problem with either the dimming circuit transistor or Potentiometer/switch. New transistors have been ordered and will be installed when the new Marker beacon coax is installed.

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