"St Louis Flying Club Newsletter"

St. Louis Flying Club Newsletter - 25 May 2006

From The President - By Todd Michal

Dear Members,

My prediction last month has come true. The new avionics are installed and the plane is flying again! I hope you all get a chance to try out the new radios and GPS this month. I know that I can't wait to try it out. I look forward to flying with Charley this month as he returns to flying after his foot is healed. Check out the photo gallery under Avionics Upgrade to see the process of the installation and checkout flight.

The insurance renewal is due on June 15th. We don't have an estimate yet, but I expect that the premium will go up some due to the increased value of the aircraft. I'll send out an email as soon as we hear more.

Happy Landings!

Todd

Treasurer's Report - by Marlin Sipe

In an earlier email I reported that fuel at JetCorp was at $5.00 per gallon. That was the retail rate. As a local customer, our price is $4.65. Sorry about the shock. That puts our hourly rate at $60.

Not all of the expenses are related to the avionics upgrade. I'm listing the maintenance and Annual items separately so you can see what expenses were not a direct result of the avionics upgrade. Amounts are rounded to $5 increments to make it easy. With everything torn apart, it was the perfect time to do a few things that were being put off or not critical (e.g. clock and coax). There were also minor things such as misc hardware not listed here. We now have a small selection of crimp-on terminals which will come in handy in the future when we need to do anything.

$80 - Left Main Tire & Tube
$65 - Alternator wiring (shielded and unshielded 8 guage; shielded 18 guage, proper terminals)
$40 - Engine air baffling and installation rivets
$20 - Engine cleaner; distilled water for battery
$30 - Worn Engine oil drain return tube
$95 - RG-400 coax (the current standard) to replace 30+ year old unapproved RG-58A/U coax (GPS coax separate) and corroded connectors
$55 - Approved BNC connectors for new coax
$370 - Turn Coordinator repair (including shipping from last month)
$150 - Oil cooler hoses
$195 - Clock to replace dead analog clock
$20 - Speaker in ceiling
$110 - Oil filter, case of oil, & Avblend
$1230 - TOTAL

Here's a rough breakdown of expenses paid by Sipe and Heilmann this month.

Heilmann:

Nav Signal splitters ($190); Hose for cooling fan ($45); Tire/tube ($80); Coax ($120); worn oil tube ($35); Oil cooler hoses ($150); baffling ($40); engine cleaner & battery water ($20); Alternator wire and terminals ($45); circuit breakers ($35); fuel at Smartt ($80); Speaker ($20); Oil, Filter & Avblend ($110); air compressors in thanks for the use of the hangars for 1 1/2 months ($215); Various misc bolts, nuts, rivets, labels, etc.

Sipe:

GPS data card and programmer ($295); BNC connectors, right angle adapters ($40); Turn Coordinator repair ($360); Misc crimp terminals, splice crimps, heat shrink tubing, insulating washers.

Just some info on extra items we have. We needed 17 BNC connectors. With a price break at 25, the price for 25 was the same as the price for 18, so I got 25. We now have extras that we can sell (maybe to the Boeing club who bought the VOR and Glide Slope receiver) and recover a few bucks ($3 each), or have if we need them in the future. We also bought right angle BNC adapters for the antenna cables on the back of the GPS (it seemed like a good idea at the time), but it turned out that it actually made things fit tighter with the direction they come out, so we have a few of those for sale.

The only remaining expense is the GPS database subscription ($260) which we will start with the 8 June cycle. I am estimating we will receive $400 for the sale of the remaining avionics (Transponder; Nav-11; Intercom; 2 Com-11). Including these will result in a shortage of about $400 on the bill next month, so we are having an assessment of $50 per member to bring the Adjusted Treasury back up to around zero. It will still drop back into the red next month with fuel expenses, but then should recover and start to build again. We do not know how much the insurance will be, but it will probably be higher than last year.

I am showing the new aircraft value this month. It looks like our share price has increased quite a bit. Things should be more stabilized on the bill after this month, so then we'll have a better idea of the actual share price. It looks like a good percentage of the avionics cost has shown up in the share value.

As I've done the last few years, I totalled up the hours charged for each person. The total hours on the plane over the past two years has remained relatively low at around 78 hours per year.

Flight times for the past 7 years

Member Hours 2005-2006 Hours 2004-2005 Hours 2003-2004 Hours 2002-2003 Hours 2001-2002 Hours 2000-2001 Hours 1999-2000

Heilmann 8.5 11.6 23.8 15.2 15.3 11.8 6.4

Michal 5.1 20.1 23.7 8.0 17.7 24.0 22.5

Piccirilli 11.1 10.2 6.7 8.4 4.0 6.7 9.3

Russell 0.9 1.7 9.0 4.1 5.6 5.8 9.1

Sipe 27.3 18.6 33.6 49.0 47.4 38.4 41.5

Skyles 3.7 6.9 8.0 7.9 8.4 14.2 12.2

Warakomski 0 5.4 4.9 - - - -

McBride 14.8 - - - - - -

Rewhinkle 4.0 - - - - - -

Previous Members - - 11.9 25.9 36.5 18.5 9.2

Maintenance 1.9 3.5 3.1 5.4 3.8 1.1 1.5

Total 77.3 78.0 124.7 123.9 138.7 123.1 111.7

Maintenance - by John

Annual Inspection - The annual inspection was completed on 13 May. The oil sample was sent in for analysis and the results will be in the next newsletter. The nose wheel fairing was reinstalled during the annual. The list of items replaced during the annual is shown above in the Treasurer section. Thanks to Mike McBride and his son Mark, Todd, and Marlin for helping with the annual.

Mark McBride helps to install left main tire

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