"St Louis Flying Club Newsletter"

St. Louis Flying Club Newsletter - 23 October 2009

From The President - By Todd Michal

Dear Members,

I would like to welcome Mike Landgraf as the newest member to our club. Mark, Mike and I met at the bank on Saturday and completed the sale of Mark's share.

At our last annual club meeting, we voted to continue the monthly fee to the improvement fund to cover the expense of the vacuum warning light, RPM sender for the engine monitor and the traffic monitor, and to allow the purchase of an inertial reel seat belt harness and a vertical card compass at a future date. John ordered the vertical card compass and mount for $303.80 and the front seat inertial real harnesses for $628.00 last week. The improvement fund is currently at $560 and growing at the rate of $120 per month which will cover the expenses by December.

This year we have had a number of extra maintenance items (vacuum pump, magneto, flap indicator, tachometer, alternator, voltage regulator) that have left the maintenance fund a bit low. As a result, this months billing statement includes a $150 maintenance assessment.

Happy Takeoffs!

Todd

Treasurer's Report - by Mike McBride

As noted in the recent e-mail, our treasury and adjusted treasury balances remain in the red, driven by some higher-than expected maintenance expenses over the past year. In order to recover, the current monthly statement includes a $150 per member assessment to bring the balances to desired levels. Let's keep our fingers crossed that John has us ahead of the game for now ...

Flight time for the month was just under 11 hours, and fuel prices stayed stable at $5.22 per gallon; fuel consumption was higher than expected, running close to 9 GPH based upon member reporting of fuel purchases / usage. It looks like the new tach is recording less time for a given flight than the mechanical tach it replaced which is driving the higher gallons per tach hour levels. The flight rate went up to $65 per hour based on the fuel burn per the new digital tach time. Note that TacAir is no longer providing statement copies for fuel purchases, so I am using fuel purchases as logged on the schedule at this point (until I can work something out with them).

Fly safely!

Mike

Maintenance - by John

Maintenance - The plane has been flying great with no maintenance issues to report this month. The new vertical card compass arrived on Saturday but the new inertia reel harnesses have not arrived yet.

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