St Louis Flying Club Newsletter - 15 September 1997

From The President - By Mike Piccirilli

Dear Members,

Thanks to Randy for replacing the turn coordinator. Hoepfully the autopilot will now be less squittish.

I had some electrical problems on a flight last week. I went flying at twilight for just over a half hour. During the flight I wound up turning on nav lights, then interior lights, and finally the landing light. As the landing light came on I noticed the interior lights noticeably dimmed. Then the tower asked me to confirm my position because they were having trouble receiving my transponder squawk. When I went to lower the flaps they only went down to the 5 degree position and stopped. At no time-did the red warning light illuminate on the instrument panel. I proceded to slip to the landing and had to call ground control with my handheld radio once off the runway. Once back at the hangar everything seemed to be working again.

Randy investigated and found another broken alternator wire. He also discovered that the red warning light had been twisted so much that it had been disconnected from the wires, so it was not working. Randy asked me to make a point to all members that the red warning bulb is not changeable. Spinning the lense will break the wires. Many thanks to Randy for troubleshooting and fixing the problem. Randy is concerned with the aircraft wiring becoming brittle with age. He warned that we might have to replace additional wires in the future.

Happy Landings,

Mike Piccirilli

Treasurer's Report - by Marlin Sipe

I made some changes to the balance statement. The main change is that I no longer include the Annual Inspection as part of the escrow expenses. My reasoning for this is that our $50/month dues cover the fixed expenses (shadeport, insurance, property tax), and we are escrowing the funds to cover those. The escrow for these funds should definitely be in the checking account, because these expenses that must be paid whether we're flying or not. Trying to escrow money for the Annual is confusing because it comes out of the hourly flight charges, which varies from month to month, and we tend to dip into those funds for other expenses. The actual Annual cost is also just a guess.

The "Treasury" now shows what funds are available for all expenses (other than tax & insurance), such as maintenance and Annual. I also show a "desired escrow for annual" for info only, which shows what we would LIKE to have saved in the Treasury to pay for the Annual.

As you can see this month, the Treasury is $68.66, which is what we have available to cover any expenses & maintenance, and is even less than what we would like to have saved toward the Annual. A negative Treasury means we are dipping into the escrows for insurance and tax. In the past, this was happening, but I think it will be easier to see where we are now.

The Treasury has been slowly improving, but any maintenance will easily use up the Treasury funds. I understand that the policy in the past has been to have a special assessment if the Treasury falls more than $350 ($50/member) in the red. It looks like this will occur when the Annual comes due, if other maintenance does not put us there first. Of course, flying more will help a lot.

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