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St Louis Flying Club Newsletter - 15 September 1999 |
From The President - By Mike Piccirilli
Dear Members,
Pic is out of town a lot, and does not have anything for the newsletter this month.
Treasurer's Report - by Marlin Sipe
The bill for the ADF repair came as quite a shock. Here's how we ended up with the bill. The problem was that turning one of the frequency selector knobs was changing frequencies, but not changing the number in the windor, so there was no way of knowing what frequency it was on. Ozark Radio at Spirit removed the ADF and determined it was a broken gear. Narco (manufacturer) no longer sells the gear, so the ADF had to be sent to Narco for repair. Narco charges a high fee for an estimate on top of what we figured the repair would be ($50 or more). We figured that replacing a broken gear couldn't be all that big of a job, so we decided to save the cost of the estimate, and told them to go ahead with the repair without contacting us with an estimate first. The charge for Ozarks time was about $100, and the remaining $420.61 was Narco. Apparently the gear assembly is not a simple thing to take apart and put back together.
Even with the expense of the radio repair, the treasury is still ahead of what we want to have saved so far for the annual.
Maintenance Corner - from Marlin Sipe
The NDB receiver has been put back in the plane, and it seems to be working just fine again. We're IFR equipped again.
Randy replaced the aluminum baffling around the engine. As reported last month, it had some serious cracks in it.
If you fly at night, you may have noticed that the breaker for the landing light pops if it is on for more than a few minutes. It then has to cool a while before it can be reset. Randy is considering replacing the breaker to see if that fixes the problem. The cost should be under $20.
Attached is the latest oil analysis. I plotted the results from the last several oil changes. Each sample is scaled to 50 hours (e.g., if there were 40 hours on the oil, I increased the amount by 25%). Then some metals are devided by some amount to make them fit on the graph. The idea is to see trends on how contaminants are increasing or decreasing.
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 |
The pitot-static check is due later this year. In the past, the transponder check was done at the same time, but the transponder check is not due far a little while yet because of the transponder repair that was done a couple of years ago. Randy may have the transponder check done with the pitot-static check anyway, to get them back in sync, and so there will be one less time when the plane will be down for a check.
The ELT batteries are due to be replaced soon too.
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Copyright © 1999, St Louis Flying Club, All rights reserved. Last updated 15 September 1999.