Squawks, Cessnas, and Munchies!

Pilots,

I would like to thank everybody who attended our little shindig yesterday -- it was a blast! Especial thanks to Tim Hocklander from Tom's Aircraft in Long Beach for bringing the food, the flybabies, and hanging out and answering questions!

It was nice to chat with folks in a casual setting -- so much so, that we simply must do this again soon!


Trevor is bored with 172SPs. His next ride is a Turbo Skylane!

For those of you who missed out, Tom's has left their gorgeous Turbo 182 chocked outside on our line, please ask the office for a brochure if you're interested in learning more about any of the toys which were on display yesterday.

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We're on a squawk hunt again. Cessna 68U and Cessna 20U have both received new Generators, and Cessna 68U has a new battery after somebody "borrowed" it.

Cessna 04H has fine-wire spark plugs installed, since not everybody has figured out that "warm day = high density altitude = lean for best performance" (see my prior news post about this for better procedures, or ask any CFI)

Cessna 08V has a new transponder, a new NAV/COM, and has had some intercom wiring cleaned up.

Robert showing off his IFR - "Intuitive Fire Recipes"

Solo activity is picking up again, now that the weather has cleared -- be ready to share the skies with Solo folks Joel K, Jay B, Anthony A, Reed W, Ben S, and likely a few others I've missed! Congrats guys, you're in the home stretch!

Even Willy was drooling over the new aircraft

Blue Skies! -- and don't forget the bottled water, it's hot out there.

- Mike

Join us for a Tiki Party with Cessna!

Pilots!

This Saturday Afternoon, the kind folks at Tom's Cessna in Long Beach will be throwing us all an open house! There will be food, drinks, and a brand new G1000-equipped Skyhawk and Skylane on display! Come twiddle the knobs on a G1000 without the office's watchful eye, and take a tour of the advanced features with Cessna trained experts.

The Skylane (nee 182) is quite possibly the perfect 4-place aircraft, with many people who switch to faster or larger aircraft -- end up returning to a faithful skylane after all. Cross-country movers, this is your chance to try to persuade us to get one of these 150kt machines on rental for the school!

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In other news:

Cessna 17J completed her first 100hr inspection tonight. We have on order a new trim knob (one that doesn't hit pilots in the eye at random -- sorry Kevin H!), and I will be loading new map data into the GPS.

Cessna 04H has had her charging system inspected. We have heard complaints of a whine in the electrics, and hope to have this resolved. Also, the ground start receptacle fuse has been located and replaced, in case we did not in fact fix this. (no more removing the cowling to charge a toasted battery)

Cessna 20U is back with a new battery, new Voltage regulator, and new Generator. We expect much "power to the people" once again -- until some rascal leaves the master on overnight again. Thanks to DP Air for the help with this one.

Cessna 68U has had some cosmetic tweaks done by the fine people at Procraft.

Cessna 08V is having her Transponder checked again. Apparently it remains intermittent, to nobody's amusement (most particularly SoCal Approach)

Cherokee 08F continues to fly trouble-free.

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We have many new faces around the office lately, say hello to anyone looking helpful or friendly -- it's either one of our pilots, or one of our staff!

Please remember, there is water and otter pops in the fridge! Stay cool out there -- heatstroke does bad things for moods and landings!

- Mike

Quick Jot

Hi Gang,

The server experienced about 20 minutes of downtime this evening around midnight, as we moved the FlyC server. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Some things going on in hangarland:




68U had a thorough 100hr done at Procraft, getting her spruced up for summer. She has new rudder hinges, elevator hinges, new tires, and the new interior panel plastics have been installed (finally! :) -- she will be going back for some cosmetic stuff as soon as we can pull her off the line.

20U has a new battery. We expect this to end the charge-nocharge cycle she's been bothering us with.

I am officially petitioning the office to get a larger fishbowl for our friend Charlie (the Betta) - and since sun = algae, and that shot-glass that Charlie lives in looks more like a petri dish these days, I'm requesting a plecostomus too.

too scary-looking to be vegetarian.

Julie seems to be flying an awful lot lately. Word on the street (and I agree with this) is that the G1000 is very intuitive, with all of the information easy to find, the radios fairly easy to tune, and checkouts are running about 1.5 - 2.0 hours lately (depending on how familiar you are with the KAP140 autopilots) -- I think she's likely to stick around for awhile -- thanks Pilots!

Cessna 72F (who?) is being troubleshot this week. We may or may not place her back on active duty when we get the new starter going. (150s are just not as popular lately)

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Apologies to those who we were forced to cancel on Sunday's runway closure. It was unexpected, and we probably lost about 40 or 50 hours of flying that afternoon! Luckily, word is that nobody was hurt on the gear-up landing which kiboshed the gorgeous Sunday flying everyone had planned - whew! Pilots considering retract aircraft, don't make this face:

how not to impress your pilot buddies...
what's that buzzing alarm sound in the cockpit anyway?

The weather is simply gorgeous. Grab some sky!

- Mike

A 100 hour-long 100hr :)

Hi Gang,

Quick update: Cessna 68U is having her fuel tank baffling replaced in one wing, as one of the plates was found broken. The baffling is a series of aluminum plates in the fuel tank which prevent a few hundred pounds of fuel from sloshing inboard-to-outboard in turbulence, and, in worst cases, sloshing the fuel away from the "pickup" where the fuel travels to the engine.

This isn't really an easy thing to describe in text, so here's a picture I found on the web:



This is a very funny-shaped tank, but it illustrates the point perfectly. The baffles are the vertical plates running along the length of the tank. In turbulence, say, when you uncoordinate the aircraft and G forces pull the fuel to the outboard end of a tank (and away from the fuel pickup) - the fuel needs to run THROUGH these baffle plates. Since there are only a few small holes available, only a small amount of fuel can move through at once - thus dampening the slosh, and preventing you from starving the engine. (which would be a bit too exciting)

Your car has these too! Baffles, combined with the general shape of a fuel tank which puts the fuel "pickup" at the lowest gravity point in the tank - ensures that you don't starve your engine of fuel, even in the meanest, longest, ugliest slips to a landing (when the G forces are decidedly sideways, and pulling on your fuel tank!)

A most excellent and interesting find from the folks at Procraft, and 68U's new ETA is Friday afternoon.

More as I know it!

- Mike

Hello from Oakland!

Hi Gang,

Beth and I are in Oakland at a Cessna Pilot Center conference, helping shape things like G1000 curriciulum, PTS, and what the latest trends are in pilot education. Quite interesting to see what the other flight schools are doing around the country, and interesting to see that a lot of "fresh" ideas are ones we put into play over a year ago (example: "try to think about your office from the student's perspective")

Also nice to see that other flight schools suffer the same grumbling problems we do (planes and/or instructors not on time, periodically indifferent or distracted office service, weather and maintenance headaches, etc.)

All in all, a constructive little conference. We will return this afternoon and see you all tomorrow.

In the meantime, some quick jots:

Cessna 68U is down for an extensive 100hr with Procraft. 68U has been beat up lately, and we aim to get her into better shape. Expected return is tentatively Wed.

The other birds are flying quite nicely.

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We are officially placing Cessna 20U for sale. 20U is an excellent leaseback aircraft, garnering an average of 85-95 hours per month, and is rather low maintenance. The new owner will have the option of taking over 20U's leaseback arrangement with Fly Corona (which the owner typically grosses $3,500 per month with -- maintenance and insurance eat much of that, but generally she pays for herself and leaves a small fund for upgrades)

We would prefer to have 20U remain on leaseback, of course, since we love her -- and the new owner would enjoy flying for the cost of fuel only. However, if 20U does not remain on leaseback, we will be replacing her with another 172.

Asking price is $45,000. I will be putting together a detail packet of her impressive features and general "dialed-in, flying" nature. Feel free to stop in the office Wednesday or beyond for details about leasebacks (since, while they're simple, they are still an investment to be considered)

Also feel free to email me at mike@flycorona.com :)

Blue Skies!

- Mike

Filling the Talent Bench...

Pilots!

In order to alleviate some of our current scheduling pressure, I am excited to announce additional CFI capacity!

CFI Shannon C. is now with us 6 days per week! (Sorry, Sunday flyers) -- he is available for bookings right now, and all through summer!

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Some other misc. news

Cessna 20U has returned from her unexpected right door repair. 20U now boasts "two underwing exits", up from only one last week.

Cessna 04H has yet another DG being installed today. Will report back if the "disco DG" problem is solved.

Cessna 68U will be entering its 100hr early next week.

Cessna 17J is still new and awesome.

Cessna 08V purrs along after her squawkapalooza

Cherokee 08F rips off the line with her new prop.

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The weather is toasty in Corona -- we have cold bottled water in the office fridge, and otter pops in the office freezer. Please feel free to help yourself and beat the heat! :)

- Mike