Monday, June 30, 2008

Summer Dreams

Pilots,

Cooler temps -- but for how long? It's nice out lately.

Some maintenance updates:



Cessna 630 is back from a tour of Seattle; however, when her renter is done, she will be going down for 100hr.

Cessna 68U is running strong.

Cessna 20U should wrap her 100hr this week.

Cessna 04H has a new starter, new starter cabling, and is currently down for a nose strut overhaul.

Cessna 1ES is chugging along fine.

Cessna 17J will be down for a failed vacuum pump.

Cessna 25R is running great.

We expect Piper 85Y's engine to wrap up this week.



The new LA Sectional and TAC charts are in (finally!) -- a few days early, but grab em while they're hot!

==

We have expanded our lending library significantly. For those who do not know, the long bookcase packed with books has all manner of aviation-related books which you are free to borrow!

Our system is as follows: borrow a book, and we will deduct its value from your account. When you return it, we will credit the value back. Simple! Keep it as long as you like, or forever if it's a great book! And there are some very good ones on the shelf, take a peruse next time you're in the office.



The Chevron gods are forecasting lower avgas prices in the next 3 months. Let's hope.



Blue skies, summer in full swing! Grab some sky!

- Mike

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Flying Warm

Pilots!

Warmer weather is here, which means we all need to focus on staying cool, flying safe, and enjoying our flying without undue hazard to health and mood.

We have cool water in the office fridge. Please take a bottle up with you. Flying is not only work, it can be dehydrating!

We will be unpacking the misty mates soon. They're dorky, but they work. Inquire with the office if you'd like one of these. Fill them from the cooler for bonus coldness.



A belated congrats to our friend Michael Booth, who passed his Commercial checkride in Cessna 25R with DPE Ken Earl on Monday.

Nice work, Michael!



Now for a "what would you do?" moment. This one is a little more advanced, sorry early fliers.

Imagine you have departed Hawthorne (KHHR) and are on flight following with SoCal Approach at 3000 MSL, heading to Chino (KCNO). You have been cleared to operate in the Bravo airspace, and you have a squawk code. You have cleared Fullerton airspace to the east, and after you inquire, you are told to contact SoCal Approach on 121.3, which you do. You are over the Chino hills, at 3000 MSL when 121.3 says "Aircraft calling SoCal, I don't know who you are, say position and intentions?"

Clearly someone forgot to hand you off. Hey, it happens. Now you need to deal with it.

You are in Ontario Charlie airspace.

You are over Chino's Delta airspace.

What would you do? Are you "busted" ?

(this happened to me today. I know what I did, I'm curious what you'd do -- there does not appear to be a correct answer :)



Hmm...!

==

We have one seat left for the run to Osh Kosh this year. The arrangements are figured out, and are as follows:

We are departing AJO on Saturday morning, July 26th, and expect to arrive at OSH on Sunday the 27th.

We have rented a home which is 2 blocks from the show.

We plan to depart on Thursday the 31st, and be back at AJO by Friday August 1st.

The house rental is for 5 nights, and will be $500 per person.
The fuel bill will be pro-rata and is calculated to be appx $600 per person.

This is in a Bonanza S35, and we will all be taking turns as PIC.

Please drop me a note via email or in the office if you're interested.

==

Blue Skies,

- Mike

Saturday, June 07, 2008

New wings, new faces

Pilots,

Please join me in giving a Fly Corona! welcome to our newest faculty member, CFI/CFII/MEI Elian B.!

Elian joins us from ATP with significant instruction experience, and we are excited to have him join us with Spenser and make it a fun summer at Corona. Elian is available starting next week for bookings!

Welcome to the family, Elian!



Cessna 25R has completed her 100hr.

==

Gorgeous flying today. You lucky devils! :)

Blue Skies,

- Mike

Friday, June 06, 2008

Be a Maverick, not a Goose

Pilots,

I received a most interesting phonecall from the FAA Flight Standards District Office today. It seems that one of our aircraft, who shall remain nameless, but whose initials are N8520U was spotted doing low-approaches at the decomissioned El Toro Air Force base near KSNA. The word was that the aircraft was flying appx 5-10' off of the deck, and doing practice landings there.

This might seem like a good idea on paper. Long hulking runways, fairly open area, cool evening. But El Toro is NOT an airport environment, and as such, the rules governing it are strict. Specifically:

§91.119 Minimum safe altitudes: General.

Except when necessary for takeoff or landing, you are not allowed
to fly below the following altitudes.

(a) Anywhere. If your power fails you must be able to make an
emergency landing without causing undue hazard to persons or
property on the surface.

(b) Over congested areas. An altitude of 1,000 feet above the
highest obstacle within a horizontal radius of 2,000 feet of the aircraft.

(c) Over other than congested areas. An altitude of 500 feet
above the surface, unless you're over open water or a sparsely
populated area. In that case, just stay at least 500 feet away
from any person, vessel, vehicle, or structure.





Now I understand that if El Toro Air Force Base was still an airport, this would not be an unsafe operation -- at least not until the Colonel saw you and decided to have you shot down. Regardless, the FSDO would like pilots to know the following:

El Toro is not an airport environment, and as such, there is no protection offered to you against obstacles. While it seems like a nifty place to practice low approaches, KSBD or KCNO remain the better bets here.

The entire Orange County community is very noise-sensitive, and their lawyers have pointy teeth. Rest assured, an incident over El Toro would draw the community's anti-GA fangs quicker than anything.

There is an unconfirmed rumor that the area near El Toro may be classified as a congested area soon. To be honest, I'm surprised it is not already. This would necessitate a minimum of 1,000 AGL flying.

==

At the end of the day, however, the neighbors in El Toro were simply pissed off at the 172 dive-bombing their houses at 8pm at night. The best way to preserve our aviation vocation is to play nicely with the neighborhoods over which we fly. This includes following the KAJO or other noise abatement procedures, and it definitely includes playing by the rules when they apply.

So, please, fly nicely.

==

In some other news:

Cessna 25R is having her landing gear system worked on. Then her 100hr will be complete.

Cessna 20U is having her elevator reskinned, and her wing attach-bolts replaced. We didn't like the looks of them when we changed the windshield. Oh, and she's getting a new windshield.

Cessna 04H completed her 100hr.

Piper 85Y is done baffling the mechanics. Her left engine was running rough due to 2 scored pistons and a spun main bearing.

A what? who?

Bear with me here.

This is a Lycoming IO-360. Piper 85Y uses a slightly smaller version, the IO-320, but this was the best image I could find.



This is a 4-cylinder engine arranged in a "boxer" configuration (think Subaru or VW beetle). Our particular IO-320 is a fuel-injected, 320 cubic-inch engine (about 5.3L in metric), and produces 160 horsepower at an ungodly torque value. It is also rated to run for 2,000 hours between overhauls. In 85Y, that equates to 340,000 nautical miles, or 387,000 statute miles. Not bad.



Here is one standing on its prop flange (prop attaches at the bottom) so you can see that it's pretty simple on the outside, and even simpler on the inside. The yellow "box" in the center is the crankcase, and the 4 black "jugs" are the cylinders. Inside each cylinder, a piston reciprocates and turns a crankshaft.



You can see here the cylinders have been removed. The actual crankcase is about 12" wide. All of the action happens inside of those cylinders.

The crankcase is designed to be "split" into halves to ease assembly.



What you see in there is the crankshaft and two of the four "connecting rods". The connecting rods literally connect the pistons, which slide up and down inside the cylinders and turn the crankshaft. The crankshaft rotates under the power which is transmitted from the pistons, to the connecting rods, and the motor produces power.

For more detail on the 4-stroke combustion cycle, NASA has a good write-up here




This is a case half. You can see 3 U-shaped channels which the crankshaft turns on. In order to prevent the crankshaft from wearing down these channels, a wedge of strong metal is sandwiched between -- this piece of metal is called the Main Bearing.



A crankshaft.

Now these parts are generally forged from steel, and the force they are designed to tolerate is measurable in tons. As such, you'd think the bearing which separated the crankshaft from the case itself would be pretty impressive.

Well, it is, but you wouldn't know it from looking.



Just two of those are sandwiched between the crankshaft and crankcase.

==

So what does all of this have to do with 85Y?

It was this little slip of metal which was starting to work loose and wear against our crankshaft. This caused a strange vibration on runup in the 1800rpm band or so. According to our engine gurus, in about 25-50 hours, our bearing would have looked like this:



Which, if ignored, may have made our connecting rod look like this



And which, if somehow still ignored, would have made our engine look like this




==

You can imagine that, at the wrong time, that could put a twin pilot into an uncomfortable position.

Luckily, we have caught this very early, and we are having the engine completely torn down and overhaulled. I do not have an ETA at this time, but I will share more when I know it.

Until then, if an engine doesn't feel right in your airplane, and it cannot be explained by turbulence or bad power settings -- trust your instinct. Have someone look it over.

Blue Skies, safe landings!

- Mike

Sunday, June 01, 2008

Adding to the confusion...

Pilots,

We have a new instructor in the FlyC family, who starts effective immediately, CFI Spenser P. To prevent confusion, we have added last initials to the schedule, so SpencerF is our existing Spencer, and SpenserP is our new instructor.

Spenser will be checked out in our various aircraft, most notably the G1000, RG, and twin, but for other planes, he is available immediately. Spenser is a local flyer, and owns his own Beech Sierra (gotta love it -- another Beech guy! :) )

Say hello if you see a new face in the office, and give him a warm FlyC welcome!



Cristina, Carlos, and myself are in San Luis Obispo at a Cessna Pilot Center conference. We will be meeting with other flight schools in the area, and gathering new ideas and tortures for the employees for the betterment of all. We will be back on Wednesday. Please be nice to our skeleton office crew!

==

Cessna 04H requires some alternator work to complete her 100hr. We expect her back Tue/Wed.

Cessna 25R will be down for 100hr Tue as well.

Cessna 68U completed her 100hr

Piper 85Y has confounded our best maintenance minds. Optimists say Monday/Tuesday. Us realists are waiting and will see what happens. 85Y has passed every test we can throw at her, yet her left engine is failing mag checks. Bad news.




Not much else to report, except nice weather abounds! grab some sky!

Cheers,

- Mike