2006 Annual Inspection -- Complete

Well, not too many surprises this year, other than the ELT. (Which I
suspected would not pass again, and it didn't.)

1. The Ameri-King ELT installation went smoothly. Running the wiring
up to the stupid annunciator panel in the dash (now required for all
ELTs) was a pain, but Ameri-King uses a long telephone extension cord
for their wiring, which certainly simplifies everything.

Most incredibly of all -- we installed something new in the panel, and
everything else still works! That is a "first" in my 8 years of
airplane ownership.

2, Plastic in Planes is STUPID. The original Piper fairings were all
fiberglass. Sometime in the last 1970s, according to my A&P, the use
of "space-age plastics" came into vogue, rather than "bulky, heavy
fiberglass"...

That way of thinking is now coming home to roost, as all of that
"space-age plastic" turns to non-repairable, brittle junk. My vertical
stabilizer fairings were completely gone -- I was able to "remove" them
by simply grabbing and squeezing, to let them shatter in my hand. Old
fiberglass parts can be easily patched. Plastic parts *can* be
patched, but they're now so brittle as to make it not worthwhile.

3. Annual Inspections Can Cause As Many Problems As They Fix. The
process of removing and installing stuff is a "wear item" in itself.
When I was reinstalling the tail cone at the end the inspection, the
brittle plastic (see #2) snapped while I was tightening a screw. So,
off it came again, to be patched (with aluminum reinforcement) yet
again. This part has been patched nearly every year -- but with 8
stripes of paint on it, the cost of replacing it is simply prohibitive.
So, pretty soon it will be entirely aluminum on the inside...

4. Engine Oil Leak. We flew around an hour today, and didn't see any
signs of oil, but that's not much of a test. We'll see if the goop my
A&P put on the engine does any good over time.

5. Seat Springs. Those stupid little springs that return the handle to
the vertical position were a real bear to replace, but it's done. What
a stupid thing to spend $100 in labor to do, but it needed doing, and I
couldn't even see how the springs were installed, let alone how to
replace them.

So, in the end, it was a pretty decent annual. The total bill is
around $1400 (not including the fairings, oil, filter, and ELT, which I
bought separately), half of which was labor to install the brake pads,
ELT, and the fairings.

It's a lot of money, for sure. Still, when I was climbing out at 1300
fpm today, looking down at all those folks driving to work, it suddenly
all became worth it!

:-)
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"