Post-Annual Flight

On Feb 22, 6:41*pm, B A R R Y wrote:
On Fri, 22 Feb 2008 13:10:51 -1000, "Owner" wrote:
Yes, but he has shown interest in the past in learning to fly. He was upset
after a discovery flight because the instructor kept telling him to relax as
there was a lot of pilot induced osscilation. Though I must say he has
learned much through books and online groups like this one.

Anonymous poster to the rescue...

...to the rescue with a complete fabrication. You may (or, I suppose,
may not) have noticed the lack of any information to substantiate the
false claim above.

In any case, it's odd that you'd feel 'rescued' by allegations about
me personally (after all, I'm anonymous too), as opposed to rebuttals
of the detailed arguments I've presented.

Not having ever owned an airplane and looking into owning one in the
future, I found your write up a good read,

Yeah... it convinced me to keep on renting.

I hope you're joking, Dallas, at least a little.

There is nothing -- NOTHING -- like owning your own flying machine. It's
worth every headache, times two.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Jay Honeck wrote:

There is nothing -- NOTHING -- like owning your own flying machine.
It's worth every headache, times two.

At least on the days when the headache has passed! There are days when
you wonder why you are doing this to yourself, but then getting back up
into the air in your own machine reminds you why.

FAA regs are written to cover any plane that could be flown by any
rated pilot. They don't make exceptions to the situations where an
owner is aware of a issue and takes steps to fly safely inspite of the
issue. So even if the owner took sensible steps to fly safely under
the circumstances, he is still illegal, but then again, so am I when I
drive 60 in a 55 mph speed zone.

True. Placarding that fuel gauge/tank and waiting until the annual to fix
the gauge apparently violated the letter of the regs. It wasn't unsafe, and
everything has been returned to proper working order, and I learned
something from the experience.

After a decade of aircraft ownership, and not being of unlimited funds, I
find that I must live in the real world. As aircraft owners there are many
"fine lines" that we walk in this regard, and we must always choose the
safest, most common sensical path within reason. Choosing to wait until the
annual inspection to fix a fuel gauge was the most logical choice at the
time.

Just to give you another example of what I mean by "living in the real
world", the shoulder harnesses in Atlas have been less-than stellar since we
bought the plane in 2002. They've always passed inspection, barely, but we
knew that they likely wouldn't do much in an actual crash. Unfortunately,
new ones from Piper cost over $450 apiece. Since most of the planes we
rented over the years didn't even *have* shoulder harnesses (and the back
seats still won't have them at all) we put the issue on the back burner -- a
practical, real-world choice.

Well, yesterday I decided that it was time to replace the damned things, and
ordered new replacement inertial reels at the bargain price of just $299 per
side. It sucks, and we could sure use that $600 elsewhere -- but I've
decided that our faces are worth it. Considering that many of us are now
flying bonafide antique aircraft (Atlas is now 34 years old), these types of
choices are necessary for people of ordinary means to keep them in the air.

Waiting until the annual inspection to fix niggling little problems (like a
non-functioning fuel gauge) saves significant money. These are the kinds of
choices that aircraft owners make every day.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

On 2008-02-23, Ray Andraka wrote:
Jay Honeck wrote:
There is nothing -- NOTHING -- like owning your own flying machine.
It's worth every headache, times two.
At least on the days when the headache has passed! There are days when
you wonder why you are doing this to yourself, but then getting back up
into the air in your own machine reminds you why.

Well, hopefully I'll find out in a few months...

One down (sorta), one to go. I flew a Tecnam Bravo for a while (about 45
minutes, I think, in the air) with the salesman, who's also the chief
instructor and DE at a local FBO's flight school. I'm actually looking at
the Sierra, but it supposedly very similar to fly to the Bravo. In any
event, I was pleased with how much came back to me after 15 years away from
it. I even made a passable landing, after recovering from overrotating the
flare the first time. (I don't remember how I recovered, just that I did.)
Afterwards, he said he thought I'd probably be back in the groove with 3-5
hours of dual.

I'll get to find out. I'm spending next Monday and Tuesday at STS for 5
scheduled hours of dual in a Zodiac. Hopefully, by then, I'll have some idea
of how much more dual I'll need to be good and current, and also which
aircraft I want to buy. If I decide I don't like the Zodiac for some reason,
then I'll get with the salesman again and we'll arrange to fly a Sierra. (He
doesn't have any, so we'll probably meet with a salesman from the UP
somewhere in north central Wisconsin.)

PS: The fuel gauges on the Bravo actually are usable in flight. I commented
on this, and the salesman remarked on how different that is from the run of
the mill of the GA fleet.
--
Jay Maynard, K5ZC http://www.conmicro.com
http://jmaynard.livejournal.com http://www.tronguy.net
http://www.hercules-390.org (Yes, that's me!)
Buy Hercules stuff at http://www.cafepress.com/hercules-390

Jay Honeck wrote:


Well, yesterday I decided that it was time to replace the damned things,
and ordered new replacement inertial reels at the bargain price of just
$299 per side. It sucks, and we could sure use that $600 elsewhere --
but I've decided that our faces are worth it. Considering that many of
us are now flying bonafide antique aircraft (Atlas is now 34 years old),
these types of choices are necessary for people of ordinary means to
keep them in the air.


Hey, at least Atlas came with shoulder harnesses in the front. My
airplane, a 1965 model, had no shoulder harnesses whatsoever. It cost
me about $1700 in 1997 to put them in the front seats using Piper
seatbelt hardware from a salvage aircraft. Hopefully I'll never need
them, but if I ever do I'll be glad I spent the money. I had all my
belts, including the shoulder harnesses rewebbed in 2004 by Southern
Safety. That came to about $850 for all 7 seats, and included
inspection and repair of the inertial reels on the shoulder harnesses.
Couldn't you have done the same and saved some $? I think the shoulder
harnesses were $125 each for the reweb and repairs.

Couldn't you have done the same and saved some $? I think the shoulder
harnesses were $125 each for the reweb and repairs.

Yep. But the OEM reels are a bad design, with sharp gears that shred the
edges of the belt. The new version supposedly doesn't do that.

The new design also has a more stout connection to the seat belts (which
come along with the deal). Sadly, I just put all new seat belts in a
couple of years ago, so I'll have two nearly new front seat belts on Ebay
shortly...
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

On Feb 22, 2:56*pm, JOM wrote:
FAA regs are written to cover any plane that could be flown by any
rated pilot. *They don't make exceptions to the situations where an
owner is aware of a issue and takes steps to fly safely inspite of the
issue.

But this situation is just the opposite of what you describe: some
pilots have been arguing that Jay's plane supposedly doesn't need a
working fuel gauge for each tank not because of some idiosyncracy of
Jay's plane that he's aware of as the owner, but rather for the same
reasons that MOST light GA planes supposedly don't have or need
usefully working fuel gauges.

Shouldn't pilots who believe that petition the FAA to eliminate the
working-fuel-gauge requirement (at least for all multi-tank planes
flying under Part 91), rather than resigning themselves to the
widespread use of planes that aren't legally airworthy?

His biggest mistake was bringing it up in a public forum where every
one could fuss at him. *

I think it's good that he did so. It led to a substantive, germane
discussion. No harm done that I can see.

He is probably aware that the FAA might make a point out of it if he crashed.

Or if he got ramp-checked. Hopefully he's aware of that now, which
might spare him (or some other pilot) some grief in the future--which
is another reason it's good he brought this up. Remember, Jay
initially maintained that it was legal for him to fly without a
working gauge for one of his tanks. Even after the regs had been
quoted here, he still said he wasn't convinced that it's illegal.
That's why he'd been flying a plane that was, in effect, placarded as
unairworthy.

On Fri, 22 Feb 2008 16:52:51 -0800 (PST),
wrote:

In any case, it's odd that you'd feel 'rescued' by allegations about
me personally (after all, I'm anonymous too), as opposed to rebuttals
of the detailed arguments I've presented.

I meant to your rescue. ;^)

On Feb 23, 7:46*am, B A R R Y
wrote:
I meant to your rescue. *;^)

Oh, ok.