Engine troubles

It seems to be a never ending fight to keep Mr. Mooney flying.  I spoke with our mechanic Ray today about the engine roughness we experienced Saturday.  He very quickly decided that it must have been lead from the fuel getting stuck in one of the spark plugs causing it to foul.  This seemed to be consistent with what it felt like when it happened and I asked him what he thought we should do to prevent it from happening again.  He suggested that we replace the spark plugs with iridium spark plugs which spark "hotter" and would prevent the engine from fouling both on the air and on the ground.  Of course there's a catch, these plugs are $50 each and the engine takes 8 of them!  I did a little bit more reading about them and it sounds like they're worth having, not to mention they should last much longer than traditional ones.

We should have the new plugs in the plane in the next couple of days and hopefully it'll be the last of the in flight fouling problems.

This weekend I'm going to be flying up to Santa Cruz on Sunday with a friend's parents so that they can watch her play in a powderpuff sorority football game.  It should be interesting to say the least!

Shafter Fly-in

On Saturday my dad and I took Mr. Mooney to Minter field in Shafter, CA for a fly-in with Mooney Ambassadors. Mooney Ambassadors is a group, founded by a woman named Jolie Lucas, that helps to spread the word about Mooney's and about GA in general.  It turns out that Jolie lives in Santa Maria and she, as well as about 10 other Mooney's were there in Shafter.  

Saturday started out very early for me (6:30) since I had filed an IFR flight plan the night before for 7:30.  While this didn't mean we had to call up at 7:30 on the dot we did have to be there pretty close to 7:30, not to mention we wanted to get to Shafter around 8:30 which is when the fly-in started.  We got to the airport about 7:30 and we were quickly loaded and got airborne about 8:00.  Our flight plan called for us to go to San Marcus VOR which is just to the north east of Santa Barbara and then more or less direct to Shafter airport, which is just to the north of Bakersfield.  Santa Barbara Approach started us out with a vector to fly heading 140, which is just about the opposite of where we wanted to be flying.  They had us follow this heading out all the way to the channel islands before having us turn around and head the right direction.  While this might sound crazy and like a total waste of time, which in a way it is, there is a method to their madness.  Since we were flying over the mountains to get to Shafter we had filed a fairly high altitude (9000 feet), this meant that we had to talk to LA center for air traffic control.  LA center handles mostly high altitude traffic and airliners, as well as in areas that don't have a more local approach control.  LA center can only pick people up on radar above a particular altitude (I believe it's 6000 ft) so what Santa Barbara did is send us out over the water until we were in LA center's airspace and then hand us off and send us on our way.  Our little island sightseeing tour meant that 15 minutes into our flight we were just passing over downtown Santa Barbara.  Our whole island adventure was made all the more uncomfortable since I had realized I had to pee just as we were taking off and any added flight time was going to be torturous for me.   Once we were on course things went quickly and we were on the ground in Shafter about 40 minutes later.

Once we were on the ground in Shafter I taxied over to where I saw a number of the instantly recognizable Mooney tails.  As I got closer I saw a number of people with parking batons sitting in golf-carts.  I taxied up infront of then and began what felt like about an hour long staring contest.  Usually when there are people around to direct you to parking they communicate with you via hand signals and I expected that to be the case  here.  I figured out that they wanted me to switch to a different frequency, once I did I was told, follow the guy in the cart in front of you and he'll direct you to parking (good thing they had a radio to give me those complex instructions).  Once the stare-down was finished and the plane parked and chocked I sprinted off to find the nearest porta-potties. 

Once we were all settled we set about meeting Mooney owners and drooling over other planes.  There wasn't really an airshow, but there were planes doing low passes and flybys every few minutes.  There were a number of old planes giving rides and there was almost always something flying by to take a look at.  We met and talked with a lot of the other Mooney owners and generally had a good time.  A surprising number of people walked by Mr. Mooney and stopped to take a look.  When I was around I let a few kids it in the plane, and I answered quite a few questions that were asked.  People generally seemed pretty interested in flying, and they were always surprised to hear that I was the pilot.  While we were eating breakfast at the pancake breakfast we ran into a few people from our RC club who had driven up to check out the fly in.  It was fun to be able to show them the other side of our flying hobby.

My dad had brought along a book and we had both brought chairs.  I think we both expected to be spending quite a bit of time in them, but we sat in the chairs for all of 15 minutes and the book sat in the back of the plane the entire day.  By about 2:00 things were starting to quiet down and we were about ready to head home. we pulled the plane out from its parking place and we soon had the engine fired out and we were quickly taxing out to the runway.

Our take-off was completely normal and things seemed to be running very smoothly.  About 2-3 minutes into the flight and at about 3000 feet the engine started running very rough, I pushed and pulled a few things and almost immediately the rough running stopped and the engine calmed down.  I circled the plane back towards the field and watched all the engine gauges like a hawk.  Everything seemed totally normal and the engine was back to performing normally, after about 2 minutes of circling we decided to continue with the flight.  I climbed up higher than I would have otherwise and continued to watch the gauges like a hawk.  Everything continued to run normally and we made an uneventful landing back in Santa Barbara.  Our current thinking is there might have been water in the fuel, but we're not really sure what caused the very brief patch of rough running.  I'm going to be calling a mechanic in the next couple of days and I'll probably go and fly the plane around for a little while and see if anything abnormal happens again.  Other than the brief patch of engine trouble we had a great day and we're looking forward to the next time we get together with the Mooney Ambassadors!

I put the pictures we took at the fly-in in a picasa album here and I'll attach a few pictures we took of Mr. Mooney recently as well.

Camping in Payson,AZ

This is a reprint of a quick write-up I did on my camping trip I took to Payson,AZ between 4/9/10 and 4/10/10.

This weekend I decided to take the plane camping in a little town called Payson, AZ. Earlier last week my plans to visit a friend in San Rafael, CA fell through and I was left without anywhere to travel for the weekend.
I'm currently in the beginning of planning my trip to OSH this summer so I decided to see if I could find somewhere to go camping and try out some of the gear that I had recently purchased. So, on Wednesday night I went on adventurepilot.com and found Payson had an on-airport campsite that had been recently constructed and looked very nice. According to Airnav it also had a fairly highly rated restaurant on the field and it was about the distance that I wanted to fly from home.
I decided I would head out late Friday morning and come home sometime Saturday afternoon, I had to pick up my grandmother in Hemet on Saturday so it made sense for me to just stay the one night.
The flight out from SBA was beautiful and calm and with a decent tailwind the trip was exactly 3:00 hours. This was the longest I have ever spent in the plane on one leg and it was a good experience since I found out that it really wasn't uncomfortable at all.
After arriving in Payson I was greeted by the airport manager Dave, who turned out to be an extremely nice guy. He showed me where to set-up my tent and told me there was no charge for camping, and the $3.00/night tiedown fee would be waived for the first night with a fuel purchase.
The camping facilities are very nice, grills and firepits are provided at every campsite. The campsites offer an excellent view of the runway and of the surrounding countryside, which is very beautiful. There is a heated bathroom and a hot shower available and the restaurant on the field, crosswinds, is very good, and reasonable priced.
Overall I had a very good time at Payson airport and I enjoyed the town as well, it's a small town and there isn't a ton to see but the countryside is beautiful and it's a nice place to camp. If you're looking for a nice place to get a $100 hamburger or spend the night I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Payson.

IFR Checkride 4/1

This is a write-up I did on my IFR checkride which took place on 4/1/10. This was originally posted on purpleboard.net on 4/2/10.

After having to put it off last Saturday due to some maintenance issues with my plane I finally went in for my checkride today.

After a fitful night's sleep last night I got to the airport around 11:30 (my checkride was scheduled for 1:00) to do weight and balance and get the plane preflighted. The plane looked ok and I made sure that there was more than enough fuel on board.

At about 12:30, as I was sitting around the FBO eating a muffin and making sure I had all my papers in order I got a call from the examiner. He was checking to make sure he had my online application number correct. I verified the number with him and it was correct, he called back a few minutes later and told me he still couldn't access it, he said it probably meant that my instructor hadn't "signed" it (signing it involves logging onto the faa site and clicking a few buttons). So i gave my instructor a call, I got a hold of him no problem but he was in Santa Maria at the time changing a tire on a plane that had been left there the day before. He said he would try and get to a computer as soon as possible, but he wasn't sure if he could find one!: I got a call back from him a few minutes later and he was able to get on a computer and get what he needed to do done.

With the paperwork taken care of everything started off ok at 1:00. I had my stuff all laid out in my conference room at Atlantic in SBA. The DPE arrived and we went in the weather room to go over charts and when we came back the conference room had been taken over by the Atlantic staff for a meeting! Since we couldn't continue the oral sitting in the lobby we had to sit around for about half an hour chatting until they were finished with their meeting and we were able to continue. The rest of the oral went well and we were soon ready to start flying.

The DPE went over what approaches we were going to do and what he expected from me and what I could expect from him. We were soon crammed into the plane and ready to set off. The plane seemed to be running particularly well and neither mag was fouled during the run-up, which was a relief since it happens fairly often, and I didn't want to be playing around trying to clear the mags during my checkride. I finished the run-up and was soon on the runway applying power. I've lately gotten into the habit of applying power very slowly during the takeoff roll, and I'm very glad I did today. Right as we were rolling through 30kts my seat back slipped and suddenly slammed back to the fully reclined position. I aborted the takeoff and taxied back to runway 25. Once I was back in the runup area I put the parking break on and got my seat back how I liked it. I later realized that the seat slipped because I had bumped the adjustment wheel earlier in the day when I was crawling into the back.

The second takeoff roll went smoothly and we were soon airborne tracking the localizer outbound on the Habut 4 departure (nothing like starting off a checkride with some backwards localizer tracking). After we completed the Habut 4 departure the DPE set me up on the LOC/DME BC-A approach into SMX. I had practiced this approach many times with my instructor but I still found it difficult since it was fairly windy and tracking a back course has always been tricky for me. We followed the approach up with the ILS runway 12 out of the hold and then headed to IZA to do the vor approach. The surface winds were quite high so we ended the approach with a miss instead of circling to land. Once we finished the approach we headed back to SBA and followed the ILS down to circle-to-land on runway 25.

Over-all the DPE said I did very well, I was quite nervous leading up to the flight but I had calmed down fairly well by the time we went up. I had heard from quite a few people that the DPE I was using can be very difficult but I found him to be quite likable and he seemed very fair to me. Everything went pretty well despite the few early mishaps and I'm very happy to be done with my IFR training!

First Post

I'm setting up this blog to chronical my adventures flying my 1965 Mooney M20C affectionately nicknamed Mr. Mooney. My first couple of entries will be reprints of writeups I posted on purpleboard.net but I will also try and write some original content for the blog. Pictured is Mr. Mooney Lucy's boss on I Love Lucy.