Saturday, May 31, 2008

N951CC OiL Change

As I was going through the reams of information about my new airplane, I realized I didn't know when it had it's last oil change. Cessna recommends that you change the oil every 50 hours, but the Cessna pilots association recommends 35 instead and my mechanic recommends 25 hours. I haven't decided on what I'll do yet, but I'll probably go to 25 hours since this is a high time engine and could use some extra TLC now. I know I've put a bunch of hours on it when I flew it back from WI so it was probably up for a change. Looking back into the logbooks, I found that the last change was in 2006 since it hadn't flown many hours since then. It was now 58 hours since the last oil change!

There is a local oil company that carries the aviation oil I use Aeroshell W100 so I bought a case and my mechanic and I changed the oil yesterday. This was the first time I was able to actually see my engine since I was sick during the pre-purchase inspection and the vacuum pump was replaced when I was working. Changing the oil is no different than a car. It's easier since I don't have to jack it up and crawl underneath, but more difficult since I have to remove the cowling and the filter is mounted upside down at a 45 degree angle, which means it spills all over when you remove it. The oil pan has a quick release valve on it so all we had to due was attach a hose and put it into a bucket and push the valve in. This part is a lot easier than pulling out a bolt and getting hot oil pouring everywhere.

My engine is most happy around 10 quarts even though it has a capacity of 12 quarts. I need a minimum of 8 quarts to fly. If I fill the oil to 12 quarts, the first 2 will get blown out the breather port and I'll be right back down to 10 quarts. So I filled it with 11 quarts since almost 1 quart will go into the filter.

While we were changing the oil, my mechanic was casually looking at everything to see what kind of shape it was in. Tug on this lever to see how loose the bearings are, see how tight that is, etc. He found that the airbox, which is the piece that connects the air filter to the carburetor had several sheared rivets. It was still held in place, but was loose. He took the air box off and we pulled out some of the sheared rivets and sure enough you could see they had been sheared for awhile. If they broke recently, the break would look like shiny metal, theses weren't. He also notice that one of the rivet tails was missing and most likely was already ingested into the engine. Good thing he caught this now before more go through the engine. All the pieces are still in good shape so he only has to re-rivet the box back together. Hopefully he'll be able to fix this quickly and we'll be flying soon.

Here are some pics of my engine.




Monday, May 26, 2008

Local flight on Memorial Day with Anthony

Today I went on a local flight with my friend Anthony. The winds were bad to the south, the clouds were low to the north, and it was raining and the clouds were obscuring the mountains to the west, so we decided to stay local. I guess we could have flown east to Vegas, but I was more in the mood for a shorter flight today. Next time we'll go get lunch somewhere.

We took off and flew south and circled Robber's Roost for awhile. Then we crossed over the El Paso mountains where I go Chukar hunting over to Garlock road. I let Anthony fly as we turned back west towards California City, then we headed north over Red Rock Canyon. We circled just a little more for traffic then landed runway 10 with 0.8 on the tach. We got to watch a glider come in on approach right over us and land on runway 20 while we held short on runway 10 after landing.

Here's another mugshot with Anthony. He had a blast and I feel bad that the weather wasn't better and we didn't get to go anywhere. I promised we'd go again.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

N951CC Flying to North Las Vegas KVGT

Michelle and I flew to North Las Vegas today for breakfast. It was a good flight and I wanted a quick flight there to get acquainted with the airspace. With the mountains immediately to the west and the McCarren class B airspace, I wasn't sure how much room there was for my descent to land. I flew through a saddle in the mountains that was further north than the last time I flew since this was in line with North Las Vegs, last time we flew into Henderson.

It turns out that the class B extends closer to the mountains than it seemed on the map so I had to descend close to the mountains just on the east side. This was incredibly scenic since we were flying right over their Red Rock hiking area. We were kind of pinched between the mountains, Nellis restricted airspace, and Vegas class B airspace that I was not cleared into. After a few passes north and south I lost enough altitude to fly under the class B shelf into KVGT. There are a lot of taxiways under maintenance and closed down so I asked ground control for taxi instructions, instead a "follow me" van was already right in front of me waiting. I followed him just a short ways to the transient parking.

There was supposed to be a 24 hour Bar and Grill across the street, but we didn't see it so we walked down the street to the Fiesta Casino and ate at their restaurant. Incredible breakfast specials and the food was good, but it was breakfast at a casino.

The flight back was pretty much the same but in reverse. I wanted to climb to be able to get over the mountains, but I had to stay low until I cleared the class B shelf. This put me right at the mountains so I had to circle to climb to get over them. I was hoping this trip would have been faster than it was since I figured I've got more performance in this 182 than I did in the 172 and I should be able to climb straight over the mountains. I didn't realize that I was going to be still limited, but by the airspace. Total round trip time was 2.6 hours, which is 2 hours and 36 minutes, so it still wasn't too bad.

The trip to Vegas was very smooth and was a great flight. The flight back was hot and bumpy, but we the bumps eventually went away as we cleared the mountains near Vegas. The air was cool at 10,500 feet so I never turned on the air conditioning. I did turn it on as we descended into Inyokern. The AC is nice because I waited until my downwind landing check to turn it off and from there, its only a few minutes until we were on the ground. I put the AC back on as soon as we were rolling out and it was way cooler than opening the windows. Too expensive of a toy to buy, but a heck of a nice one to come with the airplane!

North Las Vegas airport provides a free courtesy shuttle bus to the strip so it's a great airport to use when coming in to gamble on the strip. You do have to get your own taxi back, but that is the only service that isn't provided by the airport. Michelle has plans for next weekend so I'm smelling a poker trip with the guys...
Sorry no pictures, but we did find the camera now for next time. Here is a Google Earth look at the moutains flying into KVGT.




Friday, May 16, 2008

Red Bull Air Races, San Diego, May 4th 2008

Michelle took me down to see the Red Bull Air Races in San Diego for my birthday this year. She knows I've wanted to see it for several years now and we weren't able to make the trip to San Francisco a few years ago when they were racing there. We also had an opportunity to visit some relatives during dinner while we were in the area.

The races were incredible. I was surprised at how close we got to the race course especially for such an aggressive race. These airplanes are flying over 200 mph through gates that are barely wider than their wingspan. I had a great time, thanks Michelle!

Here is an airplane clearing the gate closest to us.


Notice the CVN-76 USS Reagan in the background of this plane starting the course.


Here is the Redbull aerobatic helicopter, the only one in the US.

Vacuump pump replace, lock fixed, up and running!

My A&P finished replacing the failed vacuum pump and was able to fix the pilot door lock. He found all the pieces inside the door and had to lubricate it and it's working fine now. While he was working on it, I asked him to install some Rosen sun visors due to the intense sun out here.


I flew around the patch on May 2nd just to make sure everything was up and running smooth after the maintenance; it flew great.

May 3rd we drove down to San Diego for the Red Bull Air Races, see the next post for more info.

Michelle and I went on our favorite buger run on May 11th to Kernvill L05, but this time the service was terribly slow. We got there early before all the crowds, but they forgot our order and it ended up getting stuck behind a few large groups. It took an hour to get our food while we watched others come in, eat there food, and leave before we even got our food.


Here is a picture of the flight to Kernville in the Sierras. This is for road directions, but I pretty much have to follow the highway through the mountains. Once I clear the eastern mountains I fly down the middle of the valley and over the lake before turning up the narrowing valley towards the airport. The pattern is right traffic for runway 17 since the airport is right at the western base of the mountains.

I also have a picture of flying into Kernville a few years ago in another airplane, but the airport is the same. It's a lot of fun to fly into.


I got out to the airport for a few touch and gos today after taking part of the motorcycle training course. I already have my license, but the course is required for me to be able to ride the bike to work. I didn't fly for very long because I was getting hungry.

Michelle and I are planning on flying to Vegas for breakfast on Sunday. That will be a fun flight, I'm going to fly into North Las Vegas this time instead of Henderson since it is closer to down town. I doubt we'll go into town for breakfast, but this will be a nice flight to determine how long it takes to fly in and how to negotiate the terrain and airspace.