I think I can

EI confirmed that the original fuel transducer was dead on arrival so they overnighted a new one so I could make my planned flights for the weekend. Sure enough, the FP-5L and the fuel flow on the UBG-16 worked like a charm with the new transducer. They read pretty close to each other as well, usually within .2 GPH. I auto calibrated the K factor of the FP-5L after running 48.5 gallons through it and it was only a little off. It'll be interesting to see how close it is now that it's calibrated.

Of course I can't fix anything without finding more squawks... Port nav light is out, instrument post lights are inop. The post lights were working then as I was putzing with one of them to see if it was dead or a loose connection, they all went out and now I can't get them back on. Sooner or later it'll be squawk free.

For the flights this weekend, we flew to Oceano and hiked up the beach to the north beach campground to see the monarch butterfly grove. The beach hike was nice, but pushing the stroller through the loose sand down to the water and back up was a challenge. The hike was probably about 2 miles each way. There was a lot of monarchs there and pretty neat to see, but Katie didn't see all that interested and she's the reason we went! Sunday we flew to Bakersfield and got a rental car to go shopping for the day. Lots of flying planned for this weekend too, hopefully the weather cooperates.

N951CC more squawks found and resolved

While I was out flying a few weeks ago, I decided to fly the ILS approach at Palmdale because I hadn't had a chance to verify the ILS after maintenance. Good thing too because I found that the marker beacon and glideslope was inop. It turns out that the marker was decommissioned (after I flew the approach) and locals were saying it has been down for a while, so that test was invalid.

After thinking about the glideslope, another local noticed that the needle didn't twitch like the CDIs when the avionics master was turned on or off. This made me think that it wasn't connected, or at least not getting a signal. I didn't swap the cables to the indicators because they were responding properly to the frequencies in the radios. Turns out that the KX-155A can be configured with or without a glideslope receiver.

It is easy to see how two CDIs are beneficial, but you can't fly two different glideslopes at the same time, so there is no benefit to two glideslope receiver equipped KX-155As. It turns out that when I swapped the radios trying to track down the comm 2 issue, I moved the radio with the glideslope to comm two. Once I swapped them back, I could now see the glideslope twitch with the avionics master. On our last flight, I flew a practice ILS into Ontario and confirmed the proper operation of the marker beacon and the glideslope.

In other news, the fuel transducer is at EI right now and I should have a replacement to install.