57A going back together

“I had a hard time maintaining heading at the slower speed -- nothing serious, but it wanted to keep drifting to the left which bothered me and made me struggle somewhat.”

That is not a rigging problem. That is slow flight. More right rudder. Welcome back to the air.
 
Troy Hamon said:
“I had a hard time maintaining heading at the slower speed -- nothing serious, but it wanted to keep drifting to the left which bothered me and made me struggle somewhat.”

That is not a rigging problem. That is slow flight. More right rudder. Welcome back to the air.
Click to expand...
Geez. That is so right on. What Troy said... Welcome back to the sky.
 
Thanks! In talking with our A&P, my CFI said he'd had no problems with it "at pattern speeds," which is what he was trying to ge me to experience --briefly-- last week. No doubt it was just me, the noobie, also feeling fairly nervous after all this time.

And now I have a bunch of "homework," setting up a Flight Service acct and applying for a "permanent" student pilot certificate with the FAA/TSA. All my old ones are expired; I'll be going with BASICMED from now on. Hitting 75 YO in less than a month... never thought I'd make it this long.....

One thing I have noticed: It seems the more my CFI flies 57A, the more he likes it, perhaps even over his C172; he really compliments it after each flight, which certainly makes me feel good. (Maybe we have a short-wing convert in the making, ha-ha!)

Oh -- one more thing -- it now has 3-1/2 hrs, not 2-1/2 as I had thought. After our last 1.5 hr flight, it had used about one pint of oil -- a good sign, yes?
 
What oil level is it at now?
At 4-4.5 I think your oil usage will level out.
Above 5 I think goes out the tube
 
I think it's currently around 5 or so, but not positive (sorry, I should know that).

When I bought the plane, it was explained to me that essentially anything over 6 qts would get blown out, no need to go above that. Maybe it's even less...? Anyway, we'll be keeping an eye on it for sure. Thanks.
 
For me, 5 is not where it will remain level. It will blow out the breather. 4.5 seems perfect but I fly a lot with 4. My pressure is in the green always
 
Glad you are getting up Walt!

Remember these stubby little things are pretty loose in pattern speeds and slow flight, especially in the bumps and gusts.

Nothing like the stable Cessnas many of us have spent a lot of time in.

A thorough check of your control system etc. for sure, but it could just the nature of the beast.

Have fun!
 
Walt, you have a new engine that probably has not broken in completely yet. Until the rings take a good set to the cylinders, you will have higher cylinder head temperatures and engine oil blow by past both the rings and breather due to high crankcase pressure. Once the rings set, cylinder head temps will drop and oil consumption will stabilize into a normal pattern. Breaking in the engine, in my experience, is done best with higher BMEP. This will put higher pressure on the rings forcing them out against the cylinder walls and basically grinding them to fit. Once the the rings fit well to the cylinder walls, the engine is considered “broken in”. There is no breaking in with the lower end. As soon as you build the original oil pressure they are what they are going to be. Doing slow flight and other low power operations during the break in phase can cause the cylinder walls to glaze and the rings will never seat properly. This is the main reason for high oil consumption continuing after an overhaul. Run the engine hard, at least 75% power for about 5 hours. When you see your cylinder head temperatures decrease, the engine break in is complete. It is not unusual to have the temperatures drop 30 degrees once the ring set. There will be plenty of time for slow flight and touch and go’s but the engine break in period is NOT the time to do this. Go cross country and buy yourself a hamburger and milk shake.
N2709P
 
Point taken and noted -- no more slower stuff for a while.

Yesterday, after a 3-hr lesson on flight planning & such, my CFI and I took it up for a good cross-country, flying to a grass strip (B10) in Livermore, ME to visit an old Army buddy of mine and his Japanese wife. Now, understand it takes me 4-1/2 hours to drive to his place; in 57A, with a good bit of help from a tailwind, it took... ONE HOUR. Wow. Even my CFI, noting our speeds, said "Wish my plane could do that...." At one point, while climbing out --I was trying to maintain 90mph-- that little plane actually approached 1000 fpm on the climb gauge. Again, "wow."

Understandably, the flight back was quite a bit longer (1.7 hrs), but still, it was great. As we were filling up before leaving the home field (2B3), I remarked that it was really nice to be spending money on FUEL instead of parts! (Can you see the grin?)

It got dark on the way back, and I saw something I've never seen before: I didn't realize the moon was rising -- it was above the left wing-- but I did see a big light down to the left and was surprised to see it was the moon's reflection on a small lake! This is what it's about, to me (sigh...).

Still some tweaking to do, but that O-320 was working hard all the way there and back and now has another 2.8 hrs or so on it, for a total now of around 6 SMOH. CHTs have dropped a bit (all in the green), oil temp & pressure good... Getting there now, for sure.


DSC01421.JPG DSC01422.JPG DSC01427.JPG
 
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I am so very happy for you Walt. May the beauty of flying make all that hard work worth it and May you soon finish up lessons and take your wife on that flight to see and old friend and let her see the moon rise over a lake. Best wishes to you, brian
 
That’s great Walt! And Brian, you said it. Flying offers us all so much on several planes! No pun intended!
Blue skies!
 
...And some disturbing news this morning... We flew right over Lewiston, ME, just before arriving at Bowman -- we were right there Tuesday! And now I see some %$!$%# took a rifle and shot up the area last night, killing a bunch of people. Ugh.
 
Sounds like you are experiencing the magic of flight Walt. Congrats, been a long time coming.
 
Thank you all! Yes, it's been a slog, for sure, but that little plane sure seems to like to fly!

So now on to a few other things -- right now I'm looking for something to get some light on the IP at night -- twice now my CFI and I have been flying in the dark, and 57A only has the one shoulder light on the left -- the right side has wiring (all new!), but the light's never been there. Have done some reading on this forum about "shoulder lights," but still looking. SWPC says their lights are out of stock, I see where some folks have made their own....

Got a question: my one shoulder light, I presume OEM, has a screw on the top of it. What's that for? Also, while fiddling with it, I noticed it was very hot to touch -- is that just because it's an incandescent? (Is that normal?)

Thanks -- W
 
Yes, with the incandescent bulb they get hot. If I remember correctly, the screw is to adjust the light in and out.

Juergen
Pacer N3342Z
 
“I noticed it was very hot to touch -- is that just because it's an incandescent? (Is that normal?)”

Those are the over-the -shoulder hand warmers!! Normal. :)
 
Thanks!

I thought I had figured out the "focus" aspect once -- I'll look it over again.

Armstrong, thanks for that comment -- I love a good chuckle in the morning! Reminded me of the old adage about the heater in the 1952 Jag 120 I was fortunate enough to have grown up with -- "It'll keep the right side of your right foot warm.... for about 20 miles!"
 
Walt,
‘We have a spare shoulder light that we would be glad to send you. Both shoulder lights working illuminates the cockpit pretty good. As we are getting older and the night vision is not what it was 50 years ago, I installed Nu-lites on all of the instruments. Absolutely worth the cost and effort. I have been told that if you keep at least one incandescent light in the nav light circuit, you can use the original dimmer system. I would also recommend one of the headlights that you wear. They can be purchased with both red and white colors and last about four hours on a charge. Great for pre-flight in the dark and for flying and reading the chart. I keep one in the jet for emergency’s.
Tailwinds!
Ron, Marsha and Daisy (N2709P)
 
My CFI had one of those red head-band lights in his bag -- good thing! I knew I had one here somewhere at home, so I found it and put it in my airplane bag.

Ron & Marsha, for the time being, I'd love to receive one of your OEM-type "shoulder hand warmers!" PM me, or use my email -- stubby57a@gmail.com. I'd be happy to pay fair market+ for it.

At some point I'll (will probably have to) consider Nu-lites or something similar, but for right now I'd be happy with an OEM light -- yes, they do actually--surprisingly-- work fairly well. I was taken aback when my son --a BMW fan, currently with a '98 540i-- said they use a similar system, two red LED lights in the overhead console focused on the gearshift when headlights are on. Hey -- you'd think they were in the airplane business!
 
Was thinking about you Walt, and about 57A, and wondering if you got any flying done over the winter, and whether spring weather has helped you get more flights done.
 
Just a little, Troy -- a couple "around the patch" and a cross-country up to the Canadian border in Newport, VT, again arriving back home after dark. (I did receive that OEM light and got it installed immediately, thanks Marsha & Ron!)

My CFI and I have also been doing some ground school stuff, and I'm now signed up for an intensive 2-day seminar in June for written test prep (Aviation Seminars, Inc), so I can maybe get that out of the way. So we did only a little flying over the winter -- then Yorke (CFII) and his wife took a trip to Europe -- just got back last week-- and haven't really started in again yet but hopefully will soon. We had our first real spring day (70+F!) only a couple days ago, now back into a rainy stretch. Good ol' New England weather.

So far 57A has performed very well!
 
That’s a great update!
And night flight and cross country and “around the patch”
are wonderful experiences each in its own right. You’re
progressing…and getting the written done will be
another milestone. Glad to hear of it!
AL
 
Congratulations Walt! It can seem like a long road back when away from flying for awhile, but you get to have another “first” solo! It will feel great, and one day soon when you’re out on a trip with that empty right seat you will enjoy the satisfaction of having perservered through all these challenges with the build etc. Good on you!
 
Well, there are still a few squawks to look at, of course -- the dry vacuum pump is new (with engine OH), but the gauge has been reading low and occasionally jumping. It did that when I first got the plane, but disassembling the regulator, cleaning it and re-assembling seemed to take care of that (consistent 5" on meter). Now it's doing it again. Would that be an indication of the regulator (chattering) failing? Anybody with experience in changing regulators?

We thought we had a fuel flow issue -- when the DC (Dakota Cub) valve's in the "both" position (all we've used, so far), it always seems to pull more fuel from the right tank, leaving the left a tad heavy on the way back home. Sticking the tanks after landing confirmed there was more fuel in the left tank. I pulled the fuel line from the carb, used the DC valve set to R or L, and timed fuel flow out each tank to fill to a 2 gallon point. Yep, there's a difference (right tank fed faster), but both were more than a calculated rate of 30 gph, well above the "rated" 9 gph in the POH for my O-320. So I guess different feed rates is a normal situation for Short-Wings...? I did the test twice, got similar results both times: around 34 seconds on right tank, close to 45 seconds on the left one. In both positions, fuel stream was observed to be solid with no bubbles or rough flow.

I think I discovered the source of the fine, black "floaties" occasionally seen in the first two or three tank sumps -- when fueling up in Newport, VT, one of the cap gaskets literally fell apart! New gas cap gaskets (Univair) now installed. I replaced those gaskets shortly after I bought the plane in 2012; guess they don't last long!

Still have a hole in the IP where old stuff was removed when my new radio (GTR-225) was installed... will leave it like that for a while, as I still need to do something about ADSB-Out (and In, hopefully), and I'd love to get an AOA meter installed at some point.

So I told my CFI I wanted to learn the navigation stuff the old way, at least initially (I think I scored some points there, but I'm just that much OLD SCHOOL!) -- so I got out my paper sectionals, drew lines, used a plotter to check angles, come up with a heading, used a manual E6B to get wind correction... and then we did the trips, with checkpoints every 15 nm or so. Amazing how accurate you can get with that stuff! We've consistently been within one minute of estimated ETEs to checkpoints on our trips so far, both of which were about 100nm one way. He set me up with an account for online flight planning; I still need more practice with that! And I now need to set up my IACRA account.

So things are progressing....
 
Amazing report!
I don’t think you have a fuel issue - you just know that
tanks feed slightly differently. I treat my left tank a little
protectively and use right tank longer in cruise flight.
I have always wanted an AOA.
What is an IACRA account?
AL
 
Your tanks are feeding the opposite of every Pacer/Tri-Pacer I have flown with the Both position in the fuel valve. It is a direct shot to the fuel valve from the left tank and a very convoluted path for the right. I always had a heavy right wing, feeding faster out of the left until I burn off quite a bit of fuel. On a long cross country I switch every 30 minutes.
 
Yes, Steve, that's what I thought, since there's a more direct run from the left tank-- but mine does seem to be "opposite". Not sure why, but everything seemed to work OK otherwise. I was careful to pull the line back out of my jug a bit to ensure that, from either tank, the flow out of the 1/4" (?) line was smooth and solid -- and it was. Yorke and I wanted to check that out, as it always seemed we had a heavy LEFT wing after flying a couple hours with the valve in the BOTH position. So far, with the few flights we've had, that's been the case -- but we'll both keep watching that, and experiment with RIGHT and/or LEFT settings.

And my memory was tricking me -- time-to-2 gallons was just under 4 minutes (not 30+ seconds as I wrote above!), and this was with each tank holding about the same, 13 gallons.

View attachment View attachment

IACRA -- that's the current set of hoops any new applicant for a PPL has to go through. It stands for (wait for it...) "Integrated Airman Certification and Rating Application." I have to set up an account, then the FAA issues me a unique number that has to appear on all subsequent paperwork vis-a-vis tests and logbook endorsements, as I understand it. The written test is now done completely online, on a computer supplied by the testing entity... Whoopie-do...
 

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Walt: I wonder if you might have a bad hose or two on that left tank. Sometimes the liner in the hose can crack.

Best regards,

Todd
 
Good thought, Todd (thanks!). I'm aware that that can happen (experienced that on one of my old '72 Blazer's brake lines) and we'll most likely check that fuel line out later... but all rubber lines were replaced with new super-duper, certified stuff when we put the wings back on in ...2020? Anyway, prior to the engine overhaul.

In the meantime, I'm satisfied that both tanks feed enough fuel that there shouldn't be a problem. Whether my A&P is also satisfied... well, I'll leave that up to him and defer to his judgement. We'll certainly discuss it.
 
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