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Age Catches Up to Us
Thunderstorms threatened, but never attacked the local aerodrome last week, so the tied-down refugees on the ramp escaped injury. This would have been a good time to have built some T-hangars to rent out, because even when all our neighboring airports are operational we get weekly inquiries about storage space. The close-by closures just make it worse.
Other than waiting out storms en route, quite a bit of flying took place over the past seven days. A nice Cirrus SR22 flew in from St. Louis, a Civil Air Patrol Cessna 182 stopped by, a Piper Warrior and a Tecnam P-Mentor were in and a lumbering Army Reserve CH-47 heavy-lift helicopter whopp-whopped over. Dr. Ed Christophersen flew down from New Century in his Piper Archer.
From the local-based bunch, Todd Proach made an Angel Flight mercy trip to Mayo Clinic at Rochester, Minnesota in his Beech Bonanza A36, Roy Conley was up in a Piper TriPacer, Doug Hartzler’s Cirrus SR-22G2 was out and both the SkyDive KC King Air C90 jump plane and BCS AirTractor sprayplane flew multiple missions.
Age catches up with even the newer airplanes in our fleet. A report came out last week of a throttle lever on a 25-year-old Cirrus that broke off when the pilot shoved it open to take off. So, there’ll be an inspection required on all Cirri throttles. I just had aileron hinges replaced on my Cessna 150; I gotta admit they have 8000-plus hours on them, and they are nearly 50 years old. And we had a 70-year old gas tank spring a leak in a Taylorcraft last week; old age is just a fact of life.
Every so often, I get asked “How come that plane is so LOUD? It must have a big motor.” Much of the time, the noise is coming off the propeller. Long prop blades turn at near-supersonic speeds when at maximum rpm, generating heavy decibels during takeoff. If the pilot slows the propeller speed down, it’ll quiet things down a bit.
The debate continues to rage over Unleaded 100-octane aviation gasoline; everybody wants to see it magically be introduced to replace the nasty old leaded gas, but the devil’s in the details. It’s hard to formulate a replacement fuel that’s not even worse for the environment, let alone affordable, and when GAMI (General Aviation Modifications Inc.) spent millions doing it, the non-midwestern crowd cried “not invented here” and said GAMI-Gas was no good. And then airplane and engine manufacturers didn’t want to warrantee their products if operated on something other than the original known-quantity avgas. All because 100LL has a tiny bit of hazardous substance that’s has been used without harm for 50 years.
Our brain-teaser from last week asked the name of the founder of Lockheed Aircraft company. He was born Allan Loughhead, but he changed the spelling to something easier to pronounce in 1934. For next week, we’ll toss out a simple question; what does a gallon of jet fuel weigh? No, it ain’t six pounds, like gasoline. You can send your answers to kochhaus1@gmail.com.
