Filling Downtime
The Cheetah is still down. It’s been at Bill’s shop for a week, but it’s been just sitting. They had a mammoth A-20 restoration project in front of it, and they’ve been working on getting it out the door last week. Bill said that he hoped to get to it the first of this coming week; and though the “hoped to” promise made me a bit nervous, there is nothing I can do about it. I thought we had escaped the Texas Flightline curse of having one month downtime, but this time I’m not sure we have.
I had hoped the PowerFlow exhaust unit might have shipped, but it hasn’t yet and it could be three more weeks until it does. The way my luck with this airplane is going it will be up about a week and then the PowerFlow will arrive, and I’ll lose it for another week waiting on that installation. The only somewhat saving grace in all this is that the airplane looks like it will come back up during the next shuttle mission when my flying time is somewhat restricted anyway. Then, I’m hoping to be able to fly it for all of April and most of May before I have to tailor my flying because of work. God knows, I better not have to tailor my flying because of anything mechanical!
I’ve been using the downtime to reconfigure some aviation things, even if it wasn’t my airplane itself, to my likings. I started by moving my Mac Pro into the duties of being my main desktop and moving it onto another desk where my CH Pro USB Yoke and Pedal Set would work better. I installed Microsoft’s Flight Simulator X onto the Windows XP hard drive in the computer and located and installed a Grumman Cheetah model into it. I test flew the model to make sure it performed realistically, which it does for the most part. I ordered a new backpack style flight bag from Sporty’s Pilot Shop, moved all my flight gear into it, sewed my old Naval Flight Officer nametag onto it, and gave my old bag away to a budding student pilot I work with. I researched the Cheetah’s Minimum Equipment list and have discussed with my mechanic the best way to incorporate outside air temperature and electrical bus voltage measurements into my cockpit. (The information used to be supplied by a Davtron M655 unit that has failed LED’s and a badly located temperature probe.) I’ve ordered an iCom A-24 handheld nav/com to replace the Sporty’s SP-200 handheld nav/com I’ve handed down to my wife. I’ve used Photoshop CS3 to examine a new paint scheme based on the old stripes and have used Illustrator CS3 to design a new paint scheme altogether. I finally figured out how I was going to reconfigure my avionics and my panel to incorporate a true audio panel and IFR GPS set-up while keeping one nav/com and an extra comm radio.
The soonest the airplane can be up will be late next week, mainly due to the 72 hour curing time the tank sealant will take. I’m hoping during this upcoming week to get more studying done to set the foundation for re-invigorating my IFR rating. I’m hoping, too, I’ll take a few flights in the MS FS X simulator running the Cheetah model. I can download local approach plates from the web and maybe even get the local low-level IFR charts from there, too. I expect to be setting up and learning the iCom later in the week, so that’ll take some time, too. I’ll probably go talk to one of my local avionics guys about pulling out the Davtron M655 and the Davtron M800 below it to replace them both with a Davtron M803. But, all that aside, I’m hoping that by next Saturday or Sunday I can fly the Cheetah for real.
I had hoped the PowerFlow exhaust unit might have shipped, but it hasn’t yet and it could be three more weeks until it does. The way my luck with this airplane is going it will be up about a week and then the PowerFlow will arrive, and I’ll lose it for another week waiting on that installation. The only somewhat saving grace in all this is that the airplane looks like it will come back up during the next shuttle mission when my flying time is somewhat restricted anyway. Then, I’m hoping to be able to fly it for all of April and most of May before I have to tailor my flying because of work. God knows, I better not have to tailor my flying because of anything mechanical!
I’ve been using the downtime to reconfigure some aviation things, even if it wasn’t my airplane itself, to my likings. I started by moving my Mac Pro into the duties of being my main desktop and moving it onto another desk where my CH Pro USB Yoke and Pedal Set would work better. I installed Microsoft’s Flight Simulator X onto the Windows XP hard drive in the computer and located and installed a Grumman Cheetah model into it. I test flew the model to make sure it performed realistically, which it does for the most part. I ordered a new backpack style flight bag from Sporty’s Pilot Shop, moved all my flight gear into it, sewed my old Naval Flight Officer nametag onto it, and gave my old bag away to a budding student pilot I work with. I researched the Cheetah’s Minimum Equipment list and have discussed with my mechanic the best way to incorporate outside air temperature and electrical bus voltage measurements into my cockpit. (The information used to be supplied by a Davtron M655 unit that has failed LED’s and a badly located temperature probe.) I’ve ordered an iCom A-24 handheld nav/com to replace the Sporty’s SP-200 handheld nav/com I’ve handed down to my wife. I’ve used Photoshop CS3 to examine a new paint scheme based on the old stripes and have used Illustrator CS3 to design a new paint scheme altogether. I finally figured out how I was going to reconfigure my avionics and my panel to incorporate a true audio panel and IFR GPS set-up while keeping one nav/com and an extra comm radio.
The soonest the airplane can be up will be late next week, mainly due to the 72 hour curing time the tank sealant will take. I’m hoping during this upcoming week to get more studying done to set the foundation for re-invigorating my IFR rating. I’m hoping, too, I’ll take a few flights in the MS FS X simulator running the Cheetah model. I can download local approach plates from the web and maybe even get the local low-level IFR charts from there, too. I expect to be setting up and learning the iCom later in the week, so that’ll take some time, too. I’ll probably go talk to one of my local avionics guys about pulling out the Davtron M655 and the Davtron M800 below it to replace them both with a Davtron M803. But, all that aside, I’m hoping that by next Saturday or Sunday I can fly the Cheetah for real.
posted by Andy Foster at 7:29 PM
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