Adventures in Oil Changing.

I have a cold, but the college flying club 172 needs an oil change… no problem, I shall manage.

1.) Drive car to hangar and get airplane.
2.) Upon bringing aircraft over to maintenance hangar, notice that carb heat has no effect.
3.) Remove cowl.
4.) Begin draining oil.
5.) Note that carb heat control arm is broken off of shaft.
6.) Order carb heat repair kit.
7.) Remove airbox for repair, upon removal note that carburetor float bowl drains its contents through bolt holes for airbox… not a good sign.
8.) Investigate further and discover that bolt holes were drilled and tapped all the way into float bowl, this is not as its designer intended.
9.) Discover that carburetor is out of warranty by one month.
10.) Cry.
11.) Order carburetor.
12.) Cry more.
13.) Go home and go to bed.


Carb heat repair kit? – $350.00
New Carburetor – $1150.00
Turning an oil change into a major disaster on Friday before a holiday weekend? Priceless.

~~Warno

So it begins

KRHV 172047Z 28010KT 15SM SKC 38/10 A2987

To say it was hot to day at the airport would be a massive understatement. It was the kind of hot that causes public acts of nudity to be deemed acceptable. It was the kind of hot that even kept the most hardcore of 75 year old hangar flyers at home in their Los Gatos palaces. It was so hot, that the takeoff performance of 3 loaded Cessna 152s was deemed too efficient. Thankfully the truck has the magic of wing windows, which take hot, still air, and turn it into hot, moving air.

Science!

Sometimes I feel like I'm sending people off to their death when I indulge their stupid requests. It's 100˚, you have two decent sized guys AND you want full tanks for your pattern work? I'll just go ahead and have the fire department on speakerphone for you. Yeah yeah, we can have a lengthy discussion about the importance of fuel (Thats like, your opinion, man), but if you're planning on flying for 1 hour on a perfect VFR day, I think its less safe to be overweight and out of balance than to have only 1 hour reserve when you get back.

Well, if someone crashes because of extra fuel, I'll at least get to claim another kill for the fuel truck.

That brings me to the first and second laws of fueling:

1: The only aircraft that isn't topped off will be the first one to go flying.
2: If all the aircraft are full, then someone will need a 152 topped off for patternwork.

We'd keep the 152s topped, but they just leak gas everywhere once they're full. We were putting cans to catch the drips, but then the genius smokers at the airport started flicking cigarette butts into them. Brilliant.