In this issue:
Monday, November 13, 6:00 - Board Meeting at the Birdcage Pilot Lounge
Friday, December 1, 7:00 - Holiday Banquet at Ernesto's Restaurant in Plymouth
Holiday Banquet - Friday December 1st
The date of our Holiday Banquet has been changed to Friday, December 1st. Please mark you calendar and reserve this evening for our annual MANG Aero Club dinner. This year, the dinner will take place at Ernesto's Restaurant in Plymouth, MI. The evening will start at 7:00 PM with a Cash Bar, followed by Dinner, Election of officers for 2007, and prizes for everyone. Prizes range from gift certificates for Sporty's mail order catalog to flying time credits on club aircraft, to lesser but useful pilot things or holiday poinsettias. The restaurant is located at 41661 Plymouth Road in Plymouth. This restaurant has excellent food, and our group will be in a very nice private room. See www.ernestos1.com for a look at the Restaurant and the "Country" dining room. There are also map directions at that web page. Menu selections and prices will be announced in an e-mail as soon as that information is available.
It is that time of year again when we elect our Club Officers for 2007. The actual vote will be held at the Holiday Banquet on December 1st.. We are now accepting written or verbal nominations for officers for 2007. Once a nominated member accepts the nomination, their name will be placed on the ballot for our annual election December 1st. You may nominate yourself if you would like to run for an office. If you are interested in an appointed position, you should make your interests known to one of the newly elected board members after the December election. All members can cast their ballots at the December 1st Banquet. The elected offices are President, Vice President, Treasurer, and Secretary. Once a new board is elected, appointments or re-appointments will be made for Operations, Safety, Maintenance Chief, Archer Maintenance, Warrior Maintenance, and Skyhawk maintenance. All officers and appointees receive flying credit as set forth in the club by-laws.
Our membership has gone up to 51, thanks to some recent additions to the Club, including Ronald Rose, Kenneth Larson, and George Dietrich. We still have four openings available for more members, so put an picture of an airplane on your desk at work and invite conversations about flying. Our Club really is the best deal in town, so talk it up.
If you land somewhere away from Willow Run, you can often get a better deal on fuel than we get at Willow Run. As of this writing, the price from Active Aero at Willow Run is $4.15/g on weekdays and $3.90/g on weekends. If you find a better price elsewhere, then you can save your Club some money by filling up there. If you are less than an hour away from Willow Run, then you don't need to fill the tanks again when you get back home. Just leave a note in the comments section of the time sheet telling the next pilot how much the tanks are down in terms of hours (like ".75 hr down"). Also write down where and how much fuel you bought. Save the receipt showing the date, aircraft N-number, amount, and price. Send a copy of that receipt with your next MANG dues payment and you will receive a credit to your MANG account.
If you order fuel from Active Aero using our MANG account, then we have been saving those receipts either in the box on the wall in the Warrior hangar, or in the pouches in the aircraft book. But when our Treasurer comes by the hangars to pick up these receipts, a plane might be out on a flight, and the book in the aircraft is not available to him. So we are now asking that you use the pouch in the book only for temporary storage while you are on a trip. When you get back to the Willow Run, please move all receipts to the box on the wall in the Warrior Hangar.
What's All This Mags-Off Check Stuff Anyhow?
Last month an alert Club member discovered that the "Off" position of the mag switch in the Warrior was not working. How did he do it? He performed the mags-off check. This check is not commonly done because it is after a flight when pilots feel like all the hazards of flying are behind them. But a mag switch that fails in the Off position is a hazard too. Suppose someone turns the prop by hand and there just happens to be a little fuel in the engine. If the magnetos are not positively shorted out, then it is possible to spark that fuel and cause the engine to fire briefly - with possible dire consequences to anyone standing near the prop.
How can you do a mags-off check? Normally you shut down the engine by turning off all avionics, bringing the throttle to idle, and then pulling the mixture to cut-off and waiting for the engine to sputter to a stop. Then you turn off the mags and the master switch. But if you want to do a mags-off check, then after turning off all avionics, do this:
Set throttle to idle (about 1000 RPM).
Leave mixture rich.
Briefly turn the mag switch to Off. Be ready to switch back to Both before the engine actually quits. Notice that the engine stops firing and is on its way to stopping. But if the engine merely slows down a little and continues to run, such as you might see during a run-up L and R mag check, then you have a failed mags-off switch.
In either case, bring the engine back to the normal running condition with the mag switch on Both, and then shut down the normal way with the mixture. We don't want to kill the engine with the mags-off switch because that leaves a lot of unburned fuel in the cylinders. It is better for the engine if we stop it by starving it of fuel with the mixture control.
Here are the statistics for September 2006:
|
(Total HOURS) |
54115 |
43755 |
33149 |
All Aircraft |
|
Septembert: |
16.2 |
25.4 |
18.2 |
59.8 |