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Bill Strahan
Joined: 20 Aug 2008
Posts: 145
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 Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2012 9:57 am Post subject: Only in a Lightning |
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Yesterday I wanted to go see a CrossFit competition in San Antonio. My schedule only allowed me to spend the day, so I couldn't go the day before and couldn't spend the night.
A 500nm round trip, with total flying time of just barely over 4 hours allowed me to see the entire event in San Antonio and be back before the end of the day...with 8 gallons left in the tanks.
Less fuel than driving and the total time for the trip was less than the driving time alone would have been.
Gotta love it. Only downside to the day was I didn't take the time to throw the cover on the fuselage. San Antonio sun got the GPS on the dash so hot that the glue melted and it slid sideways.
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Bill Strahan
Joined: 20 Aug 2008
Posts: 145
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| Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2012 3:04 pm Post subject: Re: Only in a Lightning |
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And in a follow-on to my own post...imagine my dismay when I went over to the hanger and noticed a very small puddle of oil under the plane! A quick glance showed me it was leaking down from the cowl and the firewall, both of which appeared to have a good amount of oil on them. Not good.
I removed the cowl and it was immediately apparent that the breather oil recovery canister was right in the middle of the oil mess that was on both cowls and the firewall. Only then did I remember two things:
1) I forgot to drain that thing at the last condition inspection, so it was probably pretty full.
2) While 3.5 hours of my flight were GORGEOUS at 7500-10,500' yesterday, the last 25 minutes under the clouds were awful. TRULY awful. It was 22 gusting to 35 and I had the belts cinched down as hard as I could and was still thrown around. I kept the speed below the clouds down to 100 knots and was getting some enormous G excursions, both positive and negative.
Hmmm. As I thought back on the number of times everything in the cockpit went flying upwards, I remembered how I started to smell a bit of engine smell shortly afterwards.
So I think the canister was just dumping oil out of the vent hole on the top. I removed it and drained it, guessing it was more than 1/3 full. Must have been even more full yesterday! I sprayed down the engine and firewall and cleaned the cowl. A short runup revealed no leaks.
What a relief.
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n5pb(at)AOL.COM
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| Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2012 5:38 pm Post subject: Only in a Lightning |
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Bill,
Glad to here it was only the full oil canister.
I too had a great flight on Saturday. Gainsville, FL (Gators) Air univeristy Center had their 2nd annual fly-in. Took off from St Pete/Clearwater International (KPIE). About 130 SM point to point from KPIE to KGNV (Gainsville). Launched out of KPIE with clearance into the Tampa Class B. Climbed to 3500' nice smooth air, but hazy. Superb ATC flight following from takeoff to landing. A few folks in the pattern at KGNV, but the control tower worked us in smoothly. I had just upgraded my trutrak autopilot (some of the pixels had been dropping out and I spoke to the trutrak folks at Sun-n-Fun and they told me they are using a new display, and all repair/upgrades were being configured (if you wanted it) to the new display). It was a good choice as the blue alpha-numerics on the black background was a huge visual improvement (excellent contrast). I loaded in my flight plan to take me north of St. Petersburg, over Crystal River airport then on to Williston airport and finally into Gainsville. The autopilot tied to the GPS and GRT flight plan worked flawlessly. (Tampa Approach let me climb to my cruise altitiude immediately and probably within ten minutes allowed me to resume my own navigation. (Click the auto pilot mode button one more time and I was now on GPS/Nav, where the entire system took over) I then had a few pretzels and several sips of water as I monitored the flight northbound.
Flight time 1 hour chock to chock. It's about a 2 1/2 to 3 hour drive.
The Fly-in was ok although I heard it was better last year. Anyway, an hour or two on the ground and we were back in the air retracing our flight back to home base (KPIE). Pretty warm and bumpy on the way back, but nothing like yours. On take off, there was a Cessna (172) who had just departed, and the tower asked me my direction of flight and I told them southwest. He informed the the Cessna ahead was also southwest bound and cleared me for take off. Within a few minutes I had him off my right wing and then left him somewhere at my 4 to 6 o'clock positon---miles behind!!
Another 1 hour flight home. Burned 9 gallons total; averaged 28 MPG. Got the "jet" back in the hangar, love bugs cleaned off the leading edges and still had enough time to go to mass (church) at 4 PM.
yes, Only in a Lightning.
Bear
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