As I come up on my first year, I thought I'd give you guys an update from the trenches of antique dinosaur twin ownership. And man has it been a war - especially on my wallet! I'm beginning to see that the saying
pay now, or pay later is very true for older aircraft.
Still, no regrets at all.
I won't bore you with too many tangents, but early September I finally got her back from the annual and immediately decided to go on a 1600nm cross country trip to Chicago. It was literally the first trip after it got out of the shop. Purpose was two-fold: first I had a job there and also (just by sheer coincidence), the yearly American Aero Commander Club's fly-in in Detroit (which is around the corner from Chicago) was happening on the Sat I had off from work. So, off we went. I gave myself two days to get there.
This is what happens if you don't pay your mechanic.
Crossing the Sierras and the Rockies was uneventful, except for getting buzzed by F18's in the Utah desert. As I passed Salt Lake City the weather started deteriorating and thunderstorms were forming all around me. I managed to find a passage through, but eventually my good luck ran out. I was surrounded by bad weather in the Wyoming Rockies and had to commit to a short gravel/dirt strip at high elevation called Medicine Bow. It flew a low pass to see what it looked like (not great) but decided to give it a go as I didn't have much choice. Strip was a bit rough, but my fillings stayed in place. A farmer gave me a lift down into the only hotel in town. He said he hadn't seen anyone land there in at least 6 months. I wolfed down a cheeseburger as I mulled over my options.
Surrounded by thunderstorms in the Rockies, I admitted defeat and landed Medicine Bow. Field elevation 6646ft and only 3200ft long.
Staying the night. Notice the newly built terminal in the background.
Damn it - had it cleared towards the east? It sure looked that way. I decided to have another go at it. Wind was howling, so I got off easily even though the field was rather short. Pissed around and wasted another hour of fuel until I finally had to admit defeat for a second time and land back at the same field and stay the night. Early next morning the weather was far worse and the wind had gone. I was really nervous about the T/O - high elevation and on a short strip with no wind to help me - it could spell disaster. Thankfully, the old girl was off in a little more than half, which is quite impressive.
The rest of the day it just got worse and worse and I had to fly 3hrs in pissing rain and hazy fog following roads, dodging radio towers and aerials. At least I was out of the Rockies. I almost gave up numerous times, but pressed on. Finally got rewarded with a higher ceiling as I got closer to Iowa and could climb from my aerial-clipping altitude.
Then all of a sudden the left engine started running rough. I tried the usual - booster pumps, magnetos, etc - nothing. It went away as quickly as it came. Flew on for about another 20 mins and then the roughness came back again, this time for much longer and I had some more time to troubleshoot. I contemplated declaring an emergency to the controller that had me on radar service, but ultimately decided against it as I had quite a few options - there were airfields all around me and I had plenty of altitude. Still, not only was it the critical engine, it was also the only one with the hydraulic pump on it, so if it decided to give up its ghost it would mean finding a landing spot very soon (as the gear would have come out when the hyd press went to zero). Finally after fiddling about, I must have missed the detent in the magneto on my previous try, because when I switched to the right she all of a sudden ran fine again (which I would subsequently find out was false, but more about that later).
I landed at Chicago Executive and taxied to one of the only two options for handling, Atlantic, fully aware of the fact that they now had me by the b***s. To my surprise the two day parking only came to about $30, which is very reasonable. Good ole US of A. As I taxied in a G5 captain spooling up his engines waved cheerfully at me from his cockpit. Who knows, maybe he got his start flying mail at night in one of these?
Chicago Executive is very close to O'Hare so one has to watch out so as to not bust their Bravo airspace.
Frolicking with the the big boys. Swing a cat here and you're bound to hit a G5.
At the weekend it was time to go to the fly-in in Detroit. As I started my take off roll, the plane veered to the left and it was obvious there was something more serious going on. Finally found a mechanic on the weekend who could have a look. Compression was zero on two cylinders...
I was starting to realise that not only was I not going to Detroit today, but the old girl was going to stay in Chicago for awhile. Here's the aborted takeoff:
Turned out that one of the cylinders had chewed up a compression ring, hacked it to a million pieces and spat it out through the exhaust valve. But as it got hacked to pieces, it had impacted not only the top of the piston (see photos), but also shorted one of the spark plugs by deforming the electrode. This is what made the engine run rough and also respond to the magneto change. The other cylinder had a shot intake valve and was pressurising the case (or maybe it was the other way around). Anyway, they were both junk.
One can clearly see the pitting at the top of the piston and the jack it made on the side as it departed.
The ring damaged the electrodes on the spark plug as it got pulverised.
Mechanics were very nice chaps, but not used to old planes and had "Cirrus-itis", so when they pulled the cylinders they started getting worked up about the look of the cam. Now, changing a cam means splitting the case, which, in effect, means an overhaul. An overhaul on one of these old geared engines is not as cheap as a direct drive engine. The few that do them normally insist on overhauling the gearbox as well (even though there might not be anything wrong with it), which adds to the cost. We were talking $40K here - money I just didn't have. So as I was desperately trying to source another spare engine so I could get back to California, my regular mechanic there was also looking at pictures of the cam they sent etc and not agreeing that it needed any overhaul at all.
One can clearly see the metallic sheen in the oil from the pulverised ring. The Chicago boys were not happy with this.
Finally the pics were sent to Lycoming and they also said the cam looked fine, so the Chicago boys relented and proceeed with the cylinder change. Dodged a bullet there, for sure.
New cylinder coming on.
Is she getting some perverse pleasure of having men attend to her jugs?
Here's a clip of my cross country trip to Chicago:
Three weeks later it was time to pick the old gal up. I'd asked them to look at the misbehaving beacon and they'd found it littered with car parts and dodgy wirings, so I replaced it with a brand new STC'd Whelen unit. This, plus the cylinders and work relieved me of $4700. Phew.
Nobody puts baby in the corner!
I did a couple of high speed taxis and prepped for an early morning start back to California.
I tracked south through New Mexico as I didn't want to hit the grunt of the Rockies at their highest point with two new jugs. The last 2 hrs into LA were quite nerve wracking as I had to pass the last bits of the Sierra Nevadas in darkness. It messes with your head knowing you have mountains below you you can't see. I felt very uncomfortable. Night flying over mountains is just not something I want to do much of. When I finally saw the lights of Palm Springs spread out in front of me, I felt like I had been born again! Night landing at home base, El Monte airport.
Crazy Austrian chick refuelling in Arizona. But the price was the lowest on the whole trip - $4.65/gal!
The trip back was pretty uneventful and can best be viewed in these clips, for those who like to endure the torture of hearing my bad R/T. First day:
Second day:
But we're not finished yet! Oh no - the wallet has yet still to be tapped some more!
My gear down safe light had started to play up and as I flew up to my mechanic to have it looked at, they found a cracked stiffener in the front wheel well. Three weeks and $3200 later I picked her up in Stockton and flew back. A week later on a night flight around LA with a friend, the green light - once again - didn't come on as I extended. Thankfully, you can see the mains lock through the side windows on the Commander, and during daylight hours you can also see the reflection of the front wheel in the spinners. But this was at night, so no way to know if the front was fully extended for sure, but I was pretty confident it was. As we landed I held the nose off as long as I could - thankfully it held. So next day I flew a short trip to a local mechanic who has some Commander experience. He tested the switch and it comes on immediately - it was just out of alignment. Or that's what we thought. As he wheels the old girl into the hangar,
the front wheel collapses on the tug and she drops like a rock, crushing the front doors! Obviously something else is wrong. I leave for work abroad the day after, but get the word that there was another bigger crack behind the bearing for the drag brace that keeps the front gear locked. It had gone unnoticed as it was hidden behind a panel. Still, better here than on the runway...
Just after the drop. The guys are sitting on the elevator to lift the nose up so we can extend the front wheel back into position.
Doors bent and crushed and can't be saved. Had to source new ones.
Today, she's been in the shop for almost a month and hopefully I can pick her up later this week. I haven't dared ask what the bill is, but I don't think it will be a penny under $5K…
This incident has prompted me to modify my landing technique. I used to keep the front wheel off as long as possible and when the elevator stopped flying, she would drop the front back onto the runway. I don't think that was the right thing to do, but it was how I was taught. From now on, I will keep the wheel off, but gently fly her back down just before I run out of elevator. That will hopefully stop the cracking of stiffeners. Who knows, they could have been there for years before, so not entirely sure it was my technique that caused it. Still, better safe than sorry.
Lessons learned? Have lots of money with old airplanes that have had journeyman maintenance. They'll eat you alive if you're not on top of things and can give them a loving home. Hopefully, I'll have taken care of most things that can possibly go wrong by now and she'll give me a trouble free 2012, but somehow I doubt it....