One of my goals in life is to limit surprises. Not those surprise birthday parties but rather those other unwelcome surprises none of us enjoy. Just a few examples to get your imagination going: credit card statement with unknown charges, unwanted legless critter...
I decided some years ago that I just didn’t want to crawl under my cars and do the oil changes. It’s dirty, messy and just a lot of trouble. I have my favorite car mechanic that I trust for all things automotive. He always has some sort of special offer which usually...
Troubleshooting is an interesting art that I find immensely rewarding, but only when successful. To me, successful means a logical approach is followed using available data, research when needed, and maybe some tests which all culminate with a confirmed diagnosis....
It seems as though the change in the purchase price of aircraft over the years has outpaced that of automobiles. I’m sure economists have lots of data that they would sift through to accurately quantify these values. John Frank had a wonderful matrix for determining...
Before the Industrial Revolution, the vast majority of products were produced one at a time by individual craftsmen or small groups of craftsmen. Eventually, the volume of consumption forced new production methods to keep up with demand. One of the concepts that drove...
Every solution has its problems. The various devices used to trim an airplane for stable flight is a good example. I suppose elevator trim was one of the first secondary flight control systems available. It’s also one of the most needed, so necessity again proves to...
Every once in awhile an old adversary pops up its ugly head just to make sure I’m paying attention to the details. I don’t have a lot of taildragger time and fortunately have never ground looped a plane. However, planes have performed ground loops while sitting still...
Digging deep I’ve been working on legacy Cessnas since well before production ceased in 1986. I’m very familiar with the idiosyncrasies of the service manuals and parts catalogs. Of course, there’s plenty of information not included in the published manuals...
Don’t Be Late A couple of friends recently experienced incidences in their planes that initiated investigations involving the FAA. The incidents were not caused by some violation of the regulations, and no one was physically hurt. What did happen was that the FAA...
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