Catherine and I came up to the airport to tackle the inspection part of the annual, and we were met by Kevin (the club president and hangar owner), Gary from Action-Ultralights, and Dave (one of the club members who also has some great knowledge).

Kevin mentioned that while he was waiting for us to arrive, he had taken a peek at the plane itself, and was impressed by the original builder, and felt it was a great plane etc.  We laid out an attack plan as followed below:

We started by pulling the plane out of the hangar so I could do a run-up to get the temps up.  Running at 1500-1800 RPM for 5 minutes chocked, and with me in the cockpit on the brakes, the CHT got up to where we wanted.  I did a mag check, and tested the carb heat.  Oil Temp started moving off the peg, but it would take a longer run to get it into operating range.

With the engine warmed up (and now off), we quickly got the plugs pulled for the compression test.  The numbers were great (72) across the board, but each exhaust valve seems to have a small leak, but the consensus is that I need to do some serious flying then re-do the test as they probably just aren’t seated.

After the compression tests (and a mysteriously missing pen), I rolled the plane over to some gravel and cleaned the engine top to bottom with varsol, doing my best to avoid the brake pads as mentioned several times by the folks lending a hand.

All clean, I pulled the plane back into the hangar to drain the oil.  Kevin had noted that some of the safety wiring could use re-doing, so we were going to start with the propeller wiring.  I cut off the current stuff, and since they were accessible, we decided to ensure they were torqued down properly.  That’s when the bad news came…

The original builder had used normal grade-8 bolts instead of AN bolts, which for me is a no-fly item.  We pulled them all out, and took the prop off 🙁  Digging through the Aircraft Spruce catalogue, we couldn’t find the actual price, but I was told they wouldn’t be cheap…  As we were working on the stainless prop, we could all see some basic (expected) corrosion, and the conversation turned to “what colour are you going to paint it?”  –  Decided on grey front with white tips, and the standard flat black on the back.

Kevin had to leave, and Gary was busy putting one of his airplanes back together, but, but he and Dave were pointing out that the alternator was making binding noises when spun, so sure enough, it came off, and I’ll be talking to a local auto parts store for a rebuilt replacement.  The alternator belt was past it’s prime, and we’re shooting for piece of mind here, so add one of those to the list too…

Kevin called form home where he was surprised, me pleasantly so, to find that the propeller bolts were only going to cost me $4 each!  He had also noted that the wing joint bolts had standard nuts on them, so he ordered me 8 AN ones at the same time…

Feeling a tad bit frustrated, and a little sorry for myself, I decided to try and figure out where that missing pen had gone.  Normally you might figure it’s no big deal, but my fear was that it had rolled inside the wing, and that would cause serious problems potentially.  I got a small mirror on a stick thing and sure enough the pen had fallen into the left wing’s exposed ribs (the wing joint covers were off remember).  Catherine came over to lend a hand (holding that mirror for me was a blessing), and I was able to attach some tape to a ruler and slowly milk the pen to a spot where I could reach it with my fingers!

Still a bit depressed, we closed up the hangar for the night, cleaned up, and headed back home.