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When I woke up today it was freakin' chilly out. The only thing on my mind was to get some French Onion soup for lunch. The best place I knew for French Onion was Chester County airport (KMQS), just to the west of Philly, and only a 20 minute RV ride away. First off I needed to figure out what was going on with my oil door. Some people recommended adding a stiffener to the oil door, as it must be flexing, leading to it popping open. However, why now? Why hasn't this always plagued me? I wasn't convinced I needed to add the stiffener, so I started investigating the real root cause.  One thing I noticed immediately was the hinges seemed sloppy and loose. I don't have anything to compare it to, but it just didn't seem right. Perhaps the slop in the hinge was causing the door to pop open? I used a set of channel locks to squeeze the hinge eyelets shut. Wow, did that ever make a big difference! It was much harder to open up the door now. Time to test it out and get some soup.  It was chilly out - this was about 1pm - 58 degrees.  It was a little bumpy up at 3,000', but a beautiful day nonetheless.  42 degrees at altitude. I definitely had the heater on.  I had a nice 17 kt tailwind on my way over.  On the ground at MQS. It was relatively quiet here today.  MQS has a great restaurant and a nice bar to sit at. Although I couldn't partake in any libations, It was nice to eat and watch some football.  Ah, what I had been waiting for all day. It definitely lived up to my expectations.  Going back I stayed lower to avoid the headwinds. 8 kts of headwind wasn't bad!  My engine was running beyond perfect on the trip home - 24 squared, 7.6 GPH and my CHT's between 276-288. Sometimes my engine loves to run this way, other times it needs more gas to stay this happy.  Did some circles over a corn maze.  The airport was hosting an event with a B-17 bomber and a P-51 Mustang. I landed and taxied right behind the P-51.  As you may recall, my wingtips aren't very well aligned with the trailing edge of my ailerons. I decided to see if I could fix that today.  I used the cut off wheel to slice open the back of the wingtip.  I also needed to slice open the side of the wingtip to allow it to flex enough.  Once the wingtips were sliced open, I was able to move them slightly. I lifted up on the outboard edge as much as I could and drilled a hole to see what the net result was.  I was able to get the wingtips to move about 3/32" at the outboard tip from where there were previously positioned. This caused a drastic change in the outboard edge deflection.  I drilled some more holes and put clecos in them. You can see it looks MUCH better now. Before it was over 1/2" of a deflection at the tip.  In order to try to get the tip a little higher (and also to keep it from falling down), I added a suppose made out of wood pushing up on the tip. I will let this cure and see how it turned out before I attempt to do the other side. 
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Last Modified: October 5, 2024 |