So last weekend I drove to Sandy Valley, Nevada. There’s a skypark there, and my buddy Kevin lives there with his wife and cat. Kevin has been working on a Cessna 310 for the last 7 years. It wasn’t in too bad of shape when he bought it, but it had been severely neglected. So he has been working on it, fixing it, making it ready for flight. As is often the case with big projects, he kept working on it, finding one thing after another to fix, until one day, he discovered he was out of things to fix. It was done. Well, airplanes are never “done.” There is always something to be done. But it was at last ready to make her wings do what they were designed to do, to produce lift and carry well over 3000 pounds of aluminum, steel, fiberglass, fuel, and warm, pink bodies into the sky. All it needed was a signature. My signature… I’m an IA. That’s shorthand for FAA Airframe & Powerplant Mechanic with Inspection Authorization. That means I can inspect airplanes and certify that they are airworthy. Without my signature every year, an airplane can’t leave the ground. So I drove to Sandy Valley to inspect this airplane, to verify that yes, indeed, all of the work had been performed to FAA standards and everything was as it should be. I should explain that my buddy is even more of a perfectionist than I am, if that’s even possible. Everything he touched, was perfect. “Good enough” doesn’t exist in Kevin’s vocabulary. It it’s not perfect, it gets done over, as many times as it takes, until it’s perfect. So I looked the plane over; he was worried about the ignition timing on the engines because he wasn’t quite sure he did it correctly. I dug out my equipment and we started the process… You would think this would be easy, like timing a car engine. You would be wrong. For one thing, you can’t do this with the engine running, like a car engine. Standing next to a running airplane engine, with a 7-foot diameter metal propeller spinning madly just inches from your head, is not a good idea. So you time the engine not running, and oh by-the-way, each engine has two magnetos (which is sort of like an evil distributor designed to drive mechanics insane.) and they have to be timed to within ½ degree of each other. Did I mention there are no timing marks? Yeah, dumb and dumber… So we check the first engine and it’s perfect. Over to the other engine, and it’s off just a hair. Kevin and I struggle a bit, trying to find that perfect Top Dead Center position for the crankshaft. I comment “What we need is something that would…” Kevin looks thoughtful for a second, then he is rummaging around in his junk box, grabs some tools and in 5 minutes produces an amazing tool that works better than anything commercially available. I adjust the timing and we’re done. Cosmetically, the plane needs some work but as we say, “Paint don’t make it fast.” But mechanically, this plane is ready to go. We remove the timing equipment and button up the engine cowlings. Time for an engine run… We pull the airplane out onto the taxiway in front of his hangar. Both of us in the cockpit, we run thru the procedure for starting the engines. Switches are flipped, knobs are adjusted, levers pushed and pulled until everything is just so. Ignition ON, fuel pumps set to PRIME, props are full, mixtures to RICH, starter button to START. The left engine starts turning, slowly at first but rapidly coming up to speed. Suddenly there is a roar as it catches, exhaust barking from the open pipes. It runs roughly at first, popping and banging, until the fuel pumps purge all of the air out of the lines, then the engine smoothes out into a steady idle. Oil pressure is good, get the generator online. Now we repeat the process for the right engine…. Now both engines are idling steadily. They sound like two Corvettes with no mufflers side-by-side at a red light. Without headsets, the noise is too much for conversation, so we revert to hand signals. I point at the engine gauges and make a thumbs-up gesture. Kevin nods his head once and pushes the throttles up to a very fast idle, about mid-way to take-off speed. The noise is glorious, and even with both of us standing on the brakes, it’s not enough to hold the airplane back. The plane is pulling at its leash; it’s creeping forward in tiny lurches, a half-inch at a time. The tail is shaking from the propwash. This plane wants to go fly. We let the engines run for another 30 seconds or so, then slowly reduce power back to idle. Smooth and even, everything looks good. Kevin pulls the mixture controls full back, starving the engines of fuel. The heavy propellers coast to a stop. We sit there in the silence, enjoying the stink of avgas and hot exhaust, listening to the tink-tink-tink of hot metal cooling. Kevin has his logbook on his lap. I reach into my pocket for my pen… And that’s the news from Flying Dog Ranch….
Posted on: Thu, 24 Oct 2013 06:27:38 +0000
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