An awesome week ahead

There was a time when I was maintaining aircraft at the same school I was also working as flight instructor. It was a great way to keep busy and support my flying habit on days when there were no flight lessons scheduled. Every now and then one of my students would find his or her way into the hangar and often the questions that always came with students weren’t far behind. Some even offered to “help” so they can get more experience with the aircraft. But a lot of times I had to keep the answers very short as I was on the clock for the shop and the shop didn’t pay for me to give free instruction. Some students held it against me even, and in a different world I would have loved to keep chatting, but the inspections would have taken way longer and “the real Hans” would not have been pleased.

We often worked at night when everybody else went home already to get a lot of uninterrupted work done. I guess my point was that I can relate to Julio in this scenario. It’s nice to dig in and just get stuff done without interruptions and without anybody “helping”, even if they mean well …

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3 comments on “An awesome week ahead
  1. Jean Loup says:

    When I took Skydive training with Oscar at Tequesquitengo MX, part of my payment was to take down the Continental from the Cessna 180 (4 place with pilot seat only & modified door with hinges on top, so it could open in flight and drop 4 skydivers…I mean SARDiNES!) dismount the heads & cilinders, decarbonize the piston rings, and mount everything back to specs. Every 40 hours of operation. Oscar was not only a Flight & Skydive certified instructor, he also was a certified mechanic. I had all the needed tools in my VW Safari (Thing or type 181), it was my shop-on-wheels for VW maintenance at the owners garage. Air cooled engines (they are oil cooled in reality) used one grade oil (on those days) because it resisted better & longer the abrupt temperature changes. Multigrade had detergent, one grade did not. Multigrade was for water cooled engines, their temperature changes are slower (the water goes in the radiator for cooling) than air cooled ones (oil cooled in reality), were the oil goes to an oil radiator & back to lubricate hot engine parts, like valve stems, piston heads (from the inside) and rings… were they slowly deposit carbon. If one does not clean rings after 40 hours, the engine starts puffing out black smoke!!

  2. Jean Loup says:

    I forgot to metion, it is oil molecules that gets degraded fast with abrupt temp changes. Also, if aircraft had used non detergent oils, it was not smart to start using detergent oil just like that: you are in danger of clogging oil pasages with acumulated trash that is being removed all of a suden. Unles you take the engine appart & clean all parts before rebuilding it (or total overhaul).

  3. Captain Dunsel says:

    Not exactly aviation-related, but I was the sole computer tech for a southern NJ school district for 11 years. I had a great boss, who had no problem giving me ‘comp time’, so I often came in on school vacation days. That way, I had full run of the school buildings and could fix lots of computer issues, without having to work around hallways full of kids or teachers with their “While you’re here, can you fix…..” demands.

    Plus, during my lunch break, I got to use the completely empty gyms and cafetoriums to get in a few flights with my little indoor Electric model planes ;-).

    CD

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