Ugh.

My airplane’s alternator is… messed up. And I do not have a wiring diagram for the electrical system (to my knowledge, I need to go double-check. But if I have it, then it’s in another state)

Apparently, the mechanic thinks it might be a car alternator that’s bolted on to this.

There’s also a resistor in the field wire in the alternator, which is extremely weird and at-best counterintuitive. The mechanic has never seen something like this on an airplane.

He asked to remove the alternator and test it. I gave the go ahead, and now I’m thinking of upping my return date so I can go double-check for that wiring diagram.

I also have half a mind to just tell him to tear it out and redo the entire thing. But that’d be even more expensive (and besides, I was planning to do that myself for some fun times).

#AirplaneOwnership

Had the return-to-service flight today! Was going to be 3 laps in the pattern, and if all looked good, venturing further away for some maneuvers and, you know, enjoying the nice day up here.

Unfortunately, after the 3 laps in the pattern where things looked pretty good, shortly after the 4th takeoff, I noticed what felt like a partial power loss on climbout. This manifested as a very brief reduction in RPM (I don't fully recall, but I don't think there was a reduction in manifold pressure), lasting about a second before returning to normal. Still enough to give me the heebie-jeebies and call it. Re-entered the pattern and landed without any other incident.

I did just have the prop governor overhauled, so it could be that the governor is still breaking in. But I'm obviously going to have a mechanic look at it before I fly next.

#aviation #avgeek #AirplaneOwnership

Yay! Just got the call that my airplane’s condition inspection is done! When we get back, I get to go write a giant check! And then also arrange for some avionics things to get addressed, because the shop I went to doesn’t do avionics.

#aviation #AirplaneOwnership

#VansAircraft came out with a fleet-wide service bulletin to install egress hammers. Kind of a no-brainer, but I’ll admit to never having thought of this (fire extinguisher yes, egress hammer, no). https://www.vansaircraft.com/service-information-and-revisions/sb-00079/

This shouldn’t be hard to comply with - Vans sells these for $25 each, and assuming they actually ship relatively quickly (big if, for real. I see these are already on backorder), the annoying part is just figuring out where and how to mount it. Might be able to rivet some velcro straps to the center console and have that be the install method?

#Aviation #avgeek #ExperimentalAviation #AirplaneOwnership