On November 5th, Todd up at Lancaster Avionics found an open spot to fit in my small job of fixing an intermittent right engine fuel flow. I believed, and have since confirmed, that a connector pulled loose while the technician was working in the admittedly tight space behind my panel on a previous visit. No harm, no foul, so long as we eventually get everything working.
The work that was done on the previous visit included swapping a data input to the IFD550 out of port 3 to port 4. This is a problem Avidyne identified from the logs I sent in. Fixing that issue seems to have had an impact on the now familiar UTC Mismatch Error that I’d been encountering. I haven’t seen that since the port was changed. Note that I’d never have known anything about the underlying port installation error, had I not sent the logs to Avidyne for a thorough review.
Come to think of it – I’ll download a new set of logs and update my ticket to see if anything else is out of whack after the work was done.
Since scheduling this work, I discovered that the right PTT push-to-talk switch stopped working. There had been a glued clip holding the wires to that side that came loose, pulling the wires loose from the yoke. I asked them to replace that while I was there as well.
Cool IFR: One benefit of having to go back to Lancaster Avionics so often is that I always seem to get bad weather slots. That’s actually a good thing, since it gives me a reason to get fantastic practice time in IMC.
It’s better when you have a purpose to go get into it, I believe. On this day I decided to wait on the ground for an hour to let the weather go up just a little more. When the ceilings got to 400′, I launched for Lancaster.
Once I was up there, the ceilings at Lancaster were breaking up, but there was an interesting 60mph wind from the west to contend with at 4000′. I filed IFR, of course, but I called the field in sight within 5 miles. After being cleared for the visual, I lost visual with the field, and ended up turning a close-in right downwind for RW08.
My approach to land was poorly planned, I admit, and i found myself in a tight descending turn for the runway once cleared to land. I was vigilant not to rudder it around and to maintain my airspeed. I was ready to go around, but ended up getting low enough that the wind abated and the landing was uneventful.
YES! I’m celebrating ZERO! Zero Squawks that is. There is nothing broken in the airplane today! This takes a continuous effort, and I’m downright giddy when it happens. Time to enjoy some flying……
The trip home from Lancaster, however, was a hoot in all that wind. The fact that two of the three runways were closed for maintenance work left me with an 11 kt direct crosswind, gusting to 17 into RW19, if I recall correctly. It was sporty, but this airplane does an amazing job with crosswinds.
Nice smooth landing and back into the hangar with zero squawks.
Fly safe! Frank