The following is a summary of the annual condition inspection. I performed the inspection over a period of a few weeks, and did it in phases in order to keep the plane flying throughout the process. I will summarize everything I did during the process, post a checklist that I developed, and post a list of my costs.
Tonight I ordered a new Odyssey PC680 battery. Mine is absolutely fine. Why am I ordering another one? To replace my perfectly fine battery. Yep. It's the policy I'm adhering to on this plane since I only have a single alternator. Every year (yes, it's been a year) I'll replace the battery. Why? Because if my alternator goes out on some night IFR flight, I want absolutely maximum endurance, and a healthy battery is critical to achieving that. A battery that is only at 75% will still act like it's fine most of the time...but that one time when you really need it, a few more minutes of endurance can make a big difference. So for 80 bucks a year, I'm gonna have a brand new battery at every annual. And besides...the battery I've been using is more than a year old, and it went through a fair amount of abuse months before I ever fired up the engine. It's time.
When I first bought the original PC680, the best deal I could find was through Sunn Battery. The price was like 3 bucks more than the best competitor, but their dirt cheap flat rate shipping made the total the best deal. Two years later, Sunn still has the best overall deal. $74.59, and $80.09 delivered to my door. Hard to beat. Click on the image above to take you to Sunn's site to order yours if you need one.
I considered going with the Panasonic equivalent of this battery. Digikey sells it for like 50 bucks. But when all is said and done, the Panasonic has a slightly different form factor, so I'm not positive it would fit in my battery box. And more importantly, the Panasonic battery has higher internal resistance than the Odyssey. This is a pretty big deal in my opinion. Higher internal resistance will limit performance all around. I'll pay the extra $25 or so for the "known good."
Tonight I decided...I'm gonna do the aft fuselage now. I don't have any specific plans to fly until Saturday, so I've got several days to get it done. My plan was to do everything from F-705 (seat back bulkhead) rearward. I would do the front half of the fuselage and wings in the next session in a week or two. There's no regulation that says the annual has to be performed in one contiguous session -- that's just how it's normally done from a standpoint of efficiency. Well, efficiency in my case is better defined by the concept of the "rolling annual," where you keep the plane in TOP shape all year long. And when you get around to doing the actual condition inspection, all you should have to do is pop some panels open, lube some rod ends, and button it back up. Thus is the sheer beauty of having the Repairman Certificate -- the ability to keep the plane at 100% year round.
Anyway, all that's required (as per my Operating Limitations) is that the inspection is "performed in accordance with the scope and detail of appendix D to part 43" -- here's a link to it in case you want to sniff that out. Pretty straightforward. So I figure, as long as I've done the inspection, I don't see anything wrong with doing it piecemeal (within a reasonable timeframe, of course).
So let's get started! I took the seats out and padded the seat pans so I could kneel in there and lean into the baggage area (always awkwardly and uncomfortably) to do the work. I pulled the upper and lower baggage bulkhead walls (screws, and more screws) and had my first peek back into the aft fuselage in, well, a year.
There were no big surprises, but there were three minor items that needed attention. The first thing I checked out were all those adhesive tie wrap mounts -- some people had warned that they would pop off if I had relied only on the sticky-back adhesive. Out of maybe 20+ mounts, only one had popped off...this one holding the static tubing to the side skin. No big deal. I just gobbed some RTV behind it and pushed it back into place. RTV should do the trick.
Nothing interesting going on back there. I lubed the elevator pushrod ends and the bellcrank bearing using LPS-2.
Other than some dust, it looks exactly like it did a year ago.
Ah...here's something that needs attention. These are the wingtip strobe wires, which have done a good job of chafing the belly skin. I didn't think these had enough freedom of motion to 'em...but trust me, if it can move at all, it's gonna move! After 400+ hours of Lycoming-induced airframe vibration, coupled with me wangin' this thing all over the sky, it will push stuff around if it has any flex to it. Again, a couple of strategically placed gobs of RTV solved this problem. To the right you can see where I used to have a tie wrap mount (some foam is still there)...which I removed, thinking it would only serve to pull the strobe wires down closer to the skin. Little did I realize at the time that even with the strobe wires sitting 1/4" to 1/2" above the skin, they would still rub the skin. Live and learn. The whole "stuff moving" thing is something I learned early on with firewall forward items, but it wasn't until I had flown and seen how much movement things actually endure that I got a clue about this type of thing.
Here's another example of chafing. A slight bit of slack in the static tubing allowed it to rub against the side skin. Hm...what to do...oh yeah...a gob of RTV.
I didn't get a photo of it, but one wire on the passenger headset jack (mounted at the top of F-706) was lightly rubbing/chafing the top skin. What to do...oh yeah...a gob of RTV. (Are you getting the point?)
I opened up the flap actuator panels on the sides of the baggage area and found absolutely nothing noteworthy. I lubed the top flap pushrod ends with LPS-2 (I have been lubing the lower pushrod ends all along). Well, that's about that. I put the baggage bulkhead wall panels back in place (screws, and more screws), and screwed the flap actuator cover panels back (and replaced my map "pouch" thing which I had also removed).
Now to the tailcone and tail surfaces. I had literally just lubed all control hinge rod ends two days ago, so all I needed to focus on were the internals hidden behind the empennage fairing and tailcone inspection panels, which I removed.
Nothing at all noteworthy here. I inspected the longerons, the wire runs, bulkheads, aft deck, HS and VS spars and doublers, tailwheel spring mount weldment, etc., etc. Other than some dust and grime back in the tailcone, I have nothing interesting to report.
I lubed the rear elevator pushrod end and the center elevator hinge bearing with LPS-2, and buttoned it all back up.
Now this is the way an annual is supposed to go! Four gobs of RTV, seven squirts of LPS-2, and new screws for the panels. Let's see...total cost of the annual so far...about two bucks. I hereby declare everything aft of F-705 inspected and suitable for return to service for another year and/or many fun-filled hours.
Don't get me wrong...this probably sounds like I did this in an hour or two. NOT! I started just before 5pm and left the hangar at 11pm. It was a long night, and I'm pretty sore. Next up...forward fuselage and wings...but the beauty is that I can fly it in the meantime. Man, have I mentioned how much I love having a homebuilt, having the Repairman Certificate? This kicks serious butt!
Later in the day and into the evening, the first annual condition inspection continued. I started on the right wing, working from tip to root. First I removed the wing tip and inspected everything I could possibly see.
Hell, it looks just like it did a year ago. Maybe a tiny bit dustier, but that's about it.
Out here everything was hunky-dory. I used the light and inspection mirror to scope out the spar, spar flanges and rivets, rear spar, and skins. Nothing to report other than a clean airframe so far.
I didn't get any shots of it, but I opened up the access panels on the bottom of the wing and scoped everything out in there. No surprises. Nothing at all to report. I lubed all the controls and stuff, and that's about it. I put the wing tip back on and replaced the access panels.
Most people use some sort of checklist when doing their annual condition inspection. I scoped out a few online, like Randy's, Bill's, and Gary's. Nothing novel, just a thorough checklist. So what I've been doing is inspecting absolutely everything I can see and touch, and I've been keeping track of every detail in a Microsoft Word document. This document will end up as my authoritative annual checklist going forward. I will be sure to post it on this site when it's complete.
Hard to see here, but this is the decal that calls out which grease was used at the factory. It's kinda hidden behind the front spinner bulkhead, but I could see what was what. Aeroshell #6 is what was used.
I ended up out at the hangar until well past 1am tonight working on the inspection. Because my camera date-stamps the photos, we'll just roll right into "tomorrow" to see what I did tonight after midnight...
I didn't really do any "inspecting" per se today, but I did manage to remove all of the access panels and interior cover panels required for inspecting the remainder of the airframe. First I took off the left wing tip...
...then the lower access panels...
...the flap housing cover panels...
...and then the beast of the work, the forward cover panels.
I also pulled the wing root fairings on both the left side...
...and right.
Long night, and "today" being Sunday, I had a million distractions out at the airport. I helped everybody else with stuff, then finished the PVC air plumbing system around the hangar with Linas, and it wasn't until early evening that I even got started working on my inspection again. I did the left wing at that point. The only stuff I found was some slight chafing of the pitot tubing and autopilot wiring here and there. Nothing a little uniwrap silicone tape or a dab of RTV didn't cure. Easy. I lubed all the controls, checked the pushrods, autopilot linkage, etc. Nothing interesting to report (this is a good thing).
Well, that's not entirely true...there was a tiny little booger in there. But seriously, in some ways I wish I would just find something significant in there one of these times to kinda make the effort worthwhile. Maybe one of you can slip some little pieces of crud into my tanks while I'm not looking so next time I'll see something interesting (DO NOTTTTT DO THIS).
I didn't really get any photos of the process, because there was truly nothing interesting to see. I did spend a few hours on the forward cabin section, though. All I had to do was secure a few little things here and there. The one consistent theme of this first annual has been:
If it CAN move, it WILL move. And if it CAN rub something, it WILL.
I'm talking about wires, control cables, etc. I had lots of little spots where wires had been run along the bottom skin and were chafing the skin. A little uniwrap tape, all was good. I had two spots where I had cable-tied a sprial cable sheath to a plastic-lined control cable, and the metal spiral wrap cable had chafed the plastic lining. Not a huge deal by any stretch, but a little silicone uniwrap tape and a fresh tie wrap, and all was fine. I had a few spots around the fuel pump and fuel plumbing where wires had a little too much flex to 'em, so I just secured 'em with cable ties. Literally, that's about all I found that needed any sort of attention. The rest was just lubing the controls, which are again silky-ass smooth, and making sure things looked the way they were supposed to look.
Well, the airframe is back together, and all panels are reinstalled. This puppy is ready to fly again. I need to fly it and warm the oil up for an oil change. It's about 4 or 5 hours shy of the 50 hour mark on the filter (changed the oil at 25), but there's no question...do it now.
I flew the plane, got the oil warm, decowled it, and drained the oil. While the engine was still warm I did a differential compression test, and all cylinders are still in the high 70s. This is good.
I'll continue working on the firewall forward portion of the annual tomorrow and in the days to come.
I removed the filtered airbox (my custom dealie) for a couple of reasons. First of all, I wanted to reinforce the angles where the airbox attaches to the baffle. The angles use like four rivets per side, but that and some micro mix are all that attach the angles to the fiberglass...which isn't all that thick. I began seeing the angles pulling away slightly in the corners. I figured the next thing I saw would be an angle broken off. So, I did what I should have done from the get-go, which is rivet some thin aluminum stock on the inside of the airbox, so that the fiberglass gets sandwiched between two aluminum layers. I wish I got a photo of it, but you get the idea. That should stand the test of time. I also wanted to clean and restore/oil my air filter while it was out. I used the standard K&N kit cleaner spray for that, then let the filter dry overnight tonight.
In the photo above you can also see my prop control cable out and sticking up. It has gotten really stiff over the past month or so. I disconnected it at the governor and worked some LPS-2 into it. It kinda worked, and as I write this several days later, it has started to loosen up. I may have to remove this cable and possibly replace it at some point, which will be no big deal, but I wanted to try lubing it first.
Next thing to do was to grease the prop hub. Before I did that, though, I snapped this shot of the tiny little light weight that was added to my prop hub when I got it dynamically balanced. That little aluminum shim was all it took to get it smoothed out dynamically.
This prop hub is definitely overdue for being greased. On each side of the hub you've got two grease fittings. What the Hartzell book says to do (if I'm not mistaken...check me on this) is to remove the fitting closest to the trailing edge of the blade, and to pump grease into the fitting nearest the leading edge of the blade.
Here you can see I removed the fitting by the trailing edge of that bottom blade. I just pumped Aeroshell #6 into the fitting by the leading edge until grease oozed out of the hole where the fitting was removed, then reinstalled the fitting...done deal. Did that for both blades and that was that.
Stefan King, RV builder from Florida, was in town, so he came by the hangar tonight. Needless to say I didn't get a ton of work done. We ended up just talking for the most part. I did do a little work, though. I gapped and installed brand new top plugs. By the way, I found a seriously cheap source for the NGK BR8ES plugs that I use with my Lightspeed Plasma II system. I had been paying more than two bucks each for 'em at Kragen (or even Spruce). But today I found that Pep Boys sells 'em for $1.79 each. Man, you can't beat that with a stick. I've had good luck with these NGK BR8ES plugs. They do erode a bit over time, since they're just regular old spark plugs, not platinum or iridium or anything. I toyed with the idea of using platinum or iridium plugs, but in the end I decided not to for two reasons... First of all, why mess with a good thing? This setup has been perfectly reliable for hundreds of hours. As you probably remember, I had issues with my own wiring on the Lightspeed coils, but that is definitely long since in the past. It's been smooth and reliable since. And while Klaus recommends the Denso W24EMR-C and W27EMR-C plugs, he's essentially the only source for 'em -- you can get them over the web, but they're still more expensive than the NGKs. I've been using NGK BR8ES plugs because you can get them literally anywhere. And they're the same as the Denso plugs as far as I can tell. I think the BR8ES is identical in performance to the W24EMR-C, and the BR9ES is identical to the W27EMR-C -- the only difference being the NGK plugs are slightly taller (not an issue under my cowl). So the first real reason for not switching plugs is because these ones have been working fine for me for a long time. The second reason is because while I admit that going with platinum or iridium would minimize electrode erosion, they cost about 7x as much. Is it worth spending 40 to 60 bucks for this? Hell no, not in my book. I'll gladly spend $1.79 times four every 100 hours or so. How hard is that to rationalize? Oh...you mean 8 bucks for brand new plugs every 100 hours? No sweat!
Ok, back to the inspection. I wanted to clean my injectors, so that's the next thing I took care of. One by one I removed each injector and restrictor and soaked them in the "Dan-sonic" cleaner (as Stefan called it), which is just a half-cut soda can with some MEK, shaken, not stirred. It's cheap, it's readily available, and it works.
Stefan came up with a cool idea for helping to get the injectors back in. Three out of four are no problem, but the one on cylinder #4 is a bitch to put back in. It's probably mostly because I have that oil cooler brace angle running right by there. Anyway, Stefan said he uses fuel hose or any kind of hose, pushed onto the injector or plug or whatever, and that gives you an "extension" of sorts. I used some heat shrink and a bit of masking tape, and that sure did the trick. It helps you get the proper alignment when threading the injector back in where it's tough to handle with your fingers. Good call, Stefan.
Today I spent some time on a few finishing touches. Here's an example...this back baffle wall is pretty flexible. Something I have been meaning to do for a while is stiffen it. The crack I found in the bottom of this piece earlier hasn't progressed -- the stop drill fixed it. I drilled and riveted this angle onto the baffle wall to help minimize flexing back there. I don't think it's directly related to the crack below, but I figured it was only a matter of time before the right rear corner joint started showing signs of wear or cracks. This angle prevents flex back there.
It's just a really lightweight piece of angle, so weight is negligible, but the difference in stiffness is just what this needed.
Anyway, I printed out the aircraft logbook entry, written as my operating limitations prescribed.
I don't believe it's a requirement on experimental amateur built aircraft, but I also made entries for the engine and propeller logbooks. Each entry has a little bit of detail about the important "bullet items." I didn't go into gory detail, but I did keep a separate printed full checklist of things I did in the aircraft logbook.
I had looked around on the web and found various people's condition inspection checklists. I was going to adapt them to my plane, but in the end I decided that I would start from scratch. My approach was to expose, inspect, and touch everything physically possible, and to record my actions. That record would become my "master" checklist. And here is the master checklist (Word document) in case you want to adapt it for your own needs.
For the record, here is the full list of actions I performed during this year's annual condition inspection:
| Item | Vendor | Total Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Stainless Steel Machine Screws | McMaster-Carr | $7.83 |
| Odyssey PC680 Battery | Sunn Battery | $80.09 |
| 4x NGK BR8ES spark plugs | Pep Boys | $7.16 |
| Aeroshell #6 grease | Aircraft Spruce | $7.60 |
| Cable Ties | Aircraft Spruce | $3.00 |
| Total Cost: | $105.68 | |
Keep in mind that the grease will last forever -- at least several years, and I only used a handful of the cable ties (for which I overpaid...could have gotten cheap ones at HF). Replacing the battery was a choice, not a requirement, too. When you get right down to it, I could have borrowed a friend's grease gun, gapped instead of replaced the spark plugs, reused the cad-plated screws in the cockpit, and not replaced the battery. The annual would have cost about a buck in cable ties. Ok...let's be honest...I didn't factor in the cost of several dabs of RTV and squirts of LPS-2...BFD! This annual is about as close to "free" as it gets!!!
No reason to skimp, though, especially since the labor cost is zero. I did put more than 30 hours of my time into this process, taking care to make sure everything was perfect. When I first flew the plane after the annual, in a sense the plane was "better than new" as a result of all the TLC I gave it.
Thinking back, I can't remember an annual inspection costing less than $2000 on the Mooneys. Even the annuals on the Warrior were upwards of $1500.
Have I mentioned lately how much I love having a homebuilt airplane?!?!