Thursday, January 11, 2018

Two More Things

66°F with dense fog. Partly sunny, high of 80°F low of 62°F. Not flying weather, but I went out to the hangar anyway.

1)This would be the second oil change in the cycle. I use Mogas so target every 50 hours. I would not remove the reservoir and clean the oil screen today. I picked up about 4' of 1/2 inch clear plastic tubing at the home improvement store. This fit on the quick drain on the oil reservoir and down into my gallon jug. I burped the engine (about 2/3 on the dipstick) and let it flow. I'm glad I didn't try this last week when the temperatures dropped to freezing. This was the easy part.

The hard part is the filter change. The filter is nestled behind the radiator and just inside the bend in the upper radiator hose to the engine. It's too tight to remove the filter unless you somehow move the hose. Tip: loosen the radiator and pull it to the pilot side of the airplane. This will provide JUST enough clearance to remove and replace the filter. Just a few drops on the lower cowling, not bad. I added 3 liters of clean oil back to the reservoir.

2) I had not been doing a good job of keeping my navigation databases up to date. One reason is the difficulty of removing the unit from the airplane.
To COMPLETELY REMOVE the 696 from the OFTEN VERY TIGHT AirGizmo 696 panel mount:

1) roll the AirGizmo locking lever down on the right side — FULLY DOWN — and then tilt the 696 forward (toward the Pilot) about an inch or so

2) CHECK to make sure that the 696 AirGizmo locking roller device on the right side of the AirGizmo mount is FULLY DOWN all the way

3) The uncomfortable but necessary step— carefully grab the top of the 696 GPS Unit and SHARPLY pull it forward (toward you sitting in the seat) to disconnect the 696 GPS unit’s “rear axle bar” (AirGizmo calls this a “back latch” device which is screwed onto the back of the 696 GPS Unit itself with four screws) from the AirGizmo’s “grappling, rotating retaining hooks”.

This step 3) may require a rather violent, quick, SHARP PULL in some cases to free the 696 GPS Unit completely from the AirGizmo mount.

"Violently" pulling against a plastic part just never appealed to me. Tip: You don't have to remove the unit to update the DBs. It turns out I was using an outdated Garmin webpage. The correct site is: https://fly.garmin.com/fly-garmin/ (Note - this can ONLY be used with Internet Explorer (IE),  the latest version.)

The unit doesn't have to be removed, simply update an SD card and insert it while in the airplane!

The final Tip: join a "type" group for your airplane. You really don't need to solve all of the problems by yourself. Most probably, someone has already solved the issue you are struggling with and I've found that most pilots are anxious to help you out.  My tips came from: www.scflier.com/

It's where the CRUZ guys hang out.

No leaks after the runup.









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