Grumpy

It appears that this year’s annual inspection will take more than two months to complete by the time it is done. The last item is the exhaust system. Long story short, it was made wrong when I bought it following the engine overhaul. That wrongness caused problems. After multiple attempts to correct the problems locally, it was decided that it should go back to the maker for warranty repairs. My mechanic shipped it to them last week. At least, he thought he did. It turns out that he missed a digit in the address, and it was returned to him today due to this mistake. So instead of having a repaired system ready to go back on the airplane tomorrow, allowing me to pick up the airplane this weekend as should’ve been the case, it gets to again travel from Virginia to Florida, hopefully arriving at the correct destination on Monday. With luck, it will be repaired and back in my mechanic’s hands by close of business next Friday.  But probably not early enough in the day for him to install and test it. So it’ll be the following weekend before I get it back.

Also known as Reese’s Law. Another example of there ought to be a law that has done more harm already in the three-ish years it’s been in effect than it will ever do good.

It’s worse than what the government did to gas can spouts.

In 2021, a kid in Texas swallowed a button battery and died from complications afterward. I’m sorry about the kid. She didn’t know better. I’m sorry for the parents. There is no indication that they were negligent in any way that contributed to the event. But someone decided that the government needed to do something.

So they passed the stupid law referenced above. Get this – had it been law at the time of the incident that prompted its creation and passage, it would likely have not prevented said incident, unless it had been in effect for at least fifteen years. The family discovered a button battery was missing from a remote control in their home, and later confirmed that the kid had swallowed it. Remotes last for many years unless abused, so it will take the better part of a generation for the majority of older units to leave service.

The law requires making the battery compartments for devices using coin/button batteries be child resistant, as well as the packaging that replacement batteries come in. Lest they be found in violation, manufaturers have created battery packages that are impossible to open with anything less enthusiastic than a jackhammer and a stick of dynamite.

No exception for hearing aids, largely used by seniors with poor dexterity and even worse fine motor skills. No taking into consideration that the zinc-air batteries used in them aren’t toxic like the ultra-common CR123A lithium batteries are,  which is likely what little Reese swallowed.

So, one kid died, and now EVERYBODY suffers. Might as well ban electricity and eating utensils because some kid electrocuted themselves with a spoon.

Stoopid guvmint. But I repeat myself. 

We lost two chickens over the last couple of weeks. One was a Rustic Rambler that I got in early 2021, hatched in late 2020. That’s very, very old for a chicken. We have one more left from those dozen birds.

Edit: The remaining two older hens are Rhode Island Reds from the summer of 2023. One of the other two remaining is a RI Red from 2023. That puts them it well into middle age and likely at the end of their its reliable production days, although they it will probably live another year or two.

Edit to add: The other remaining bird is an Aquila from early 2022, making it between the Rustic and the Rhode Island in age.

Fortunately, the five newly acquired Golden Comets from last year are in peak shape and carrying the load well. I’m planning to get four or five more of those this summer, given the likely loss of the oldest bird at any time and the expected production to drop off from the other two.

Sporty’s Pilot Shop has declared February IFR Month. Predictably, they’re running promotions on IFR-related items. Cool. Today, this free course hit my email:

—–

Pilots Guide to Airspace

Most pilots don’t just want an “airspace refresher.” They want to stop wondering:
Am I legal here?
Did I miss a TFR?
Do I need ADS-B for this?
Is that shelf going to bite me?

—–

I appreciate that they are offering this. It is good information that lots of pilots struggle with. But the timing doesn’t make any sense. The only point in any of the aforementioned promo that is the least bit applicable to IFR operations is the ADS-B question, and that applies equally to both VFR and IFR.

Airspace effectively disappears when operating IFR. One need not concern themselves with anything of that nature when on an active IFR flight plan. Class Bravo, Class Charlie, TFRs, Prohibited Areas, Restricted Areas, MOAs, none of it matters. Fly where they tell you to fly, and all is well from airspace and legal perspectives. They won’t do it, but if ATC clears you to fly directly over 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, then you fly directly over 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with zero concerns.

Which is why including this under the IFR Month banner confuses me. I never fly more than five minutes of any non-training flight under VFR for this very reason. They can’t bust me for flying anywhere if they told me to fly there in the first place. Not flying where they do tell you to fly is a whole ‘nother situation that I won’t get into now, though.

Happy flying!

Warning: aviation geekery ahead.

First, the definitions; Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast (ADS-B) is an aviation surveillance technology in which an aircraft determines its position via satellite navigation or other sensors and periodically broadcasts its position, enabling it to be tracked. FIS-B, short for Flight Information System Broadcast, is a data broadcasting service that works along with ADS-B to allow aircraft operators to receive aeronautical information such as weather and airspace restrictions through a data link to the cockpit. All of this data is publicly available at no charge if one has an appropriate receiver – no subscription or active internet/satellite connection necessary. 

Some in-panel avionics have the ability to receive and display this information. Mine does not, so in order to take advantage of this technology, I have to use an ADSB-in receiver that can provide it to the navigation software on my tablet. An added benefit to using such a device is allowing one’s real-time location to be displayed on said tablet. This allows me to see where I am, where other ADSB-equipped traffic is, relative to my position, and what the current weather is, subject to broadcast delays. I have found it invaluable and would hate to have to fly without it.

There are several different receivers available, and multiple ways that this data is formatted and relayed through these devices to the different navigation platforms. The king of platforms is ForeFlight, which is what I have used since returning to the cockpit. They have a proprietary method of data transfer and sell their own line of ADSB devices, called Sentry. They have a basic model called the mini for $400, which is tiny but has no onboard battery, so it must be plugged in at all times. Being unfamiliar with the technology and not wanting to invest too much too soon, I went with it way back when. They also have the standard model for $600 that adds a built-in battery and not much else. Then, they have the plus model that has a CO detector and a couple of other bells and whistles. It will set you back $800. These turn the public data into a proprietary format that only ForeFlight can use.

Garmin is the number two guy in the Electronic Flight Bag market with their Pilot software. They also sell a receiver. The newest version works with both their platform and ForeFlight. It won’t work with anything else.  It costs $850.

There are several other EFB options out there, like ifly and eightflight, but they use what is known as open-ADSB as their way of interfacing with receivers. The problem is that neither of the big dogs use this protocol in their receivers. I guess the ongoing subscription price for their platforms is too valuable for them to allow some upstart platform to use their receivers and deprive them of perpetual revenue.

There is one company, Appareo, whose Stratus units will work with the proprietary formats necessary to interface with both ForeFlight and Garmin Pilot, and also offer the open-ADSB protocol that the other platform developers use. They like their model a lot, too, requiring the same $850. However, their last generation model is functionally identical to the current model. It just doesn’t have the g-meter, the color touch screen, or the Apple Find My features. They can be had for $450-ish used.

I like the functionality of ForeFlight as an EFB, and the subscription cost is similar to other options for the features that I need. I do have concerns about the limitation to iOS devices only and relatively new ones at that if one wants to be able to use new features.  I’m also concerned with its future, given its recent acquisition by Thoma Bravo. If/when they get stupid, I want to be able to take the technology I’ve grown accustomed to with me when I leave. My Sentry Mini won’t allow me to do that. So I bought a used Stratus 3. I can use it with ForeFlight or Garmin Pilot, or any of the open-ADSB options currently available or being developed. And I paid little more than half the price of a current generation model. I’ll likely be able to sell my Mini for $300, making my total transition cost right at the same as the cost of round-trip fuel for one of my usual weekends of flying. 

I have also looked into other EFB options. Garmin Pilot is comparable to, and only slightly less expensive than ForeFlight when considering the levels I need/would use. The problem is that Garmin has had moments of getting too big for their britches in the past, and I fear that such a transition might only be exchanging one monster for another. 

Eightflight looked good until I found that they, like ForeFlight, require iOS version 16 or higher – no Android support at all. Since my iPad Air 2 topped out at version 15-something, they are automatically out. I fly a forty-five year old airplane. I’m not going to buy new technology every three years. And that timeframe is accurate – iOS 16 was released 12 September 2022, less than three and one-half years ago. Yes, some devices sold before then are upgradable to 16, but my point stands.

Then I looked at iflyEFB. They support pretty much all mobile platforms of any age. They have a 30-day trial. I loaded it up on my spare iPad and have been trying it out. They have a simulation mode, so I got to see how it will act in the air despite my airplane still being in pieces. I can live with it. I like certain things better, while others are much clunkier-feeling or generally lacking. I’ll get used to it if I decide to go that route.

Today, I set up the ForeFlight and ifly iPads side by side and powered up the Stratus. Almost immediately, I discovered a limitation. I had hoped to fly FF and ifly side by side for comparison. I can do that, but I will have to continue to use the Sentry in order to do so. The Stratus will not simultaneously operate in the proprietary manner required by FF and the open-ADSB mode that ifly uses. I was able to verify that it works fine with both, though, just not both at the same time. I’ll keep playing with ifly and see how my opinion develops. As for the Stratus, though, I’m happy with it.

It appears that two weeks have passed since I posted anything. Let me reset that clock.

They’re still working on my airplane. First, they pulled the tail off to replace a couple of life-limited parts.

Then, they found corrosion from leaked battery acid that had eaten all the way through the firewall.

Also, there’s been delays getting information from EarthX in regards to replacing the conventional battery with a LiFePO4 unit. The STC is pending, but EarthX won’t release the engineering documents. Without those documents, it would be very difficult to get field approval to install it now.  Looks like I get to fly a few more years with a traditional battery. Hopefully, it won’t leak and rot another hole in important sheets of metal.

And there’s an issue with the exhaust leaking. It’s unclear whether it was an issue with the overhaul, the post-overhaul reinstallation, the replacement exhaust system, or what, but it appears to have been blowing by on at least three of the four cylinders for quite some time. This has caused damage that will probably require more than just new gaskets to solve. That issue is still pending, as well as the firewall repair (metal inbound). The inspection itself is complete. Several minor issues were found and have already been resolved. 

Besides that, little is new. My weight is still in the mid-190s, and carnivore protocols remain active. Weather kept me home last weekend and is threatening to do the same this weekend. 

Not much is going on this week. They haven’t pulled the plane in to start the annual yet, but they are working on approval to upgrade the battery to a LiFePO4 model that not only provides more cranking power but also weighs fifteen pounds less than the standard lead acid unit. Since such technology did not exist in 1981, and the feds (spit!) being what they are, permission is required. I’m looking forward to a fifteen-pound increase in useful load, if it can be made to happen.

We had a bit of a breeze on Sunday. If sustained winds near thirty and gusts over forty miles per hour can be called a breeze. I have a 10×17 Harbor Freight shelter housing my backup generator, my backup lawn mower, and during the winter, my Benelli micro-motorcycle. The main part of the cover disintegrated last year, and I chose to replace it with a heavy-duty tarp, hoping both for lower cost and longer life over an original replacement. I used rope through the grommets on each side to secure it to a line attached to anchors in the ground, and it worked well. It weathered high winds many times, so I wasn’t worried about it.

Wife texted me early Sunday afternoon just after church, telling me that the shelter had collapsed. The rope that I had used to secure one side of the tarp was old when I installed it, but it appeared serviceable.  In the months since, it weakened enough that, when the enthusiastic wind ballooned the tarp, it broke. That allowed the tarp to blow across the top of the shelter to the still-attached side. In the process, it caught the last section of the frame and pulled it loose from its clamps and the rest of the shelter, laying it against the tractor that is parked at that end.

I feared major damage but found none on Monday morning when I inspected the situation. The frame sections are only slid together at the top, with a single clamp at the bottom. The original cover incorporates straps that pull everything towards the center, making that an acceptable design. The way I had the tarp attacged did the same. With it loose, it didn’t take much to pull things apart. I reconnected the three pipes together and drilled a small hole in each, through both sections of pipe, and installed a screw in order to improve the situation. Then, I re-tightened the clamps at the bottom.

That was all I had time to do before work on Monday. Yesterday, I pulled the tarp back into place and secured it with individual pieces of paracord at each grommet. This will prevent any single failure in the future from releasing the whole tarp or even one side. The other side still uses a single section of rope for the entire side, so the potential for such a scenario still exists for that side, but at the moment, it is functional. And I ran out of time before I could address that. Everything is back under cover at the moment, so crisis managed, priority lowered.

Yesterday evening, Wife texted while I was at work with another situation. The power blinked momentarily, and a noise began at the same time. She also had no wifi, even after the power came back on. Obviously, it was the UPS. While it usually works as expected, sometimes, depending on the duration of the blink, it can lose its mind and require cycling power to reset. I walked her through locating the unit and how to turn it off and back on. It’s stupid about having to hold the button down for such things rather than a simple press and release.

I thought the issue was resolved, but about twenty minutes later, she texted back and said that it was steady alarming again and the modem and router were off. Odd, as there was no second power blink. She wanted no parts of trying to reset it again, choosing instead to just use her mobile data for anything that would normally use wifi. I figured the UPS was toast and told her that I would look at it when I got home.

When I got home, I reset it and waited for it to do something stupid. While doing so, I came up with an alternative to just plugging the modem and router directly into the power strip and having no battery backup. The plan I came up with was to use the power station formerly reserved for aviation use to power a pure sine-wave inverter, via which I would power the router and modem. Leaving the power station charger plugged in would allow it to float during normal operation and seamlessly switch to battery in the event of a power loss. I couldn’t use the power station’s built-in 110VAC outlet as it will not allow charging when said outlet is in use.

I hit a bit of a snag, though. Whenever I plugged the inverter into the power station’s cigarette lighter outlet, it would disable that output. It was like the connector was shorting out the outlet. I’d used the inverter last week for another purpose using a different power source, so I knew it wasn’t the problem. The inverter was off, so it wasn’t overloading the output capacity, either. The cigarette lighter outlet worked fine for other things, so that wasn’t the issue. I tried different things and eventually got it to work with a portable cigarette lighter socket connection plugged into the power station’s 12V barrel connector output. All this allowed the UPS plenty of time to get stupid again. It never did.

I unplugged the UPS from the wall to test its backup functionality. It immediately went into a full alarm. Probably the battery, maybe the unit itself, but it was almost midnight, and I was done arguing with electronics. I dragged the power station and inverter over, hooked it up, verified operation, and went to bed.

This morning, the power station was fat, dumb and happy at 100% charge and 11.9 volts on the output while powering the modem and router. Just like it was when I left it. At least that is reliable as a backup. I removed the battery from the UPS and put a meter on it. It measured 9.0 volts. It’s a normal 12V sealed lead acid battery, so it should’ve been at least 12.5 volts. The battery was ancient, so that was no surprise. The surprise was that nine volts was enough to power the alarm buzzer.

Off I went to Amazon to search for a new battery. It’s a tiny UPS, 350Va, and the battery is likewise very small. I couldn’t find one with the correct dimensions, and the closest cost more than I wanted to spend. Then I remembered a possible solution.

Back in 2019, I bought a marine deep cycle battery for the trailer that I used for the tractor when I took side jobs. I wanted something to directly power the winch that I installed on it rather than trying to pull that much amperage through the trailer lighting harness. I’d removed it a year or two ago when I quit the side jobs, and it had just been sitting ever since. I put a charger on it a few times a year to keep it charged but never used it again. I figured it was dead, given its age and lack of use, but I hooked the charger up to it.

I then went about fabricating wiring to connect it to the UPS, just in case it was still serviceable. The UPS’s charging circuit is probably in the milliamps, given the size battery it is designed to use, and is unlikely to do much for such a large battery. Also, despite the successful charge (according to the charger), I doubt that there’s very much capacity remaining in the geriatric battery. Even so, I hooked it all up, reconnected the electronics to the UPS, and let everything boot up. Shortly after, I unplugged the UPS from the wall to see what would happen. It immediately switched to battery power and did the short beep every minute to indicate that it was running on battery, just like it’s supposed to do.

Since the pull for both units is only about fifteen watts total, I estimate that I can get a week or more of constant use out of that battery, even given its age and likely diminished capacity. The tiny trickle of charging current that the UPS is able to deliver should keep it close to fully charged since we typically only lose power a few times per year. One more problem solved. 

And that is how I’ve managed to avoid boredom this week.

…as Wife calls it. I call it a mental victory. It’s been four days since I recorded a body weight in the 200s. After spending eleven weeks between 200 and 210, I think I’ve finally broken into the 100s for good. I wasn’t sure if last Friday’s result would be the true beginning of this chapter, as I’ve had a couple of dips under 200, only to climb back up.

It’s a brain thing, nothing more. I know this. It’s only a number, and I could just as easily celebrate being under 213 pounds or any other arbitrary weight. But there’s something about seeing a 1 as the first number on the scale that feels so very good.

Now, if I can just make it into the 180s in less than eleven weeks, that’ll be great.

For any number/data nerds out there, here is the length of time that I spent in each “decade” during my journey thus far. 

• 240-250 – 29 days
• 230-240 – 67 days
• 220-230 – 83 days
• 210-220 – 27 days
• 200-210 – 76 days

In my last post, I mentioned the “power station” that I use to keep my electronics operating and charged during flight. One of the reasons why I chose the size/model that I did was to back up the avionics briefly in the event of another alternator/electrical failure. I found it incapable of this task shortly after purchasing it, as I will explain further shortly. In addition to a 110VAC outlet and USB ports, it has what is advertised as a 12V output via either standard automotive cigarette lighter socket or a 2.1/2.5mm barrel connector.  It’s not really 12V, and it certainly won’t supply the rated 10A/120W from that output, as I learned too late.

I built/bought cables to tie the 12V output into one of the aircraft accessory outlets. Wire is wire, and will allow current to flow in any direction absent components to prevent such. When connecting the power station’s “12V” output via these cables, the main bus becomes energized, just as if the Master were switched on and feeding power from the aircraft battery. Doing this while the Master is off keeps said battery isolated.

This powers all of the toggle switches (avionics sub-bus, nav lights, landing light, strobes, pitot heat, and fuel pump) as well as the knob for the panel lights.  It also connects to the engine monitor, the electronic attitude indicator, and the gyro inside of the turn coordinator, all of which are wired to come on immediately, without the need to flip a switch.

Those three pull the initial 12 (actually 11.9) volts down to about 11 volts. Turn on the strobes and nav lights (which also turns on the ADSB transmitter), and it drops to 10.5V. Flip on the avionics, and the electronic directional indicator, GPS, transponder, nav/comm, and nav indicator all power up. All are necessary for IFR flight. This additional load, while still less than 75 watts total and well below the rated 120 watts, pulls the voltage below 10V, which is so low that the nav/comm won’t power up fully. The display shows an undervoltage error and doesn’t allow any functionality.

Backup fail. One hundred fifty federal reserve notes essentially wasted.

That’s when the power station got demoted to two important but nonessential flight functions, and availability for non-flight operations such as CPAP while traveling or during power outages at home when I’m not inclined to go outside and fire up the whole-house genny.

First, preflight. Even with the voltage loss, it will power up the nav lights (LED), strobes (LED), landing light (LED), and panel lights sufficiently to verify operation without using the aircraft starting battery, allowing me to take my time with these items without worrying about draining the onboard battery. After checking those, I switch them off and activate the electric fuel pump to make sure it builds pressure. Once that is done, I isolate the power station output from the aircraft and perform the remainder of the preflight.

The second function is powering and charging my portable electronics during flight. As previously mentioned, I connect all the USB-powered equipment to the power station and plug in the accessory output from the aircraft to the power station’s charging port. The unit will allow the operation of the DC outputs while charging, letting the system essentially float during flight, keeping it nearly 100% charged during operation. Were I to lose aircraft power, the power station would easily supply all of my portable electronics for at least three times the duration of my total fuel capacity. I bought a much larger unit than needed for the job it got demoted into, expecting full backup capability.

That left me without an in-flight backup for the panel-mounted avionics should I lose  battery power. I have a handheld radio, and while it has limited power and range, it is better than nothing. I could probably navigate to an airport and shoot an approach well enough to survive just using my portable electronics if the weather isn’t horrible, but that’s not a good situation to be in. If it’s at night, the landing airport will have to be one with lights on all the time, as the handheld might or might not activate the runway lights much before short final, if it ever did. That means a major airport. I can only imagine the aftermath if I were to come into Charlotte, or even Raleigh with no clearance, no comms until only a couple of miles out, if at all, and no lights or transponder, at night, in IMC when tower light signals would be useless. They’d see me on radar as an unidentified target with no altitude data and would be diverting jets out of my way left and right while trying to figure out who/what I was, why I was in their airspace, and what I was doing.

Such is a very unlikely scenario, especially since I have a new(ish) alternator and voltage regulator, and I am about to have a new battery. It’s still possible, though. To mitigate that risk, I purchased a 20Ah lithium (iron, not cobalt – much more stable) 12V battery. I will set it up to backfeed through the same cables and accessory port that I use for the power station. I will then test it and make sure it will power the full panel and all the lights for at least thirty minutes. It should, since everything in there all together shouldn’t exceed ten amps when the radio isn’t transmitting. That should give me at least two hours if the battery rating is accurate. Another indication that it should be more than enough is that there is a purpose-built system made for GA aircraft with big MFDs that uses a 6Ah battery. It sells for over five hundred dollars, which is why I didn’t buy it. It includes a charger and a higher quality battery, but Ohm’s Law still applies.

I’m pretty confident that my plan will work. I spent $45 on the battery and another $20 on a 10A home charger certified for the battery chemistry – both paid for with the proceeds from my last bleed-in-a-bag bribe. I already had the cables that I’ll use for the tie-in. I’ll charge the battery periodically on the ground, at home, and only connect it in the airplane in the event of an emergency.

I’ll let you know how the test goes after I get the plane back from the annual.

I’d hoped to welcome the new year under two hundred pounds.  I didn’t make it.  I weighed 202.4 on the morning of January 1st. In spite of the disappointment, I’m much happier this  year than last year, seeing as I rang in 2025 at 252.8 pounds. I’ve not been above 205 since 12 December, but I’ve yet to break through 200 consistently.  It will come. The carnivore journey shall continue.

I’m still eating as much as I want, although I’ve had to decrease the size of some of my “standard” meals in order to stay in the sweet spot. For example, from the beginning, I would have a pound of sausage and eight or nine scrambled eggs. I found myself full with a good bit left on my plate (which I did eat, probably to my detriment) the last two times I had that, though. The most recent time I had that particular combination, I cut it to four eggs and was comfortably full when the food was gone. It’s not a hardship when I don’t feel deprived. I’m convinced that I’ll reach and maintain my goal weight without major adjustments to my current nutritional lifestyle.  It just might take a while.

My little bird is sitting at FRR waiting in line for its annual inspection and a bit of additional work. After several flight cancelations last week due to weather, I finally got a decent day on Sunday. The headwind was less than forecast, and instead of the usual routing over towards Richmond, I got direct CSN as soon as I cleared RDU’s approach corridor.  Then, about ten miles south of GVE, Potomac Approach came on the radio and said, “November 26045, you can go direct Front Royal if you want.”

The phrasing was odd, but the frequency wasn’t busy, and everyone tends to relax a bit when things are slow. That includes comms. I accepted, was given the official clearance, and turned twenty degrees left. A bit later, I figured out a possible reason for the addition of if you want. My filed final leg, CSN to FRR, would’ve taken me north of the tallest peaks in the area, the highest being 2909′, about two miles south of my route, and my time above anything resembling a mountain would have been very brief. From the position where I was offered direct destination, I passed over almost thirty miles of wildly varying terrain, some over 4,000′ just off my left wing.

The air had been smooth to that point, but crossing mountain ridges in winter at only about one thousand feet above ground level is begging for turbulence. I got said moderate turbulence the entire way from the first peak to the last. I was also nervously watching the Distance to Destination display on the GPS. I’d told them I’d take a visual approach, even though I’d never been there before and had no idea how difficult it would be to locate, because the only instrument approach in is a circling approach coming in from the northeast.

I was coming in on the perfect heading to enter left downwind for 28, but I still had one final peak between me and the valley where the airport is located when I hit eleven miles out. This was going to be fun. Clear that last peak, find the field, cancel IFR, and dump altitude from 5,000 to pattern altitude of 1,700 quick, fast, and in a hurry. Once over the peak, I saw two open areas in the direction that the GPS was pointing, at what I estimated was the now nine miles out that the GPS indicated.

I called up Potomac, canceled IFR, went rich on the mixture, flipped on the fuel pump, yanked power out, shoved the nose over, and made my first CTAF call. I still wasn’t sure where exactly the airport was. My plan was to keep flying straight towards where the GPS said it was until two miles out, be at pattern altitude at that point, and then turn to 010 for downwind 28. It would definitely be off my left wing and visible by that point. Or so I hoped. I actually positively identified the threshold at about three miles out, just before I started the turn to downwind.

According to flightaware, my descent rate hit 1,050 feet per minute at one point. Standard for small GA aircraft is 500. Don’t misunderstand, 1,000 – 1,250 is completely safe if a bit aggressive, as long as managed properly.  I did fine. Airspeed hit the yellow arc, and power was back around 2,000 RPM in order to get it to fall out of the sky at that rate, but the air had smoothed out by then so all was well. The seventy-five foot wide runway compared to the one hundred foot wide runways at TTA and HWY messed with my brain a little, and on the landing I rounded off a few feet higher than normal. Once I realized what I’d done, I added a touch of power back in to soften the drop. As it is prone to do, the right side settled first, side-loading the gear a little, but it was mild. 

I did learn a few things about my equipment during the flight. I’d left everything that wasn’t critical to the flight home, so there would be nothing extra to possibly get lost during the scheduled work. This included my power supply. I have a 230Wh power station that I use to power my Sentry ADSB receiver and the cooling fans on my iPad mount, and to keep my phone and secondary iPad charged during flight. It will provide DC power (USB and 12V) while charging, so I hook everything up and let the plane charge it as it powers everything. Normally, it keeps up, with the battery level being at ~98% after doing all that for a two plus hour flight. I left it at home, wanting as little to put in my flight bag for the drive home as possible.

Instead, I used my tertiary backup, a pair of (supposedly) 20Ah portable chargers to power things. They are over three and a half years old, and new were probably rated double their actual capacity, but I figured they would suffice for the expected three-hour flight. I didn’t connect the cooling fans, hooked one charger up to the iPad and the second one to the Sentry and my phone. That last part was the mistake. I forgot that the phone loses signal in the air and goes into a search/roam mode that burns power. Under normal circumstances, starting out fully charged, display off, it doesn’t need much to stay charged.

The Sentry doesn’t pull much power either. I figured one charger would easily cover that and keep my phone charged. I knew that the second one wouldn’t keep up with the iPad usage with the display at full brightness, but figured it would keep the onboard battery from dropping too much. About two hours in, the iPads popped up an alert, saying that the Sentry had disconnected. I glanced over and saw that the lights were indeed off. I grabbed an ancient charger/backup that I’d forgotten was even my flight bag (I know, I am obsessive about multiple layers of backups – you would be, too, if you’d lost your alternator on a night flight over an hour from your destination) and plugged the Sentry into it. It powered back up and stayed on for the remainder of the flight. I did notice at the time the Sentry failed that the iPad had stopped charging and was at 58% battery remaining. 

The flight almost didn’t happen, though. Despite temperatures in the low 40s and the fact that I’d flown less than two weeks prior, the battery was barely up to the task. It turned over slowly, and while five strokes is usually perfect for that temperature, I didn’t seem to be able to get the amount of prime for the carburetor right. It caught but wouldn’t stay running. I refreshed the prime and tried again. Lather, rinse, repeat. Finally, it got to the point that it wouldn’t turn over at all. I set the parking brake, primed it yet again, and started to climb out to hand prop it. I was halfway out when something told me to try it one more time. I did, and that time, although it turned over very slowly, it caught and stayed running for about fifteen seconds before coughing and dying again. The battery got just enough from the alternator during that little bit of runtime to s-l-o-w-l-y turn it over again. Fortunately, it caught quickly and stayed alive that time. I added battery replacement to my squawk list.