December 17, 2018 – January 20, 2019
My first gyroplane was a Gyrobee home-built ultralight. Inasmuch as there are few rules about maintaining an ultral
ight, I was totally responsible for its upkeep. Of course, being small and not very complex, there was little to take care of beyond the engine and the rotor. That doesn’t mean I was sloppy: my life might depend on how well I kept things in good condition. But being as simple as it was, everything was easy to access so keeping things ship-shape wasn’t too difficult. I never had any issues with anything on the Gyrobee, and not once had an engine-out.
That was then. This is now. My Cavalon is far, far more complex and with a monocoque shell covering most everything, just seeing things is a lot more 
difficult, much less working on them. More telling, I didn’t build this gyroplane so I’m required to have an A&P do the annual condition inspection. (That doesn’t mean I can’t check things out and do routine maintenance… I do all of that, including lubing the rotor routinely and changing the oil.) Yet if there is something that potentially may affect the airworthiness of the aircraft, an A&P either needs to do the work or sign off on the work I’ve done.
Being mid-December, I was quickly coming up on my first-year anniversary of owning the Cavalon and its last inspection. I cast around to some gyro-friends as to who might be a good A&P in the SE Texas area, and subsequently found Mr. Wayne Lohmeyer of Custom Aviation Services. It seems that Wayne gets a lot of gyroplane business and, even better, that includes Cavalon’s. Having an A&P who already knows your aircraft is almost priceless. After a few conversations over the phone, I was convinced he was the one to do my first annual.
When I was to bring it to him was variable due to weather, of course, but eventually I set the date of December 17. He is located at Fair Weather Field (TX42), an airport I wasn’t familiar with. It was on the west side of Houston while my home airport is on the east side. My planning software said it was 72nm away and would require 6.4 gallons (give or take, depending on head/tail-winds). For me and the Cavalon, this wasn’t very far and most of the trip would be over territory I’ve covered many times, including flying through The Corridor.
The flight to TX42
Here is the flight plan, starting at Anahuac (on the right side) and flying through The Corridor and then slight WNW to TX42 (on the left side):
If you look closely, there is a cyan-colored line that is close to, or overwritten by, the purple-colored flight-plan-line. That cyan-colored line is my actual path, so I pretty much stayed true to plan. (Deviations are usually due to 1) other planes coming too close, 2) avoiding an airport or obstruction, or 3) I simply saw something interesting and wanted to get closer! In this case, the northerly deviation when I got west of The Corridor was due to Weiser Airpark being right on my path.)
As I always say, there’s usually something new to see or, at least, a new angle on something I’ve seen before. And since the atmosphere looks different most days, the view changes too. On this day, it was smoggy and hazy, but not too bad. Even though this was just ferrying my plane, it was still a fun flight!
The Annual
In addition to the condition inspection, I wanted Wayne to see if he could successfully evacuate all the air bubbles in my brake lines. I’ve had trouble stayed firmly braked in some situations, so I was sure it needed bleeding, at the least. Later he discovered that the master cylinder was not working, so he replaced it.
The inspection itself included: “Gap and install new spark plugs and re-install. Perform compression test on all cylinders, Inspect tires, bearings and brakes and repack bearings on landing gear. Cleaned all fuel screens. Lube control surface hing points and grease all zerks. Research, verify and/or inspect as required the FAA AD’s for Airframe, accessories, engine and propeller and complete logbook entries and Service Bulletin log report.”
Other issues included:
-
- Exhaust leaking at silencer, so it was adjusted.
- Gas tank filler seal re-sealed
- Added heat shield on oil lines
- Added a ground line (poor grounding found between engine and airframe)
- Teeter bolt and bushing replaced
- and a few other miscellaneous items
In the middle of his inspection, he found that there was an occasional engine roughness, occurring when the turbo kicks in. He didn’t like that. As with all of the above, he talked to me about it and I certainly wanted him to try to figure it out. (I had not detected nor noticed any roughness when the turbo kicks in, but then I’m kinda busy at that moment during takeoffs.) He spent a large amount of time trying to track it down. Eventually, he tried several different things dealing with the carburetor, yet it didn’t improved things. So he simply replaced the entire carburetor… and the roughness was gone. He never figured out the exact cause, but I’m happy that it’s fixed!
The bottom line cost of all that was about 3 times what I was expecting. However, what I was expecting was just the inspection, but as you can see there were a lot of other non-trivial items that were dealt with. So while it was a big bite out of my wallet, I was still glad he did it. I’ve no doubt he did a much better job than I would have done, had I been allowed to do it. And I feel much safer, much more secure knowing that everything, big and small, was taken care of. The only thing left for me to do is fly the plane… something I’m good at!
The return flight
Wayne released the plane on January 20, 2019 so he had had it for almost a month. The weather wasn’t all that much different for the return trip and most of the same landmarks were easily spotted.
Here, again, is the flight track along with the actual path:
You can see I dropped much further south than I normally do… that’s how I got such great shots of the battleship and the monument.
I wish I could say that I’ll be flying more hours in 2019 than ever before, but honestly I doubt I’ll fly as much as I did in 2018. I have a lot of other things on my dance card and they will all decrease my time in the air. But when I do venture forth, I will do my best to record my adventures here!
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Always enjoy reading your blog and looking at your pics. Keep up the good work.
Robert, it’s good to see you flying again.
I’ll bet more people would comment if it were easier to find the comments section. I found it by accident clicking on your email link, which brought up your Texas Flyer blog again, but scrolling down I found this comment section. Then again, it could be my computing ineptness on display.
I stopped by the Custom Aviation Services yesterday. They are exactly what is needed in this area, someone who caters to the Experimental segment of flight.
Thanks for all you did for me when I was first getting into flying. Hope to see you one day soon at a local fly-in or something, take care.
Jimmy Young
Thanks for the suggestion about a link for comments…. It’s a good one! I’ll see what I can do. I, too, hope to bump into you soon!