12/23/2024

Greetings all from the famous Hangar Town, home of our Annie.

Over the last year, a lot of progress has been made in getting our BT ready for flight, including finishing up mechanical issues, getting things inspected, and our “Stick Actuators” up to speed in training. If you want to see all the details on the restoration, check out our newsletter.

The monkey wrench in the works seems to be our radio / intercom problems. During the first set of engine runs, the rear cockpit had issues with the intercom, and hearing the tower. Cleaned the jacks, then things seemed OK, until another taxi test....the we lost all com. It got to the point that we had to use our portable to let ground know we were heading back to the hangar. Over the last couple of weekends, we installed new jacks in the rear cockpit, but to no avail...then we decided to start checking out the wiring. What I saw was one of the reasons why mechanics say a lot of bad words while working on airplanes....a big mess of wires going in 24,000 different directions. We’re formulating a plan which includes a new transponder and ADSB, so things should get better soon...I hope!!

I want to thank my ground crew, Charlie, Chris and Jeff, along with SA’s Edgar, Taurus and Alex for helping with the stuff that makes Annie fly. I’ll have another update, and maybe a few stories of interest to those of us that “keep ‘em flying” after our first flight.

Cheers

Greg