Hearing that line over the radio this morning turned some heads, and quickly so. Bryan Lindner (my instructor from private training) and Pete Thayer (a guy from my class) were on their way back into Felts, about 4 miles out when they noticed smoke curling up from under the instrument panel. They were in actual instrument conditions at the time, but thankfully just breaking out of the clouds. Bryan immediately declared an emergency to the tower, then shut off electrical power and brought their plane in to land. Praise God they were kept safe, a fire in the cockpit is one of the most difficult things to recover from. It appears that the switch for the landing light somehow shorted out and started to burn up some insulation. Needless to say, they were both slightly shaken up by the incident (I was talking with Bryan a couple hours later... his heart rate was finally back down). So, just another example of how God is watching over us.
In other news:
I worked all last week on paperwork and ordering parts for the Decathlon (we got our engine back from overhaul!). I managed to spend about $2500 of Moody's money on wheels, tires, engine hoses, hardware, an ELT (Emergency Locator Transmitter - the thing that beeps constantly on a frequency if the plane crashes), and other odds and ends. Check out the pics below... 150HP of sweet 4 cylinder power (quite good, when the max weight of this aircraft is about 1900 lbs).
This week I'm learning approaches... think of it as going through airport security in Chicago or New York... you have to get cleared for each step, and there's a bunch of different ways to go for a bunch of different exits. Just throw in navigating vertically and laterally without looking outside, and you've got flying approaches nailed down ;).
The now-shiny firewall of the Decathlon (a 5th year guy, Spice, and I worked for several hours and went through many skotch-brite pads)
Ian...being himself... next to our pretty "new" engine
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