49R Goes For Annual

It's April, which means that spring is here the flowers are blooming and it's time for 49R's annual inspection.

Every aircraft, regardless of how many hours it flew must have an annual inspection completed at least once a year. An annual generally takes about 20-30 hours to complete (depending on the type of aircraft) and generally costs between $2K-$5k or more depending on the type of aircraft. In addition to the inspection, there are some items that are just replaced every year (regardless of their wear) some things that are checked and replaced based on their condition, and some things that are replaced based on the number of hours they flew.

Our mechanic is a really good guy and allows (even prefers) the owners of the aircraft he works on to assist in the annual. His reasoning is that it makes for better customers as far as taking better care of the plane. If I help with the annual, I get to know the airplane better and pay closer attention to what's going on with the airplane. When something isn't quite right, I'll recognize it more sooner than someone who doesn't participate in the care and maintenance of their aircraft.

My partner and I don't have the time away from work to completely assist for an entire annual and there is a limit to what we can do partially based on skill level and partially based on what we are allowed to assist with. So, we generally start the annual on a Saturday morning and work on the plane all day Saturday and all day Sunday before handing off to the mechanic to complete on his own.

Generally in the annual we complete opening the inspection panels, removing the seats and carpeting in the plane, pulling the cowling and spinner, changing the oil and oil filter, cleaning the secondary oil screen, cleaning the fuel strainer filter, servicing the brake shoes, testing the compression of the cylinders, lubricating the hinges, pulleys and flap rollers for all the control surfaces, cleaning, gapping, testing the spark plugs, inspecting the propellor and removing any nicks and repainting the propellor leading edge, inspecting and changing the airfilter, removing the tires and cleaning and repacking the bearings

The work can be difficult to complete and frustrating when you're trying to disassemble and reassemble parts, but it's extremely satisfying to see the job completed and to learn about how these things work and to know that we've saved a little money by doing it ourselves.

Overall, it looks to be an uneventful annual, but we did find one issue. Part of our exhaust system needs to be replaced due to wear on a couple of sections of exhaust pipe that connect using a slip joint. The two pieces of pipe have worn down over time to half of their thickness and that wear has caused a exhaust to leak at that spot. Each piece needs to be fabricated on order and are about $500 each. Other than that, everything looks pretty good and we shouldn't see any big surprises in the final bill. We're also replacing the cam-locks that secure the two halves of cowling with stainless steel ones that will cost us about $300, but that was a planned expense.