As you know from my earlier posts, I sold my Piper Archer III in 2014 and took her to Subang (KL) for a change of registration to the US register. That was the last time I saw her, and I will never see or fly her again. She crashed on the 15th of November 2015 near Senai Airport. Thankfully, nobody was seriously hurt; she protected her pilot while “sacrificing” herself.
Read the rest of this entry »
Ian in Johor
Update 130901: We left the hotel in Malacca at 9:15 and touched down in Seletar at 11 am. I had a brief chat with the very friendly immigration officer. She told me that Malacca immigration services are available everyday from 9 am to 5 pm. Next time, I won’t stop in Johor on the way to Malacca to get my passport stamped. The airport security desk charged me a landing fee of Ringgit 10.69 and a parking fee of Ringgit 6.27. All very reasonable.
The weather was nice between Malacca and Batu Pahat, but then the cloud base came down to just a bit over 1000 feet around Benut. Another aircraft, coming from Simpang Renggam was scheduled to arrive at Kulai at the same time as I, which required some coordination over the radio and old-fashioned VFR look out.
Paya Lebar Approach asked me to climb 2500 feet to join downwind 03 left at Seletar, which was odd. Seletar then corrected to 2000, but even then I had the usual difficulties to loose height fast enough when I finally got clearance to descent for final. I have to find a better method – maybe slowing down to flap speed earlier without descending and yank out the flaps to full even before turning to base.
Finally, here is my flight plan and the flight log to Malacca:
(FPL-9MDRJ-VG
-P28A/L-SF/C
-WMKM0200
-N0100A020 WMKM MUAR BATUPAHAT BENUT WMKJ EJBT POINTXRAY WSSL
-WSSL0105 WMKJ
-DOF/130901 EET/MUAR0013 BPAHA0027 BENUT0040 WMKJ0053 EJBT0100 WSSL0105 OPR/INGO NOKA
-E/0400 P/1 R/V S/ J/ A/WHITE AND DARK GREEN C/NOKA I +65 81275812)
Subang Airpark is going to be closed for small airplanes
It was good to be back in the air today. For the first time I took the inland route from Singapore to Subang. That route shaves off about 10 minutes from the flight time. If everything goes according to plan, it is possible to fly from Singapore to Subang (block on/off) in about one hour and fifty minutes. In most cases it will be an honest two hours however. You have to watch you altitude however. There are some hills on the way that reach more than 1,500 feet. In my flight route some of the hills stand right in my flight path. (Download the flight log and AFTN Flight Plan here.) Read the rest of this entry »
Back in Singapore after 14 hours of flight, 1,500 nm and three countries in four days.
I spent Monday evening in Ipoh, which is apparently famous for the local food. I tried one noodle dish, which was indeed delicious. Normally I am not a big friend of chicken feet in the Chinese cuisine, but this one tasted great. Read the rest of this entry »
9M-DRJ, a bit lonely at Hat Yai Airport, Thailand
On Monday, my short field take off skill was to be tested. In a case like this, before you do anything else, you have to makes sure the weight and balance of the aircraft is acceptable for the runway you want to take off. At a soft, grass field of 500 meters, that stuff really matters. Normally I take off from runways that are built for an A380, on which I have ample time to get up to speed or to abort if it is just not going to happen (the take off).
I couldn’t do much about my own weight (which is embarrassingly high these days), so I made my plane as light as possible. I had about 32 Gallons (87 Kg) of fuel and 25 Kg of luggage (mostly paper, iPad, laptop, handheld radio – this sort of thing). Altogether, I and my plane were in good shape for a short field take off. (I did the calculation for takeoff ground roll and over 50 feet obstacle as well, which is a topic for another post.)
W&B for take off from grass field Phuket Airpark
Busy Senai Airport and Beautiful Flying Weather
Today we had beautiful flying weather and Senai airport was teeming with GA activity. A heart warming sight after many weeks of being grounded because of haze and recently because of aircraft maintenance.
On a day like this it is bad form to talk about money, but anyway, today I picked up 9MDRJ after the Annual Maintenance and paid a couple of bills, which prompted me to provide some pointers to the operating cost of small Malaysian registered GA aircraft.
Lycoming O-360-A4M in Piper Archer III
While I usually fall asleep halfway through most Hollywood movies, I could spend hours watching machines to figure out how they work. And so I was looking forward to the first 50 hours maintenance to document in detail what lies under the engine cowling of 9M-DRJ.
My plane is equipped with a normally aspirated four-cylinder four-stroke, horizontally opposed, air-cooled granddaddy of an engine. Clearly not cutting edge anymore, but rock-solid. This sort of machine will give you ample warning before it quits. It won’t just stop out of nowhere like one of the new diesel engines that rely on lots of electronics. On the flip-side, this engine practically needs to be bathed in oil and fuel to run smoothly.
Nevertheless, quite a number of components need to work together in a well-coordinated manner even for this unsophisticated engine to run. You need the fuel system with pump and carburetor, the oil system with cooler, filter and pump, the spark with magnetos and spark plugs, the starter motor, the exhaust system and of course the motor block with cylinder heads, pistons, valves etc.
If you are interested in this sort of stuff, you can take a look at a couple of pictures I have taken of this little marvel of technology
Fly in Asia 