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.
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9M-DRJ For Sale
As some of you have picked up from my earlier post, my somewhat sudden move to Dubai requires me to sell my Piper Archer. This is not an easy step for me, but I don’t want her to be on the ground for too long. Aircraft that don’t fly much, don’t last long.
To make this as fair and transparent as possible, I have put all the information about the airplane into this post. Thankfully, the previous owner of 9MDRJ was extremely helpful and open, but before that, when I was still looking for a plane to buy, I was a bit frustrated by the lack of information and I was generally surprised how little effort the sellers put into making the process easy for prospective buyers. I hope that won’t be a problem in my case.
I am available for test flights on 8/9 and 15/16 November. Having gone through the process of buying an aircraft recently, I can assist with the necessary paperwork (i.e. certificate of registration, insurance, maintenance organization etc). The airplane can be handed over with immediate effect. If the insurance company is agreeable, I may be able to add the new owner to my insurance cover, so that the new owner can start flying while sorting out the paper work.
If you are interested in buying this airplane, please use the contact function on blog.flyinasia.com or send me a message on Facebook.
9MDRJ – Panel
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)
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
As they saying goes: it only takes two things to fly – airspeed and money. However, while it is usually better not to think too hard about the money you spend on flying, it is a great thing to know your airspeed.
Recently, I found out what it takes to fly without knowing your airspeed. After take-off, the airspeed seemed to come alive very late and be stuck at about 60 knots. By the time I decided that something is wrong with my airspeed indicator, I was already airborne and not enough runway left to abort the take off. I figured it is safer to fly as planned and use power, attitude, ground speed and eyeballs to fly at a safe speed. It turned out to be rather easy to achieve a straight and level flight without airspeed. After all, what speed can you possibly fly at with a 70% power setting without climbing or descending? The real question was, how would I achieve a reasonable approach speed and probably for the first time in my flying career I actually listened to ATC telling me wind speed and direction in their landing clearance.
9M-DRJ and me
Hurray – I bought an airplane! You probably ask whether I ended up buying the Cessna 182 or the Diamond DA40. Well, neither.
The thing is that I forgot to talk about money in my first post. The issue is that you need to have enough money left to maintain and fly the aircraft. If you max out your budget buying the plane, you won’t be happy.
So I decided to go for a relatively new and affordable Piper Archer III. It does not have a glass cockpit. The instruments are all analog with two VOR/Localizer CDIs one glide-slope indicator, ADF, KAP140, KLN89B, etc. – basically the original Silvercrown Bendix/King stack. One of the coolest features is the Piper Aire air conditioning. I don’t think you can go wrong with an a/c in the tropical climate down here. The call sign is 9M-DRJ and I will post a lot more about my new toy.
9M-DRJ Instrument Panel
| Engine Time | 11h 51m |
| Landings | 7 |
| Fuel total | 85 Gallons |
| Fuel per hour | approx. 7.2 Gallons (28 Liters) |
| Hotel cost | approx. RM 240 (SGD 100) |
| Pictures | Click here |
The flight safari has been postponed, so I had free time on my hand and decided to jump into the club piper to see where the wind would carry me.
13 October 2012, 14:00 LT, Malacca Airport
Empty Airport Terminal in Malacca
Well, as it turns out the wind decided to carry me exactly 100 nm before putting a full stop on my plans with thunderstorms over Subang. Now I am sitting in an empty airport terminal in Malacca and hope I will later make it to Penang and Langkawi.
Round Malaysia GPS Track
Live Updates posted during a Round Malaysia trip from 12 to 15 April 2012
Aircraft: Piper Warrior II, PA 28-161, 9M-FRR
PIC: Ingo
Co-pilot: Capt. Ridzuan
Logbook PIC hours: 16.4
Airports and airfields: 14
Landings: 16
Suyoung, Nigel and Ingo
Is there a good reason to fly to Malacca, have a coffee and a Nasi Lemak and fly back straight away? No! When you find the only coffee shop closed and left with the option to buy a Fanta, there is even less reason to do so.
Is that going to stop us pilots to do exactly that anyway? Of course not. We do it for the flying and for the surprised looks on our friend’s faces when we tell them that we will fly for a coffee to Malacca on Saturday. Read the rest of this entry »
Fly in Asia 