Recent content by Dan Thomas

Yup, but the media love to distort it mightily. The Times calls it a crash in this video:

So often such problems are maintenance shortcomings, not manufacturer design problems. Are 767s in the habit of doing this? No. But the manufacturer is pilloried by the media, and the people suck it up without question. Many airlines have contracted out their major maintenance to shops in other...

Plus: Where do the passengers want to be stranded?

Aircraft Spruce sells the Saf-Air valves, and they stock the parts for them too.

That is true. But the torque spec for an AN5 bolt in shear is low enough that crush damage is unlikely. I have seen the fairings all torn up around the bolt holes from the bolt being too loose; nosewheel shimmy then wrecks the fiberglass.

That mechanism has nothing to do with shimmy. It's to handle and damp landing loads. The shimmy stuff involves the shimmy damper, torque links, steering collar, all of which get owrn when shimmy is allowed to continue. Replacing it is expensive, and if the shimmy is not addressed, the new stuff...

That's it. A loose bolt will bend under towing forces, and while AN bolts are a ductile nickel-steel alloy that resists cracking, eventually they give up. Turning too tightly with the tug, especially a tractor tug, forces the steering collar up against its stop, and puts a lot of stress on...

That's it. #18 is a metering rod. It moves up and down through a hole in #8. As #13 goes up and down, it pumps fluid through that hole, in and out of #8. The thickened sections at each end of the pin restrict the flow at each end of #13's travel, damping the ends of the travel so as to avoid...

The weight will keep the strut from blowing out of the oleo cylinder if the torque links are disconnected, but it won't keep that bottom plug in the strut. Only the hollow pin is doing that.

Soon enough? It does no good if the engine quit first and the exhaust system has cooled off.

That bolt also holds the plug in the bottom of the strut, and has oil under pressure against it. You did release the pressure first, right? Now, an edit: some of those had a hollow pin retaining the plug. Yours might. Lucky, maybe. The bolt went through the pin.

This sure sounds like just another carb ice event. Pilots are far too poorly trained in the physics of carb ice, when to expect it, and how to deal with it. 600-foot ceilings mean a one-degree C spread between temp and dewpoint at ground level. You figure it out. I bet the investigators...

Check with the avionics shop re that. If it's OK, some good silicone dielectric grease would keep the water out. It's frequently used in other aviation wiring applications, but I'm not sure it's good around RF stuff. It would certainly repel the water.

Cessnas (and most others) have small drain holes in the belly. There should be one on each side of all the bulkheads. I usually found those holes all plugged with dirt and other debris, and frequently saw watermarks revealing that significant puddles had formed at times.

You still need to get that connector real clean. In the antenna end, too.