Recently, the trusty 912S in my 701 has been, well, not that trusty. The symptoms started subtly about a year ago, with slight difficulty starting. Used to be, you couldn't count the blades before the thing sprang to life. Now I was counting 6 or 10 seconds, and having to mess with various combinations of throttle and choke - probably because the lack of immediate start was causing flooding.

Anyway, I had an annual inspection coming up, and even though I have my repairman…

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Funny thing – the original bungee on my 701 lasted for years. But with about 5 years and 200 hours on the aircraft, I was persuaded to replace it. So, I ordered one from Zenith, also the bungee replacement tool which helped - only to find the bungee was too big for my plane. It was really loose and with the gear off the ground, I could push the bungee off the pegs on the nose gear leg.

 

A quick call to Zenith, and Roger kindly digs up a smaller one and sends it to me. It fits…

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I've been flying for several years now with a 72" Warp Drive. As my good friend Felipe points out - heavy but reliable. However, no leading edge protection meant that over the years of landing in places an airplane probably should not go, I had a pretty battered prop.

I met with the folks at Sensenich who are just up the road from me here in Florida (I like doing business locally where possible). Their website actually recommends the 68" with a 912S. However, after thinking…

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Problem: as left/right flaperon is applied, path length of the cable changes dramatically, because the top of the elevator control horn is located about 12” off the axis of rotation of the flaperon torque tube.



With cable tension set to 20lbs at neutral stick, I was seeing 10-15lbs at full left (very slack) and >35lbs at full right stick. This was tight enough to cause the elevator horn to bend!



Solution: I have added a pulley right behind the lower access hatch, on the… Continue