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Winter operations / lowest temperature for starting / preheating methods (merged)

Raven wrote:

I wrote about it some time ago. I made a humidity tests inside my engines before/during/after preheating.
Don’t do your preheating for more than 2-3 hours. Humidity level rises violently during this process. Sound not logical but it’s the fact.
The mechanism of this is that the oil in the sump contains quite a lot of trapped moisture which was produced during combustion process.
During winter time it’s quite regular that your oil temp. will not be enough to make that moisture evaporate completely (that is my case even in the summer).
During preheating process the oil warms up and the moisture is being released to the engine block. Not a problem for 2-3 hours but definitely bad if lasts for 12 hours or more.
There is somewhere a warning in operating manual of Conti or Lyco engine that preheating for more than 24 hours may cause severe corrosion attack – so this is confirmed even by factory.

Hmmmm. My club have oil heaters connected H24 during winter (well, not when the aircraft is flying, obviously) and we have never had problems with corrosion at overhaul.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

Airborne_Again wrote:

My club have oil heaters connected H24 during winter

If it’s club’s plane then it’s probably used quite often and in that case the inside humidity doesn’t matter as the internals are still covered by oil film.
In my case – the plane can sit for 3 weeks without flying and after 7-10 days internal parts become exposed to the air as the oil film disappears.

Poland

Not sure whether to post this here or with the “random videos” – some old Garmin VIRB footage, re-edited and with a soundtrack/commentary.

Just to show that flying needn’t – and definitely shouldn’t – stop for winter. Feel free to comment here or on YouTube.



Glenswinton, SW Scotland, United Kingdom

That is fantastic! Evidently Scotland has certain advantages, like… space, not many people, and snow!

I recognise the base

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Very pretty.

EIWT Weston, Ireland

Christmas Day – chilly but not really wintery as such:

United Kingdom

Well within the temperature range of W80 despite widespread belief

This is one of many measures of the economic destruction:

Normally, at this time of the day, the sky here is full of contrails, of Brits flying into mainland Europe.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

I had few surprises recently,
- Vacuum pump warning earlier this month on climb in IMC, it completely gave up halfway and hand flew arrival and return leg, KI256 drives KAP150 and the backup G5 saved show but it keeps yelling “Alignment” in bumpy weather….
- Windshield TKS was partially clogged, it took a while to remove rime ice once outside the soup, luckily storm window helped in flare
- Tried to get vacuum pump fixed Friday but runway at LeTouquet was closed on my arrival (too wet with lot of crosswind), later battery went flat after 3 missed cold start attempts in freezing cold, no one around to help and we end up making plugs from nearby car garage, this took the whole afternoon to jump start before flying back very late at night

Is this just cold winter gremlins? or bad luck? or maintenance?

I took Eurostar train to UK today: things did not look reliable

[ photos moved to a post further down ]

Last Edited by Ibra at 16 Jan 11:06
Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

Ibra wrote:

Vacuum pump

Sure did not realise there still airplanes equipped with those
On the other hand, reading the following is slightly worrying:

Ibra wrote:

G5 saved show but it keeps yelling “Alignment” in bumpy weather

I’ve had this happen about 4 years ago, in very lengthy turbulent conditions, luckily in VMC. Wrote to Garmin who replied it had all been taken care of in the latest revision… and I luckily never had this happening again during the ~ 1K hours flown since. It was also a reason I later installed a Uavionix AV-20 bacon saver on my panel

Dan
ain't the Destination, but the Journey
LSZF, Switzerland

I’ve had this happen about 4 years ago, in very lengthy turbulent conditions

I had it twice once cruising in convective IMC and second landing in VMC (very gusty: kid got to enjoy it untill he went airsick )

Last Edited by Ibra at 16 Jan 13:19
Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom
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