Picking up from a post about someone having discovered no less than four blind altitude encoders in his (presumably) 1970s plane, this has got me wondering…
The problem starts with most owners getting multiple quotes and going for the lowest one. Especially syndicates, where getting agreement on anything tends to be a fraught process.
So the installer dives in and installs “the box” which the customer wants to go in, as far as possible avoiding to have anything to do with the stuff already in there, to stick to the quoted-for man-hours and for fear of opening some can of worms.
Of course there are reputable firms out there who will say to you “we can do as you wish but it is going to leave a mess”…
I recall one MEP owner saying that one firm, doing a fairly big refit, removed 15kg of dead wiring from his plane. My entire plane has nowhere near 15kg of wiring in it in its entirety… I know where the dead wiring is (the harness going to the old KG102A) but it weights a few kg and is near-impossible to remove because of inaccessible cable ties.
I wonder how much weight one could remove, on average?
Interesting point Peter. It’s amazing how much clutter you can quickly accumulate in the plane as well. I have added larger items like a life raft to my W&B figures but here are lots of other little bits which probably add up.
I wonder how much weight one could remove, on average?
I think that dead avionics and cabling on board are rather an exception than the rule. The only thing I can think of are the inoperative autopilots installed in many training aircraft 
It’s rather the collection of bits and pieces that accumulates in the baggage compartment of many aeroplanes that adds to the empty weight. I used to hire a C421 some years ago and one day I found a box with 12 can of oil inside the wing baggage compartment. I called the owner about it and he told me that his locker in the hangar is full with other stuff and because he’s afraid that his oil gets stolen, he rather flies it around. That was at least 15kg. The same with chocks. 95 percent of airfields can provide chocks of some kind. And for the remaining 5 percent it is really sufficient to carry the smallest and lightest ones and not necessarily two big lumps of wood at 3kg each.
Aluminum Box 7.6 kg (Tie down kit, some tools, extra oil etc.)
Airplane Cover 1.7 kg
Accessory Box 5.0 kg (Oxygen equipment, passenger headsets, GoPro cables, iPad cables)
Window Heat Shields 1.2 kg
Cowl plugs 0.3 kg
Tow Bar 1.6 kg
Oil bag 0.5 kg (funnel, cloth, paper)
Camping mattress 0.3 kg (you never know …)
-———————————
TOTAL 18.2 kg
Max baggage is 59 kg, so ca. 40 kg left – 10 kg per person max.
Anyone concerned about this (and it should indeed be a concern to every PIC!) ought to take a training in “maintenance and repair of very light aircraft” – in mine, any proposed action or plan was immediately countered with the paramount question “and what will that to to the empty weight?” until it became a second nature.
In a discussion on an ultralight-specific forum, someone reported coming across a “transformer” behind the dashboard and wondering what to do with it. It turned out to be the L-component of a filter circuit in the supply of the radio, and though the forum concensus was that it was not needed, the topic starter decided to leave it in place because “if it ain’t broke, do not fix it”. I left him to his wisdom and to perhaps half a kg of unneeded empty weight.
PS I too carry a few items not really required in the baggage compartment, but it can never be more than 1 kg – or so I believe…
About 22 kg for things like tools, some spare parts, a quart or two of oil, rags, a few cleaning items, tie downs and chokes, O2-equipment, airplane cover, passenger headsets etc. Pretty similar to what Flyer59 carries.
However, looking around the airfield a lot more weight could be saved by reducing the chocolate and other health-food induced deadweight around pilots and passengers….
My luggage compartment used to be more like you people above, till I got a “situation” in Spain in 2005 and decided to permanently carry a very full toolkit. The toolbox now weighs about 20kg and contains everything for a 50hr service.
So I probably have about 30-40kg in the back, plus a 10kg raft and another 10kg of other stuff (oxygen etc) on the RH back seat.
The toolbox lives right at the very back of the plane, for lowest elevator drag and thus best MPG.
The toolbox lives right at the very back of the plane, for lowest elevator drag and thus best MPG.
Do you actually see better cruise speed with an aft CG in the TB20 ?
My Cardinal RG will pick-up a solid 4 – 5 knots TAS in cruise with an aft CG
I wonder how much weight one could remove, on average?
I got 14 lbs or over 6 Kg permanently off my plane, extra wiring and hardware associated with a system that had been removed/disabled, plus a wing tip strobe system that I didn’t want.
Re tools, I don’t carry what I probably should, instead relying on good preparation in the hangar. On a cross country with an A&P friend, he decided this was no good and brought a tool roll. He is no small guy himself, and I’m not tiny. With full fuel we crept skyward, quite happy that the ground elevation was dropping away under us.
Why be so concerned about removing weight? It does not matter that much for our typical GA tourers if you have enough runway available. I, like Peter, got into difficult technical situations far from home and value my toolbox. With what I carry on longer trips, I can pretty much overhaul a Lycoming…
I’m in a comfortable situation with a C182 and plenty of useable load but ever since I discovered that the TCDS of my aircraft allows for 30% above MTOM (that is 421kg over MTOM!) with permission from the authorities and a small adjustment of Va, I am much less concerned. That doesn’t mean I fly overweight but rather that I don’t have to calculate everything down to the last fraction of a gram.
