Hi
Guys,
Well
this isn't my typical we had fun flight report. But you
gotta take the good with the bad.
Saturday
we flew down to Venice FL for lunch. An absolutely
perfect day, 75F light winds, hardly a cloud in the sky,
low humidity. If every day in FL was like that we'd
have a population of 100 Million in FL but because it's
mostly scorching hot and 99% humidity when it's not
raining with mosquito's that can carry away small
children we only have 20 Million... anyway back to the
flight report.
I
flew at low power for the 30 minutes down the beach. I
was shooting 3D video, figured it would be fun to have
the whole beach recorded. We climbed into the pattern
at Venice and got behind a Cessna on Downwind. Those
things are slow, surprised they can actually fly at that
speed... So we dragged the Q200 in behind the Cessna at
idle speed. Landed. Darn half the taxi ways are closed
so we had to taxi a long long time to the restaurant.
Toward the end of the taxi the engine started missing.
Weird, it's never done that. I got parked and powered
up do do a mag check, both systems were running like
crap. Oh well, let's have lunch.
After
lunch we fired her back up and the poor 0-200A was
running like crap. I thought I'd get away from the ramp
and in the open somewhere and run some real power to
it. Wow it was banging, wheezing, acting like I was
just turning the mag switches off and on. Never did
that in the 29 years I've been flying her. I kinda
wondered if I could make it back to the tie down ramp.
With
no tools or parts we rented a car and drove home in
shame. A couple of buds at the home airport thought it
might be bad gas, fowled plugs, stuck valve, intake
issue,...
So
today (Sunday) I loaded the rental car with my 4 spare
plugs, hoses, tubes, duct tape!, torque wrench... At
Venice I checked everything over, looks good. I drained
the carb bowl, nice gas and good fuel flow, it's not
gas. I pulled the top plugs, #1 was soaked in oil, #3
was black as night, the other two just looked bad. I
put the new plugs in the top and the best from the top
into the #1 bottom (oil soaked). Then I figured I'd
fire her up and see what happens. Started great and ran
great, just like it's supposed to. So I figure I might
as well go to full power and see what happens. If I
starts popping I'll abort the take off. She climbed out
great, took her to 4500 and headed home. Not a miss, no
issues. A beautiful day with some clouds at 3000', just
enough to make it pretty.
The
Q200 is back in her hangar. I think I'll pay a lot more
attention to cleaning the plugs on a regular schedule.
I had no idea plugs could make it run so bad! She's
going to get a good looking over this week.
