Thks Mike 

Always enjoy your reports. Jerry 

-------- Original message --------

From: Mike Dwyer <q200pilot@...>

Date: 3/13/21 5:14 PM (GMT-05:00)

To: Q_List <Q-List@groups.io>

Subject: [Q-List] Flight Report

Beautiful day here in west central Florida today 75F 45% humidity.  Got down to the airport and checked the Q200 over.  Got in and hit the starter... but the propeller only turned slowly.  No where near fast enough to start.  Shoot, my Odyssey PC925 battery is 7 years old, it's probably dead.  I keep an AGM type battery charger on it so I reset it and the battery is now showing 15 volts.  That is a characteristic of a bad battery that has too much internal resistance.  Oh well, $200 later I got a new battery.  I pull off the tail cone where the battery resides and pull out the battery.  Whenever you do work at the hangar everyone comes over to watch.  My buddy Sam mentions that he has a battery tester.  He also says he replaced his Odyssey PC925 a couple years ago after he had it for 15 years in his Velocity.  Cool, let's try the battery tester.  Old battery Good.  What?  New battery Good (expected that).  Oh, no I got a different issue.  Battery connections look good.  30 Years ago I had built the battery cables with a disconnectable joint so you could pull the rear shell off.  Sure enough this connection looked good but wasn't.  My smart charger had been acting strangely lately.  That should have been a sign.  Anyway fixed the battery connection and buttoned her up.  

Take off on RWY 36, no wind.  Nice.  Ran great, cool temps.  Headed North and climbed to 5500' to do the Ham radio thing.  People have fun talking to airplanes so I did that for a while.  Starting to be a bit of haze in the air but not too bad.  It was 10% humidity up there!  That's crazy low.  Hey, let's buzz by Clearwater Beach and see what the Spring Breakers are up to.  Got a little low as I went by.  FlightAware kinda shows me at 0 but that is only approximate!  

Have you ever seen a seagull go by at 175 mph?  It's impressive.

Anyway there were more boats out today then on a summer day.  The beaches with parking like Clearwater were packed.  So after passing the interesting beaches I pulled up to about 1600' to head back to the airport.  They gave me runway 4 with a perfect 11K from the left crosswind and it was gusty.  Eh, got to keep up the crosswind skills.  Crabbed to the right with the left wind down and landed with the left wheel first.  Plunk and it's down.  Not bad.  

Here are a couple of North bound pictures.   

Oh, and I returned the battery to the store.  So it was a cheap fix afterall!

Fly Safe (even tho gas is up $0.80 a gallon - thanks Biden).

Mike Dwyer

Q200 N3QP

YouTube Videos:  https://www.youtube.com/user/FlyMeAirplane/playlists

Q200 Website: http://goo.gl/V8IrJF