Tough year

 It was a tough year for the mighty TwinBo.  On dropping it off for annual, and after bragging to my buddy Martin that my annuals have been so reasonable the last 5 years in a row and my squawk list was short, they found some bits of copper in the left engine oil screen.  Deep inspection of the engine revealed no anomalies... compression good, borescope clean, valves seating properly with no chips.  Engine has 700 hrs SMOH.  After some calls to Lycoming and Columbia it was advised for me to run it another 10 hours and check again.  I ran it about 5 hrs and it ran perfectly, then checked the screen again and it was clean.  Alls well that ends well right?  Well it just didn't sit right with me.  In the back of my mind I just felt like if something inside broke it wasn't going to fix itself.  When something comes apart inside my engine, I want to know what it is and fix it.  So I took the plane to West Air aircraft engines at Livermore and asked them to figure it out.  They took off all the jugs and found the culprit.  Apparently the connecting rod wrist pin caps were likely not originally installed correctly and one of them was not rotating and was badly cracked. 

Another one was cracked and two other ones had minor chipping too.  Simple fix right, just replace the caps?  Well the reason it cracked is that since it couldn't float freely it got hot and also melted part of the piston.  I was relieved to have found the source though, and it was advised I should replace all the wrist pins and wrist pin caps and pistons, new rings and hone the jugs, check all the valves and valve stems and push rods.  Basically a light top overhaul.  During this process they also discovered that the connecting rod arms had the part number scratched onto them.  That's probably no big deal safety wise but it's not allowed by Lycoming, so I also needed to replace all the connecting rods.  So all the cylinders on the left engine got new pistons and rings, honed the cylinders, new connecting rods and bushings.

All this saga started in August and I just picked it up yesterday.  I test flew it by flying it over the airport for half an hour with my buddy Aaron in the plane with his eyes glued to the JPI.   All ran very well with low CHTs (it was cold by CA standards yesterday) except a bad probe on the #1 EGT.  The shop replaced the probe on the house since he felt bad I just had to write a 24k check!  Then I flew home.  So the plane is finally back in the hangar.  It's got mineral oil in it so I'll need to break in these jugs by flying it at 75% power over the next 10 to 15 hrs.  I'm looking forward to putting more than 20 hrs on it this year!  

Dynon HDX approved for the TwinBo

Wow, I didn't think this would ever happen but it did.

https://www.dynoncertified.com/aml-list.php

The Skyview HDX is approved for the TwinBo. Hats off to Dynon for putting the Twin Bonanza on their AML. I'm not optimistic they'll ever do the autopilot but the STEC works fine and here is a great glass panel option for a reasonable cost vs the G600txi which bonkers expensive.  

Unfortunately I didn't find my way to OSH this year to get all my questions about this answered by Dynon, just too much stuff going on at home.  It looks like 5 tBones make it though and I'm jealous.  

I'm going to start getting some pricing and strongly considering upgrading my Aspen to a 12 inch Dynon HDX would looks like a thing of beauty.  

Ceramic

 Got the plane ceramic coated.  I love the white bottom look but the downside is that it shows every bit a grease, exhaust and oil that comes out the augmenter tubes.  The ceramic makes it much easier to wipe down and protects the paint for at least 5 years or so.  Looks good!

Baja

 Did a Flying Semaritans trip down to Baja with the mother lode chapter and brought my older boy along. We took a dentist and a volunteer interpreter and had a great time.  It's always a little nerve wracking going into Mexico because of all the paper work involved, but it mostly went smoothly.  At some point I'll do a detailed write up on all the steps involved if only for myself as I always seem to forget.

San Diego

 One reason I bought the TwinBo was to have enough room for everything when doing family trips.  We go down to San Diego once or twice a year and with the four of us, a small suitcase each, a boogie board and a surf board, some bags of groceries, drinks and snacks even the big beast ends up pretty full.  The concern is often how we're going to fit it into the rental car at the other end.  We had some weird weather on the way down but very pretty.  It ended up being an IFR approach and then we woke up to rain.  That's pretty unusual for California in September!

Oshkosh!

This year I made my 3rd pilgrimage to Oshkosh.  Last time was in my Baron and a Meridian geared it up in front of me, so they shut the airport and after circling for 45 mins I ended up landing at Fond Du Lac so missed out on actually landing at OSH.  This year I went with the Tbone crew and camped so I got to do the Warbird arrival with 4 other planes in a 5 ship arrival and then setup a deluxe camp for the full experience.  I went with my buddy Joe and we met up with friend and fellow Tbone owner Martin who flew his own Tbone.  We had a blast.  It was a lot of flying but well worth it.  Logged 21 hrs of flying in 4 days without a squawk!  Not bad for a 60 year old machine.  

Wing bling

Decided to bling up the wing a bit and chrome the landing light lens frames. Gregg Cadieux had some spare frames so rather than wait to have mine done he did his for me and sent them over to exchange with mine. They look great. I was a bit concerned the different frames mightn't line up with the screw holes perfectly but they did. Amazing the precision the Beechcraft craftsman achieved 60 years ago.

Here's what the painted frame looks like

Here is the chromed lens frame

For good measure I decided to also see what I could do to improve the old magnesium trim wheel

It was a pain in the butt to get that anchor screw out but once I did the wheel came right off and I replaced the old wheel with the bling version.