My Glasair Sportsman

This is the story of my first airplane; a 2007 Glasair Sportsman. My dream of owning a plane finally came true on June 1st, 2009, when I flew this wonderful bird from Asheville, NC to NY. This is my story.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

The First Annual


Toward the end of January, 2010, it was time for my first annual. There were a few minor things that needed work and I wanted to replace the landing lights with new HID lights. I did some research on HID light and I decided on Rigid Industries 50 W MR16. They are made specifically for Vans, Glastars and Sportsmans and the word around the forum was that they worked well.
The annual went pretty much as I expected. The total time on the aircraft was 218 hours and the compressions were 75,76,76,75. I was having intermittent use of the electric elevator trim and did find out through Glastarnet forum that the original Ray Allen relay switch was too small and replaced it with a larger one (REL-2). That solved the problem. A couple of missing Vortex Generators, tighting a few couplers, screws where minor leaks were, and that was pretty much it.

I have to say Ed did a great job on the light installation. There was a perfect spot on the firewall for the ballasts and with the new HID lights, the brightness was incredible. Unfortunately, the wires were too short and we had to get extensions which solved the problem. The other real problem was heat. The HID's were too hot and the plexiglass lens might not fair too well if I was on the ground with the lights on for too long. We needed a solution. Again checking the forums showed several people with this issue and Ed and I labored with a how to best solve the problem. He came up with a guy in Brooklyn who could make a lens out of Pyrex that would work perfectly. When it was all said and done, the lights were great.

Next up: Time to go to conventional gear.
Posted by at
Labels:

2 comments:

  1. MikeMarch 8, 2014 at 7:41 PM

    I am looking at buying a Glasair Sportsman as well and I'm curious as to what your annual costs of ownership are? I owned an SR22 for a little over three years and maintenance was crazy expensive. I like to work on stuff myself and with something like this, I can legally do much of the work that I had to pay others to do. Do you have any issues getting parts for it? BTW, beautiful aircraft!

    ReplyDelete
  2. John KNovember 2, 2014 at 1:50 PM

    I do not do the annual myself but based on about 100 hrs a year flying, It''s been between $1000 and $2000. Now I live on Long Island so nothing is cheap here and I tend to have my A&P do a lot of minor stuff. I've upgraded the panel, experimented with difference landing lights, etc. so that can add up. With about 600 hrs on the plane, I have only changed the magnetos out and replaced the starter once so that's about all for the big stuff. Parts are not a problem. It's a great plane.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)