Volume VIII, June 1 2016
Membership
Membership is now at 726. This is quite surprising for a group that is just 2 years old this month. Keep spreading the word! Also, have fun doing it.
Membership Rules
Open to all who have a passion for Grummans. Open to wives, spouses, children of solo age (16 years US) and interested in aviation. Come have a say in this fledgling community.
Bowling Green
The National Gathering is less than two months away (July 19-24) and our block of rooms at the hotel ends June 25th. So call and make a room reservation and then go to the event at: http://gpa.grumman-parts.com/events/2016-national-gathering/
Near the bottom of the long page you will find bookings and you may make your selections. Then go to the Store to buy your tickets. Winner, winner, chicken dinner, (beef, veggie) and more at the Saturday Night Banquet Dinner. Truly award winning!
Speaking of Awards
We have taken an idea from Ken’s post, ’40 Years Ago’ and created the ‘Fire’ award. it goes to those that have a real and demonstrated passion and ‘fire‘ for Grummans. This will ensure that we ‘make darn sure not to kick out the fire!’
Oshkosh Group Flight Sunday
We need 12 planes (minimum required) for the group flight to Oshkosh, currently have three.
Seminars at Bowling Green
Want to give a seminar? Send the title and length of your presentation, AV equipment you need, to us to include you in the schedule.
Wrenching Bending
Wrench Bending shirts are available in the Store bearing this logo:
Available in the Store.
Throw a Flyin
Asking members across the nation to throw an event in their area. After all it is flying season! Just let us know what we can do to help. Happy to help post pictures, create the event, etc.
Technical Director
We are pleased to announce that Ken ‘Guru’ Blackman has accepted the role of Technical Director. The Guru has been at this for some time and his expertise is still much needed. He will be responding to posts in the ‘Ask the Gurus” as well as “Technical Information” Welcome Aboard.
And here he is in action:
I said I have comments on the AG’s. I, personally, would not buy one because of a serious lack of product support. They were different from the AA series in many ways, largely things that were more detrimental to the airplanes than improvements. I dearly hate the 28v electrical system and the control quadrant is one gigantic PIA for me in operation of the aircraft as well as being a maintenance nightmare. Most of the transmitters for the engine gages are not available, or very difficult to locate, the cowlings are a real horror to take off and install and most have been seriously fractured from having to be nearly broken in half to remove and clear the air inductions system and exhaust. There is an STC for totally revamping the air intake which adds MP and performance plus is easier to deal with. Actually the lower cowl should be able to separate so half can be removed at a time. This is a popular mod to the AA-5Bs, which the above airplane does have done, but the other problem is they had lots of trouble with the carbon fiber retaining paint. It also is famous for lots of surface cracks developing. The wing tip landing lights are not directly replaceable with any current LED light which is a really sought after thing these days. Another thing is a serial number sensitive thing but lots of the early AGs had serious corrosion problems with the interior seat frames, other parts, and the areas of the side honeycomb where the fabric could contact the aluminum. There was a recall on them but the new interiors they replaced the first ones with was about as bad since they still used a saline solution to fire-treat the fabric. Mix that with some humidity and you had a disaster in the making. The ones built by Tiger Aircraft were better in many ways but there were quality control problems there too as they were really broke from the get-go and I’ve seen parts that should have been rejected used on a couple of planes we have maintained. At any rate I highly advise not getting any built in Mississippi, unless they were a late S/N and not any of the very last few. I would much rather put money into making a ’78 or ’79 just like I wanted it for similar money as you could buy a nice AG for. If they ever do get back in production I would feel the same unless they retro’d a lot of things and then, the price, would most likely put it far out of reason.
Ken Blackman
Air Mods N.W.
guru@airmodsnw.com
425-334-3030
GPA Parts Network
The parts network has been working overtime lately with Fletchair being out of some parts. Here are just a few:
Nose Boot – found the last new cowling strut boot for a member.
Fuel Line – Cheetah owner needed a new right inside fuel line, it was over-nighted to Florida so he could use his plane for vacation.
Right Elevator – Cheetah/Tiger needed a replacement right elevator, only left were to be had. Found a serviceable one for the shop.
Propeller – Customer needed a Cheetah prop with some meat on it for overhaul. Found and delivered with a deal price. A new one was 5 months and 4K.
Website Changes
We have made several changes to the website to serve you better.
Forums – Restoration (no more welcome forum)
Covers From major to minor hints and tips for restoring your plane.
How to Guides Coming
How to Post to Forum + add attachments
Author status How to upload images into , library and use in a post.
Header Images
Header Images now are randomly selected from a pool and used at the top of a page as you click through the site. If you have one that shows something that is grumman, air-to-air, ground, etc.– submit yours we have 20+ now. They should be 1600 x 230, open areas, grumman in view, no marking (n-number), copy what you see in the header.
You can even submit a larger photo and we can crop/lighten/size as needed. Then your original will show up in a gallery (like on the home page).
Photos in Albums
Photo albums used to be limited to 14 photos, we have set this number up to 100. Post away.
Bookings
Bookings allow us to update headcounts and know who is coming to the event, which help with planning.
Tickets in Store
Tickets are sold out of the store for events to avoid yet another money plugin in the site.
Upload Limits (sizes)
Recommended 1024, 2048 longest side in pixels for detailed shots. Each of these takes up server space, so use your good judgement for detailed larger shots. Thanks.
Security
Joining – Our efforts to protect the site are working, bogus account creation has been greatly reduce.
Money (store and purchases, donations) – It was decided to use the Store to buy tickets/products for the National Gathering instead of adding another money plugin.
Bogus Accounts
Create account and come back later to harvest it to spam the site. We stop them at the door, put the username they selected into an autolock file and delete the account. What this means for you is a reduced server load.
Music
We, the GPA as a pilot group tend to be talented in many areas. A bigger percentage than most would believe have a musical background.
Recently Ken Blackman reminded me that he had a CD of music (I have had a copy for years and have listened to it) but we ripped it into mp3 format and put it on the website. We advertised this on the Grumman Gang and in the next 36 hours over 17,000 songs were listened to. We had them for stream only, not download (working on that as we speak, to REDUCE SERVER LOAD). Anyway, for 5 days the server was very taxed with streaming.
Which brings us to this point. Do any of you have any original music you would care to share? Someone years ago did a digital mike recording of big engines at Reno. Similar aviation themed recordings might be nice. As they say in “Nawlins, ‘Whatcha got?”
Hot Topics
What makes this first post so great, is the history of how this group and it’s mission, came to be.
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<h3>40 Years Ago</h3>
<p><small>Posted on May 31, 2016 by </small></p>
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40 YEARS AGO by Ken Blackman It was April, of 1976 and plans were being firmed up to fly 9 American and Grumman American aircraft from Paine field, Everett, WA to Merced, CA to attend the first official Annual Convention of the American Yankee Association. These 9 aircraft constituted the entire fleet of the North…
</div> </div> <hr style="visibility:hidden; clear:both;" /> </div><div class="wpmlposts"> <div class="wpmlpost"> <h3>Video 1st Flight in Tiger for my pup</h3> <p><small>Posted on May 23, 2016 by Ed Muccio</small></p> <div class="wpmlpost_content">
https://youtu.be/5ynJAefeeAo
</div> </div> <hr style="visibility:hidden; clear:both;" /> </div>These next two posts show quite an attention to detail. Tracy sets the bar ‘pretty’ high!
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<h3>Cheetah - Engine Powder Coating after overhaul</h3>
<p><small>Posted on April 30, 2016 by Tracy Norris</small></p>
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N9683U got her new engine back from Custom Airmotive in Tulsa, OK - very nice but I'm not one to leave well enough alone. Powder Coated the rocker arm/valve covers, pinion gear and push-rod tubes. Perhaps a little more "bling" than I wanted but but well worth the effort. This picture was taken back in…
</div> </div> <hr style="visibility:hidden; clear:both;" /> </div><div class="wpmlposts"> <div class="wpmlpost"> <h3>AA5X - Rudder Pedals need love too!</h3> <p><small>Posted on May 9, 2016 by Tracy Norris</small></p> <div class="wpmlpost_content">
Found a set of spare rudder pedals on eBay for cheap so that I could refurbrish them without taking my existing units out of service. Although there are several methods of spiffying them up, I chose to powder coat the set of four since they are fairly easy to do (for me anyways - spent…
</div> </div> <hr style="visibility:hidden; clear:both;" /> </div>Midwest Daily Coverage
Suggestions
Please send any suggestions along, you are our idea base.
Volunteers?
Always have a need for volunteers, no job too small.
Newsletter Contributions?
As with any newsletter, we are always struggling for copy. So send some in, or make forum posts, either one will work.
Items coming to Store
Group Discount on purchases of aviation catalog items. Each purchases is at a discount with a small percentage going to the GPA, dropped shipped to you.
New Aviation Shirt Selection
These new shirts will be available in about 2 weeks. There is no GPA logo on the back of these to help reduce cost. This and other shirts with aviation themes are coming. As always, if you have an idea, or two, or 3,…, send it along.