Bad timing...

No no no...it's "Hail Mary", not "Blame Mary". :-)

Now Jack here is obviously a successfully married man...

;-)

Well, the parts arrived from Spruce by 10 AM this morning, and the
brakes were fixed by lunch. Atlas is tucked safely back in his hangar,
fully fueled and ready to go.

All we need now is some nice weather on Sunday. It's 35 degrees and
raining, right now -- ain't nuthin' flying around Iowa City...

Prog charts show a big chunk of (argh!) thunderstorms moving into
Oklahoma and Texas on Sunday morning...

:-(
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Ouch...

This is one of those stories that makes me glad that I didn't spend
the extra money (and lost useful load) to install Toe-Brakes in 61J...

Yes it was odd... for the first 5 minutes of taxiing.

After seeing two of my old club's planes go through a set of pads per
100 hour inspection (one of them having a similar catastrophic right
(I believe) break failure... only during a landing... only a VERY good
instructor prevented a ground-loop). And then hear stories like this
from a very experienced pilot no-less...

I can't say I miss them.


I have had a right break failure in a piper with toe brakes also right
brake
stuck upon applying them.


This makes me just a little curious.

Is the handbrake on a Piper (without toe brakes) mechanical or hydraulic?

My reason for asking is that, if hydraulic, the same culd happen with the
handbrake--although the possiblility of inadvertantly dragging the right
brake while applying rudder would be eliminated.

Peter

Anyone know if it's possible for a brake to hang up and not release,
resulting in advanced wear like this? Or should I keep blaming Mary
for riding the (right) brake?


Yes. In cars, this is often caused by the caliper rusting.
That's caused by a) road salt b) water in the brake fluid.
Hence the recommendation to flush the fluid every 2 years.

I've read both the 'rotor runout' and seal material explanations
for retraction; I suspect there's some of each. In any case, with
no pressure/drag - i.e pads skipping along; there's very little if
any braking action.

And a few cars, such as Corvettes in the middle 1960s, were reputed to have
springs inside the calipers so that the pads would not retract. This was
supposed to keep the pads and disks cleaner and drier, with only a very
slight increase in the rate of wear.

I never owned one and don't know how well it worked.

Peter
(Anticipating the obvious question)

On Mar 9, 8:47 pm, "Jay Honeck" wrote:
Prog charts show a big chunk of (argh!) thunderstorms moving into
Oklahoma and Texas on Sunday morning...

Yep, low ceilings, crappy visibility, possibly rain and thundershowers
from west of Wichita Falls all along the Red River all the way to Lake
Texoma forecast for most of the day Sunday. MVFR at best, probably
actually gonna be IMC though.

Might be a better idea to try again Monday. Or if you can, leave
Saturday morning. It's supposed to be very clear and almost no winds
all day Saturday across the local region here.

Might be a better idea to try again Monday. Or if you can, leave
Saturday morning. It's supposed to be very clear and almost no winds
all day Saturday across the local region here.

Yeah, we'll probably only make it half-way down Sunday anyway...so
flying in to Fredericksburg on Monday is no biggie.

Can't leave today, dang it. Got a million loose ends to tie before we
can leave the hotel for a week...
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Yes its hydraulic (Single Cylinder)... so yes, it could definitely
still fail.

The whole system is much simpler (And lighter, by about 8 lbs) than
the toe-brake system though, and according to my mechanic at least,
its basically bullet-proof...

This is simply according to him - but apparently fried right wheels/
brakes are a reasonably common (especially on Grummans and training
aircraft)... he attributes it simply to the subconscious dragging on
takeoff/taxi... At the very least, the right pads wear faster than the
left on most planes he looks at, even with experienced pilots.

The only planes he doesn't see it on are the few that don't have toe
brakes. That was enough for me... (Disclaimer, I am a young, low-time
pilot with ABSOLUTELY no experience in this matter, other than I
learned in a few toe-brake planes before I bought 61J, and I adapted
to no toe-brakes in about 5 minutes...)

I do tend to trust the opinion of a mechanic who tells me not to give
him money for things though...

-Scott

On 2007-03-10, Peter Dohm wrote:
This makes me just a little curious.

Is the handbrake on a Piper (without toe brakes) mechanical or hydraulic?

I presume you're meaning on aircraft like the TriPacer which has the
hand brake, but no toe brakes.

In the TriPacer, a cable goes from the hand brake, around a few pulleys,
and ultimately it ends up under the pilot's seat. Under the pilot's seat
(and I'm not joking) you will find a Piper Cub heel brake, with a hole
in the back of the heel brake, where the cable connects.

The heel brake is hydraulic and applies both wheel brakes
simultaneously. The diaphragm has a habit of splitting just when you
really need the brakes, leaving you with nothing!

--
Yes, the Reply-To email address is valid.
Oolite-Linux: an Elite tribute: http://oolite-linux.berlios.de

On 2007-03-10, Jay Honeck wrote:
Prog charts show a big chunk of (argh!) thunderstorms moving into
Oklahoma and Texas on Sunday morning...

In my experience of (around 800 or 900 hours of) flying around Texas -
prog charts showing possible thunderstorms are not necessarily doom to a
trip.

My usual strategy was to look again at the radar just before departure,
and pick a point where I could stop and re-check the radar to see how it
was progressing. Around 70% of the time, the entire trip was a 'go'
because the thunderstorms turned out to be very widely scattered.

It also depends what the thunderstorms were associated with.
Thunderstorms embedded in a front, with low IMC? I'm not going to even
bother going to the airport. But basically reasonable VMC conditions,
and an area of widely scattered storms? Flight watch, and a stop at a
nearby airport to get a full update on the weather would usually prove
useful. About half the time, thunderstorms in the prog charts wouldn't
even materialise on the day of the trip and it was obvious from just
looking out of the window or calling Flight Watch that there was no need
to stop.

Of course, it's wise to exercise caution if you've no experience flying
in the area (because you don't get that gut feel whether they are
airplane-eating monsters or easily avoidable airmass storms), and the
usual advice to have an 'out' is something that can't be ignored.

But isn't it funny that on the day of a trip, all this weather always
seems to show up? I've done the Houston to Pinckneyville trip about half
a dozen times, and I can predict years in advance that there will be a
cold front lined up such that it lies right over the middle of Arkansas
on the Friday afternoon just when I'm passing. It's _always_ there on
that particular Friday, like a big cosmic meterological taunt!

--
Yes, the Reply-To email address is valid.
Oolite-Linux: an Elite tribute: http://oolite-linux.berlios.de

"Dylan Smith" wrote in message
...
On 2007-03-10, Peter Dohm wrote:
This makes me just a little curious.

Is the handbrake on a Piper (without toe brakes) mechanical or hydraulic?

I presume you're meaning on aircraft like the TriPacer which has the
hand brake, but no toe brakes.

My Cherokee 140 has a handbrake with no toe brakes. It's hydraulic.

This makes me just a little curious.

Is the handbrake on a Piper (without toe brakes) mechanical or
hydraulic?

I presume you're meaning on aircraft like the TriPacer which has the
hand brake, but no toe brakes.

In the TriPacer, a cable goes from the hand brake, around a few pulleys,
and ultimately it ends up under the pilot's seat. Under the pilot's seat
(and I'm not joking) you will find a Piper Cub heel brake, with a hole
in the back of the heel brake, where the cable connects.

The heel brake is hydraulic and applies both wheel brakes
simultaneously. The diaphragm has a habit of splitting just when you
really need the brakes, leaving you with nothing!

--
Yes, the Reply-To email address is valid.
Oolite-Linux: an Elite tribute: http://oolite-linux.berlios.de

Yes, that was the question.

BTW, your description of the TriPacer hand brake is a great example of the
way existing inventory happens to find an additional use. It reminds me of
a conversation I witnessed a few years ago at a combination picnic and
hangar-invasion. One of the members was in the process of building a Pitts
Special from plans--and lamented the difficulty of fabricating the elevator
linkage adaptor (for want of better nomenclature) which attached to the
control stick. Another member took one glance and said "that ol' son of a
gun just cut the top off [of] a cow bell".

Peter