FIKI

Flew myself and 2 coworkers to Chicago yesterday for a business meeting. Weather at 6am had icing forecast for 60 miles along our direct route of flight. We were flying a FIKI airplane and departed due south so that we could get out of the area of clouds in closer to 15-20 miles. Airliners that departed ahead of us had no pireps for ice and it turned out that the clouds were only 2,000 feet thick, clear sunny skies above and no ice.

For our flight home, we had to stop in the upper penninsula of Michigan to drop off one of the guys. Picked up a trace of ice, but it was mostly just light snow showers. Departed for Duluth and again just light snow showers and no ice enroute until we descended through about 2,000 feet of clouds in Duluth and we picked up some ice. Weather below was clear and made an uneventful landing.

It was my first icing experience in a FIKI airplane, and a trip I could not have made otherwise. Despite having been part of the FIKI certification program, I have not had much opportunity to fly one. It worked as expected, and I was happy to have it.

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Amsafe Inflater Replacement Time

We recently released Service Advisory SA12-01 that clarifies the inflator assembly replacement interval for the Amsafe inflatable air bags. The replacement interval for the inflators has been increased from 7 years to 10 years. The electronic module assembly remained unchanged and must be refurbished at 7 years and replaced at 14 years.

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Alt 2 Winter Update

Recently looking back, I noticed that I haven't updated the blog about our Alt 2's since this post in October.

As I mentioned in that post, In late 2010, the alternator vendor made several changes. Those were all implemented in the 'k' (2011) date code alternators. Those alternators hit our factory floor and field replacements in the march time frame.

About a month ago, we went through the data, and to date we have had 3 failures of these new 'k' alternators. The picture shown is a graph of serial number versus hours for the SR22 (SR22T is graphed separately). The vertical line on the graph shows where the new alternators were implemented into the line.

This is a VAST improvement over previous model years, and reason for continued optimism that we might be on to a solution.

As I also mentioned in that post, there are 2 additional improvements coming. The new rotor bonding process is now online and those parts are now being produced. The new diode is scheduled to be in place in a couple of months. We will continue to monitor the reliability of these parts, and keep you updated.

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