I think the definition of an aircraft owner is someone who goes to the airport to fix something as frequently as they go flying.

I’ve been working hard to get all the snags on my Zenair cleaned up now that I have a nice shop to work in and it’s warm enough to work comfortably. There’s lots of little things that I’ve put up with over the years and I’ve finally gotten around to getting them taken care of.

The first item was the SCAT ducting for the cabin air intake. It needs to be removed every time the cowling comes off, and by now, the metal coil inside had unravelled, making it harder and harder to put on. I finally broke down and replaced it.

The burned out landing light was not an easy item to change, and since I have two, it wasn’t a priority. I finally purchased a PAR36 LED bulb, removed the wingtip, modified the holder, and reassembled everything. Hopefully, it never needs to be replaced, although the right wing will need a light change sometime in the future.

The original brake lines had started to shed the plastic coating, but the inner structure was not leaking. I could have just ignored it and cleaned up the mess, but it didn’t look like it was in good condition, so new braided stainless lines with new brake pucks were in order.

Ralph Inkster has a great setup with ramps for the scales, allowing one person to do it with little effort.

Grudgingly, because it is expensive, it was time to do the Pitot Static test. This wasn’t something I could do myself, but it needed to be done. Finally, a compass swing was required, which involves taxiing around in a circle and making notes of what the compass indicates.

Now that all of this is complete the plane should have many hours of troublefree flying ahead of it. With daylight flying going to 10:00 PM there will be lots ofhours available to take advantage of a trouble free airplane, and hopefullyavoid the Springbank rush hour at the runup bay.