Home at last

I bought my Skymaster in Oct. of last year. I went to Sandwich Il. in May and picked it up. It was supposed to be a quick inspection and then a ferry flight home but it ended up as a 100 hr inspection plus snags. I spent about 60 hrs to get the airplane ready for flight.

Once airborne into the 40 mph head winds it took 14 hrs. to get home to Castlegar BC. The airplane worked flawlessly, except for the fact that the gear doors wouldn't retract. Rather than fix the problem I chose to fly it home gear down and fix the problem there. Interestingly enough, when I checked the gear in Sandwich, it checked out fine while on the jacks. So far it looks like the microswitch on the powerpack was the culprit.

Anyway, in the end, this airplane turned out to be what I was looking for. I'm still not finished with the importation into Canada, but hopefully by the end or the month it will be done.

[gkey]

From one proud Canadian Skymaster owner to another - Welcome!
Which model did you get? Do you have long range tanks?

Thanks, It's a B model with long range tanks.

[gkey]

Don't know how the B models work, but mine is a G model, and the fuel tank selectors are always set in the green - never have to touch them again. Regarding long range tanks, you will LOVE them. The longest flight we have done was from Cambell River, BC to Cold Lake, Alberta, and then to Saskatoon without refueling. Still had contingency fuel left over! Last year we flew from Cold Lake AB to Whitehorse, Yukon. The only reason we landed inbetween, was to relieve our bursting bladders and wash the millions of bugs off the windscreen.

Whenever you come by CEN5, let me know, and I'll show you what a Skymaster looks like with a glass panel.

I lived in La Ronge Sask for ten years and have been trying to get back there for a visit. CEN5 is sort of on the way. I would definitely stop in for a visit to check out you glass panel.

[billsheila]

Tony;
I can offer a welcome from a fellow Canadian skymaster owner as well (except I now live in the US). I own a 1965 NA, also with long range tanks!

Regarding your gear door problem, I may be able to offer some help, as I struggled with a similar problem for months after my last annual. I could write a novel about all the fun and expense I went through to get to the bottom of it. As it turned out there were multiple issues, and some created along the way of trying to sort out the original problem. But the key culprit was as follows, noting first for you that my problem was normal gear retraction (and momentary gear up light) followed by gear doors closing and then immediately re-opening again. Gear legs would remain up in the wells, but the doors would remain down (and the handle would not return to centre).

What this turned out to be was NOT the rigging of the powerpack microswitch (even though this was checked, re-checked and monkeyed with many times) but rather the rigging of the main gear switches on the saddle "hooks" that the gear lock into. Everything would be fine on jacks (as in your case) but things would go awry in flight. What was happening was that with wind load in flight, the gear legs would be pushed further up into these saddles and with the mechanical play in the saddles, contact would be lost on the main gear microswitches. Switch rigging was much worse on one side than the other, but both turned out to be out of adjustment and finicky to get right. What would happen is that the gear would go up, initial contact of all switches would be made (and gear door close cycle would start) but then contact would be lost as the gear were pushed "too far" up into the saddle by the wind, and then the powerpack door solenoid would tell the doors to re-open and they would stay that way. The problem started as "intermittent" (great!), but then got such that on every cycle the gear, the doors would initially close and then re-open. I understand that in later models there were some subtle changes made to these saddles, so this may be an early model only problem, but I am not 100% sure on this or what was changed. Tom Carr at CPA was a big help to my mechanics as they worked through this and other gear problems I was having at the time.

If you ever want to talk about this in person, just let me know and we can exchange phone numbers and go over it on the phone sometime.

Thanks
Bill Taylor
N2131X Serial #31

Bill, thank you for that info and the welcome. I will print that post and save it for reference. I have been doing a fair bit of reading on the gear and have learned a lot about it from this website. I have a list of items I need to address before I can fly this aircraft to check the gear in the air. It should be soon though.

[gkey]

Tony,

I remember, before I had the Skymaster I was reading up everything I could about it. I even got a POH copied to read. The landing gear in particular was difficult for me to understand, since I was only familiar with my fixed gear 172 at the time.

So one day I asked my mechanic to explain to me how the gear works.
He answered:" It works by a principle called PFM".
He could see his answer had me preplexed.
"It stands for 'Pure Freakin' Miracle' ".

So that explains it. Now I know. And that's how I explain it to other people too.

"PFM"
I'll have to remember that one.

I finished the importation July 2. Almost 50 trouble free hrs on my new plane since I picked it up in May. Oil change tomorrow.

Here is a picture. The paint isn't the greatest but it's ok for now.

[WebMaster]

It looks nice, Tony

[hharney]

It looks great to me, get that thing ready for SOAPA next year. It would be fantastic to have you and GKEY join us.

Come on down!!!!!

Thanks for the compliments. The paint scheme is growing on me. When I first saw it I didn't think to much of it. But when I saw the ad for the 1966 C337 I see it is the same and I'm liking it more everyday. I couldn't say if the paint is original. I've attached a pic of an A and a B model. The A model pic is the same airplane in the skymaster ad that I was sure I saw on this website but can't find now.