*New owner, not new airplane.

I just bought a Travel Air last week, a fairly well cared-for airplane with moderate hours on the airframe, engines, and props. I spent a respectable sum on the pre-buy inspection but that means I now have a couple, good, local mechanics who have had a good look deep inside the airplane. The airplane is a 1959 95, the early model with the short fuselage (light weight) and carbureted engines.

Lots of military pilot hours (Navy) flying helicopters and prop airplanes (singles) and getting my multi add-on shortly as my own schedule allows. Watching the used light twin market, this airplane looked like a pretty good bet even though it happened before I my ratings were ready for it.

Been reading lots and lots here on BeechTalk and I really like the knowledge, technical sophistication, and humor of many of the threads.


Cheers!
Jim

Jim, welcome to BT, and congrats on the Travel Air! Enjoy!

Almost forgot. Pictures or it didn't happen!

I'm soooo busted!

The lighting in this photo is unintentionally quite flattering

Welcome to BT, Jim.

Jim, don't try to hover it...

And definitely keep Pickles from flying it.

Jim,
Welcome to BeechTalk and thanks for posting a picture of the bird, looks very nice...

Welcome, Jim! And congrats! May the blue side continue to stay on top!

Glad you are here Jim!
Your plane looks pretty good, nice picture and congrats on your acquisition!

Welcome to Beechtalk Jim! That's a great looking Travelair! I have one and I have really enjoyed it so far and I know you will as well.

Way to go!

Welcome to BT, that is one sweet looking ride.

Thank you for sharing

Thanks everybody! I got to flying it today but I had to cut it short for radio issues. I've had the airplane parked outside and maybe some rain got in there, or maybe not, but I'll get that fixed before trying it again.

Sweet handling machine. It got off the ground very nicely with just me and slightly less than half-full tanks, trims out nicely, and easy to land. I'm looking forward to having a lot of fun with this thing.

Now I have shoulder belts!



I bought the BAS kit for my front seats and put them in this past weekend (owner-assisted, my A&P is really great to work with). I worked reeeeally slow so that I didn't mess anything up and I probably worked north of 20 hours. My labor was roughly equal parts divided three ways: peeling back the ceiling upholstery and removing my front seats, drilling holes/hardware installation (including fabbing a couple shims and some bushings for the lap belts), and putting the ceiling upholstery back (including wrestling with the front seats).

The kit is quite straightforward with easy to follow instructions and pictures. I thought the lap belt bushings were a strange thing to omit on the hardware list (1/4" I.D. to 3/8" O.D. and about .200" thick). The shims I mentioned are in the instructions and you only need them if the stringers on your fuselage ceiling are slightly far apart. Yes, you do need to drill holes in the roof (only two though, for a couple of 3/16" screws). No, there is no reason to worry about these holes leaking water or corrosion if you're the least bit careful about them. I did need to use a compact angle drill to drill some of the holes around the brackets.

I am, quite honestly, ecstatic to finally have these shoulder belts- it bothered me a lot to have only lap belts in my front seats. The original manual describes shoulder belts, but as best I can tell it was some kind of Rube Goldberg arrangement with a long third belt coming up from behind the seat, over one shoulder, and across the chest. The seat backs don't quite come up to normal people's shoulders which means that that goofy shoulder belt arrangement would have been a great recipe for spinal trauma in a crash (almost as bad as face trauma... no thanks).

Anyhoo...

It's not like spinal trauma can keep you from flying Jim, once you put on the leaves you had it removed!

(Navy joke for those who think I've lost it)

Got a PM yesterday asking me about the angle of attack instrument (CYA-100) I put in my plane, so I figured I'd put a couple pictures on here.

Here is the display. I wasn't finished installing it when I took this picture and I put the compass back on later. I put it on the glareshield, in my field of view. I had to make a little metal bracket to hold it there next to the mag compass. There is not enough current in the display to influence the compass (and besides, I ran the positive and ground wires next to each other). I chose to orient the display as the top lights mean high AoA/bottom = low because that's what I'm used to flying with. All of the LEDs are lit because the box is going through its startup sequence. Normally just one is lit.


Here is where I put the vane- on the nose cone close to and under the front, in "clean" airflow and away from the influence of the propellers. I made a small backing plate inside although that it is probably unnecessary for the ~ 1/4" thick fiberglass nose cone (the instructions say that the vane makes something like .7lbs drag at 250 knots, and much much less at normal Travel Air speeds).


Otherwise, I put a dedicated on/off switch on my panel along with a placard stating something or other like "do not use as a primary reference." The instructions are very easy to follow and they cover all of that.

Knowing what I know now, how easy it is to remove the leading edges of a classic Beechcraft, I might have given more consideration to putting the vane way out under one of the wings- but the nose cone works great (it doesn't get in the way of towing, for example).

If any of my mechanically inclined fellow BT'ers used to use Haynes manuals to fix their cars then you remember the 1-5 wrench scale. This job was about a 2 or a 3 level of difficulty.