Frugal Flier

A hangar is the best way to keep an airplane out of the elements. But what if none is available, or affordable? What can aircraft owners do to protect airplanes living outdoors? Canvas canopy covers, and even whole-airplane covers, are a compelling option.

A new canopy cover made to protect all windows and doors in a typical single-engine airplane usually sells for about $400—or about one month’s hangar rent at my local airport. Such covers virtually eliminate sun damage to windshields and do a great job of protecting aircraft interiors from excessive heat, and the cracking and fading that come with it. The avionics also benefit from being in the shade, and the covers usually offer some protection from rain, snow, and wind- or blast-driven debris.

“There’s a hidden cost to avionics from excessive heat, direct sunlight, and water that can seep into the wiring and create problems,” said Tom Blaine, a sales manager for Bruce’s Custom Covers in Palo Alto, California, which manufactures about 10,000 aircraft covers annually. “Aircraft owners used to buy covers to protect their windshields and interiors. But as they’ve added more sophisticated avionics, protecting those investments has become more critical.”

A generation ago, fabric-covered airplanes seldom merited hangar space. The rationale was that, since the fabric had to be replaced periodically anyway, there was little point in keeping low-end, fabric airplanes inside. But since today’s lifetime fabrics can last indefinitely—and the cost of recovering such aircraft has gone up significantly—there’s more interest in protecting their exteriors. Wing and even fuselage covers are becoming increasingly common for fabric airplanes.

“We ask a lot of our Decathlon and want to keep it, and its gorgeous green paint, in top shape,” said Evanthe Papastathis, owner of SkyBound Aviation, a flight school at DeKalb-Peachtree Airport in Atlanta. “I spent $1,500 on a whole-airplane cover, and it was money well spent. The cover’s not easy to put on on a windy day—but it’s doable.”

Composite airplane owners also have been buying full aircraft covers to protect their airplanes from prolonged exposure to sunlight’s damaging ultraviolet rays. Full-airplane covers for single-engine airplanes typically cost between $1,500 and $2,000, and one person can usually put them on in about 15 minutes and remove them in about half that time.

A new paint job on a typical single-engine plane can easily top $10,000. But aircraft owners who save $3,000 or more annually by keeping their airplanes outside, and covered, could get their airplanes repainted every five years or so and still come out ahead.

Starting a cold-soaked piston aircraft engine can seem cruel and abusive. The battery protests, the starter groans, cylinders fire reluctantly, and the needle on the oil pressure gauge takes its time coming to life.

All that metal-on-metal contact during the first few seconds of cranking can cause significant wear—some say as much as hundreds of hours of normal engine operation—and no one wants to face an early engine overhaul.

FBOs will gladly pre-heat your engine—for a price. The going rate in the Mid-Atlantic is $25 for a single and $30 for a twin (don’t ask why the disparity). A variety of propane, kerosene, and electrical aircraft pre-heaters are available for aircraft owners to buy and use themselves. Prices range from about $150 for a plug-in pad that connects to your oil sump; to $300 for a modified kerosene heater that blasts hot air into the engine compartment; to $470 for a small, cleverly modified, omnivorous camp stove that burns everything from Coleman fuel to avgas, is small enough to bring along, and doubles as survival gear in remote areas.

But for the ultimate in frugality, it’s hard to beat a light bulb.

A fellow pilot in a nearby hangar has an old-fashioned desk lamp that he converted to an engine compartment heater by simply removing the shade (and adding a shroud to prevent the bulb from becoming a fire hazard). When he’s finished flying, he covers his airplane’s cowl with a thick blanket, plugs the air intakes, and positions the lamp so that its single, 125-watt bulb reaches up into the engine compartment below the oil sump.

By simply leaving the lamp on, heat from the bulb does a remarkable job of keeping the engine warm, even on freezing winter nights. And the next time he starts his engine, the oil is typically more than 20 degrees warmer than the outside air, and the oil pressure needle in the cockpit registers instantly. Even the cost of the electricity is covered as part of his hangar rent.

Of course, light bulbs are no match for the brutal winter temperatures in far northern latitudes. And no bulb works as well as a purpose-built pre-heater designed to raise engine oil temperatures 80 degrees Fahrenheit above the outside air. Lycoming says its engines should be pre-heated when the mercury falls to 10 degrees F (20 degrees for some models) or below. But why wait until it gets so frigid?

Winter mornings here in the Mid-Atlantic, for example, are often around the freezing point. If plugging in a reading lamp is enough to keep the engine oil in the 50s, it seems like a good idea.

In fact, isn’t a light bulb the very symbol of a good idea?

After a long trip to and from AOPA Expo, the 2008 Get Your Glass Sweepstakes Archer was due for some TLC that included an oil change. But Jiffy Lube doesn’t do airplanes. And many FBOs regard such mundane service items as obstacles that get in the way of larger, more complex, and more lucrative projects. I was quoted the price of an oil change for the single-engine, four-cylinder Archer at $250 (two hours shop time at $79 an hour, oil filter, six quarts of AeroShell, oil analysis, and new gaskets).

Since owners and pilots can perform their own preventive maintenance, including oil changes (see FAR Part 43, Appendix A, Paragraph C for a full list of approved actions), this seemed like an opportunity to get to know the airplane better—and save some coin. In fact, the total price of the tools needed to perform this, and future oil changes, was significantly less than the quoted cost of a single, full-service oil change.

A rainy, blustery Saturday gave me the chance to spend some quality time under the Archer’s cowl. And I had an enthusiastic assistant—my 9-year-old son, Nathan. He wanted to ride his scooter, and the airport has some of the smoothest pavement in town. (Puddles from the off-and-on rain made scooter riding even more attractive to him.)

The Archer’s two-piece cowl was easy to remove, and I was pleased to find a quick drain on the Lycoming O-360’s oil sump. That meant I wouldn’t have to remove and refasten the drain plug, or cut and reattach the safety wire.

Unseasonably warm weather allowed the old oil to run out fairly quickly, and I took a quick sample to mail in for an oil analysis. The $20 charge may seem unnecessary considering that Penn Yan Aero returned the engine to new condition about 100 flight hours ago. But it’s important to establish a solid baseline early in an engine’s life so that anomalies show up clearly.

The oil screen on the back of the Lycoming can be tough to reach with a socket wrench in some installations. But the Archer’s screen is refreshingly accessible, and it was easy to remove, clean, inspect, and reinstall.

The oil filter also was easy to reach, but I decided to leave it in place this time. The oil screen was clear, so the odds of finding metal in the oil filter seemed remote. I’ll get an oil filter cutter before the next oil change, however, and carefully examine the filter’s innards for metal in the future. (Oil filter cutters typically range in price from about $60 to more than $450.) My shop skills are rudimentary at best. But even with frequent distractions from my scooting son (Hey, Dad, watch this!) the oil change was largely finished in less than two hours.

One of the final tasks was pouring the golden new oil into the engine, something Nathan wanted to do. I placed the funnel, and Nathan stretched onto his tiptoes to dump in each quart of AeroShell 100. We were doing great until the fourth quart escaped his grasp, and he ended up dumping gobs of the honey-colored oil on his gray sweatshirt.

By my calculations, our oil change had cost about $75, including a spool of wire and twist pliers that can be reused many times for future small jobs. Even counting the $15 or so to replace my son’s oil-soaked shirt, we still came out way ahead.

AOPA Pilot introduces “Frugal Flier” a series designed to help pilots better manage their aircraft and flying in these turbulent economic times.