How do you keep up maintenance?
 

I only have 1 plane that I can fly out of 8, and It needs to be maidened. So my question is, How do you keep up good maintenance with your busy schedul?

Dave Trimmer

RE: How do you keep up maintenance?
 

Plan ahead and make the TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

RE: How do you keep up maintenance?
 

Maintenance?? We don need no steeenkin maintenance!!!! :D

Seriously Dave, you just need to make time for it. How you want to do it is up to you. Pick every sunday after a flying weekend, pick one night a week to do it, or do it as you need it. But if you let if pile up you'll find yourself in the boat you are in now, all your planes broken and nothing to fly.

Ken

RE: How do you keep up maintenance?
 

I tweak the planes I will fly the fri. night before flying,if everything is good to go then I do some building on one of my many projects.
when you are young and having fun there seems to be no time to do modeling, thats why I took a 20yr break my kids inspired me to get back to the hobby.
seriously can you really fly 2-3 planes at the most on a fly day.
if I get 2 planes in the air for a 2-3 flights each, thats a good fly day.
how much maint. can there be for a trainer/sport plane not allot for the ones I fly.
for warbirds there is tons of little nick nacks theres always some little part that needs fixing or adjustment,usually retracts,just making sure everything is tight and ready to go and the battery is charged up .

RE: How do you keep up maintenance?
 

Yeah, the time NOT to do it is at the field, just before you setup to fly. You may just ignore some important warning signs and fly anyway (Yep, learn by example.. we have all done that... at times it is costly, at others, you find the defects during flight, land, then go home to fix the problem with a sad look on your face). Or, you can be at the field getting ready to fly, then find something that cannot be fixed at the field and simply head home, again, with that disappointed look on your face.

If it breaks during flight, it may lead to more than just going home with a disappointed look on your face.. you may be carrying the plane in a plastic bag.

Just take the time, perhaps the night before... or whenever you can fit that in the schedule, to go completely over the plane and make sure nothing serious has developed.

BUT NEVER fly without doing a complete pre-fly examination, even if you spent two hours the night before going over the plane. Check it out. Make sure you did not break something in the car on the way to the field.

DS.

RE: How do you keep up maintenance?
 

Well, one way is to not buy any more airplanes than you can maintain. You've got 8 already but have time to maintain only one, right. Don't buy another until you've fixed one of the downed ones. The time you spend assembling the next ARF takes away from fixing the downed ones. And you found time for new airplanes.

If you think you have no time to fix any, then you don't. But if you have time to go fly, you've got some time to use. The flying time. Don't go one day and fix airplanes instead.

If you've got arguments against all that, then learn to live with the way you are.

RE: How do you keep up maintenance?
 

After a day at the field, I give my plane a looking over before hanging it on the wall. Any problems found and it goes right to the workbench. I usually spend a couple of hours checking every nut and screw the day before I fly. I don't like those uh-ohs when I get to the field.

RE: How do you keep up maintenance?
 

I do all my repairs while watching programs on the lube-tube with my wife. It kills 3 birds with 1 stone: Spend time with th wife, enjoy the show, and most importantly fix my babys. :)
My p-51 I haven't done any maintenance on it except when I have hard landings.
That actually goes for all my planes. I just set them up and don't do anything to them after the maiden except check screws, glue joints, etc. That doesn't take long.
I would guess that you're relatively new to this hobby. The more you do the stuff to those planes, the easier and quicker it will become.
Use lock-tite! I can't stress that enough. Also, put a piece of tubing or something else to keep those clevis pins closed. Lost a c-130 because of that prob.

RE: How do you keep up maintenance?
 

Fewer planes properly built don't require much except inspections and miner maintenance assuming you don't crash. This should be done at home not at the field.

RE: How do you keep up maintenance?
 

Another technique,
Select the model you most want to fly and only work on it until is is ready to fly. If you try and do a little on each model you will be in a very depressing place getting nowhere.
pick one, and fix her.

I was once where you are now so I know how you feel.

RE: How do you keep up maintenance?
 

well, every Sunday and Thursday i go flying, only exception being when the weather is bad, i plan AROUND my flight schedule, when i have a spare hour and dont know what to do i will go and charge my batteries, or check my linkages, and on a nice sunny Saturday when ive nothing better to do i run the engine and check to see if the fuel is still good, then everything is ready on sunday

but hey, im a kid so i dont have many commitments apart from school and going out with mates every so often

RE: How do you keep up maintenance?
 

Hello, I just wanted to add I have 2 boys (almost 3 and 1 year old boys), And I maintain my wife and I fleet of nitro trucks 3 I maintain on a weekly basis, 1 is a Project truck, you just have to find the time, Sometimes I do teardowns with my boys awake or asleep, sometimes the wife helps (Sometimes!!) LOL but I found it easy to do them at night while everyone is preoccupied. Then I can do what I need. And I have a cen GST 7.7 On the way. but that just goes to you need to know your limit in numbers, I mean as far as how many are you willing to work on at any givin time,There are times I have both savages, Revo and my .30 size heli out and I do maint. on all of them at once. I had 4 electrics that I hated working on, so I solved that problem and sold them, cause I never worked on them our nitro trucks and heli's took all my time. Maybe you need to lighten your load a bit it helped me, but as I lightened the load it just made room for more nitros, LOL our collection grows all the time, its just a matter of what and how many Im willing to work on.
Good luck to you and I hope you find something that works for you! Peace!
Tankfreak1974

RE: How do you keep up maintenance?
 

just leave a note in your wallet saying " dont even THINK of buying that airplane!"

if anything i found nitro trucks worse to work on, so ive moved to Airplanes which are better, you can still find a little bit to do to keep you occupied, but otherwise a bit of ARO and thats about all you need

RE: How do you keep up maintenance?
 

well those days you can't fly due to wheather ate good for getting the fleet back into shape then once caught up either thin the fleet out to a more manageable level or maintain/repair immediately instead of putting it off.I found 4 planes was about enogh of a feet years ago if I tired of one ,sell it and get something new.the key is not how many planes you have but how well you can fly what you have.I had 1 pattern plane [cutlass],1 scale warbird[p-39],1 sport plane [new era 3],1 twin [duellist]

RE: How do you keep up maintenance?
 

Thanks, I have learned a lot. I don't think I will sell any though, I feel evenyualy i will fin time. even If it's in a couple of years:D. There are lots of greeat suggestions and I hope with summer in just 3 more days I will have lots of time, aside from a job I hope to get.

I guess it just helps to have encouragement once in a while to know that your not the only one in the perdicament. Also it would help if there were more like 30 hours in a day, think of all the flying,[sm=lol.gif]

Thanks, dave trimmer