[John]

Now I am really confused. The latest goodies have a life about equal to that of the average gnat. The whiz wheel is timeless. What am I missing???///

Point of information: When I worked for a living I bought all of the Crescent Tool buildings in Jamestown NY to house two of my businesses. Crescent made their line of tools there at one time. They bailed out of NY state in favor of Sumter SC.

[John]

Chinese Crap. Bought an assortment of phillips head screws for a project and couldn’t even tighten um without wallowing the heads out. Soft pot metal it seemed.

[John]

Yes I have an ATP.

I was flying in really shitty weather out of Jamestown NY (KJHW) and had to deal with a whole lot of approaches to minimums and significant icing potential due to the proximity to Lake Erie so I thought an ATP was a good opportunity to learn to fly like a real pilot.

It was a good experience because I did not need it, had nothing to lose trying, and the examiner was in FL and within 5 minutes he said “you’ve flown on instruments a lot”. We talked about my motivation, and then he said he was sick of flying with pilots who needed an ATP, but spent 1500 hours flying right seat in a Cessna 152 teaching students, and only at 1400 hours began practicing IFR flying.

He pushed me into a lot of procedures he admitted he did not have to do, but he treated the test flight as something the two of us were doing for fun.

I later found out my anal attitude was the most valuable way I could keep my skills high. Despite a real capable autopilot, a well equipped panel with things like dual HSIs and flight director I did the best thing I could have ever done. The autopilot was only on at altitude. I never used it for climbs, descents, and approaches. I got beat up by other pilots whose attitude was to use the AP because it was more accurate and better than any pilot, but hand flying became second nature and learning how to deal with ice despite the plane being certified for flight into icing made me feel very comfortable flying. In Pilots N Paws I was the guy who did the animal rescue flight when the weather was on the ground.

I never flew behind a glass panel in a real plane but have about 10 hours in sims, some in a Northwest 757 / 767 and some in a FedEx MD11.

[John]

What is the hi temp limit when they stop accepting a charge? Most are 113 to 118 F. How do you keep it below this when in hot country?