It flies, just not far

 The young man with his arms folded and a determined look on his face is the Chief Pilot for the 817SP LLC organization.  He is also my son, John Benjamin, 36,  and had every hope of getting our Cessna 172 off the ground this weekend.

Last weekend, he and a friend had hopes that new solenoids were the solution to an electrical problem that caused an aborted takeoff.  So, a decision was made to replace the alternator.  That was done by the other man in the picture, our friend James, a Coast Guard aircraft mechanic who has become a good friend - to us, and to 817 Sierra Papa.

My son today suggested we change the tail number to Hotel Quebec.  I asked him why, and he suggested it fit our aircraft better this past month.  HQ in his mind stood for Hanger Queen.
I actually had the plane up in the air for one hour after recent replacement of the alternator.  I had our flight school owner, and James the mechanic aboard.  We were good at takeoff, and made it all the way to Venice.......and then, the annunciator light for 'voltage' came on AND stayed on.  A hard turn to port and set the course toward SRQ.

Now, the plane still would fly -  after all we still had a battery that had been recently charged overnight, with an assist from me by stopping at Publix for some distilled water.  At $1.18 per gallon jug, the cost of filling a few 'low' cells in the battery was going to be an extremely easy, low cost fix.

I am here to tell you, there are no low cost fixes, but it goes with owning an aircraft.  Yesterday I added one hour to my logbook, plus one landing.  Today, my son "flew" the aircraft as shown in the middle picture, as the assistant driver on the "tug" and the plane took a place on the apron as a static display (sans battery, being recharged for the next ignition attempt following the installation of a alternator regulator.  That SHOULD fix the issue.  Hope springs eternal.

Postscript - yesterday (3/3/14) we ordered a regulator for the alternator, which ought to fix her.