I flew Barney today!

Yep, I flew Barney. It’s a 1977 Piper Archer II, and I’ve never flown an airplane so purple.

…and it has a Barney sticker on it!

This airplane is owned by a nice lady who has an adorable dog that flies with her frequently. We just completed an annual on it, and it needed a test flight to calibrate the standby vacuum system after it’s 2 year IFR check. It also had a new cylinder put on.

Doug, the A&P that did most of the work on it, went with me to record the numbers. Everything during the run up was normal, and we taxied on to runway 11 (winds 070 at 6) for a north bound departure. I kept waiting for the airspeed to move…it never did. Not a real big deal, but we would need to punch thru a cloud layer to do our test on the standby vac system. We were able to do the 2,000 and 4,000 foot numbers before getting a clearance, but getting to 6, 8, and 10k, we would need to be IFR to get on top. With a clearance obtained, we were on our way thru the 1,500 foot cloud layer that started at 4,500, and topped at 6,000ft. I used the altimeter as the primary pitch instrument, and the turn coordinator & compass as primary bank/wings level instruments. Reason? Well, we were on and off the primary vacuum pump for the two tests at 2 and 4k. The AI and DG were erect, but I didn’t want to trust them because I didn’t know if they were up to speed or not. I used ground speed and winds aloft info to guesstimate my airspeed.

We wrote down the numbers at 6, 8, and 10k (took FOREVER to get to 10k), then got a clearance to descend back in to Bloomington. With the power pulled back, the standby system works flawlessly, and is what it’s designed for. At full power, it does not work, but with the throttle pulled back, it’s a fantastic system.

At 4,500ft, we broke out of the cloud layer, and I cancelled the IFR clearance to return to Bloomington VFR. I again used my ground speed along with wind info from the tower to guesstimate the airspeed, and when to put in some flaps. We landed with two notches of flaps, with a nice and smooth touchdown and roll out on runway 2, winds were calm.

I really enjoyed this flight since it presented some challenges, and gave me a good chance to use my partial panel skills. Now, if the weather had been low, like 1,000ft or so, I would not have made this test flight, but with a 4,000AGL ceiling, and a 1,500ft layer to get thru, I felt comfortable doing so.

The airspeed problem was diagnosed as soon as we were back at the shop…it was found that the static and pitot lines were hooked up backwards. There’s nothing on a pre-flight that will reveal that problem…ALWAYS test flight your airplane on a VFR day after an annual…you never know what they will miss, or hook up backwards.

1.1 hours logged.