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manufacturer or your favorite maintenance technician and they should be able to help.
Covers for your pitot tubes and static ports are as im- portant as performing a good pre-flight inspection. Covers are an inexpensive way to add a lot of protection from bugs nesting in those perfectly round, perfectly bug-sized openings. You may feel the urge to roll those long red streamers up to make them look a little neater and to keep them from scuffing up the paint. Don’t do that. The sole purpose of those streamers is to be as obtrusive as possible to minimize the risk that they’ll accidentally be left on the airplane. There’s also very little chance that they’ll scuff the paint.
If you wet wash your airplane, take proper precautions when covering pitot/static probes and sensors. There is typically a procedure in Chapter 20 of your aircraft’s main- tenance manual that will tell you how to properly wash your aircraft. If you don’t have access to your maintenance manuals, call your favorite shop or the manufacturer and ask if they’d provide you with the procedure. These precautions are important not only to protect the pitot/ static system but to protect the airplane from ingesting water into places that can’t shed moisture, creating a higher-than-normal chance for corrosion.
If you use tape to cover your static ports for any rea- son, my recommendation is to include a couple of feet of
fluorescent orange or pink surveyor flagging tape so it’s flapping in the wind and extremely hard to miss on even the most blurry-eyed pre-flight inspection. I use flagging tape any time I change the configuration of the airplane – pulling an inspection panel, disengaging a circuit breaker, or anything that needs to be reset before a flight. Because I work alone most of the time, it’s really easy to get side- tracked and forget about that engine cowling that is only secured with one fastener. Flagging tape is available at any hardware store and is an inexpensive visual reminder that something is outside its normal configuration.
A properly maintained pitot/static system is mind- bogglingly accurate. It will keep you safely away from all that other aluminum zooming around in the flight levels, but these systems are as delicate as they are ro- bust. Something as benign as a piece of tape or an unfor- tunately placed wasp can cause chaos, but with proper maintenance and thorough pre-flight inspections, we can eliminate most of the “gotchas” that can foul up our most critical instruments.
Ocean Reef
http://oceanreef.com
Elliott Cox is a pilot and the Director of Maintenance for a Part 91 Corporate Flight Department in the Southeast. You can reach him at his website TheWritingFlyer.com or by email at elliott@thewritingflyer.com.
March 2023 / TWIN & TURBINE • 19