November 2004
When I make my semi-annual pilgrimage to my dentist’s office, I always notice the small sign on the wall that says “If you ignore your teeth, your problems will eventually go away.”
Lots of piloting and aircraft ownership details are just the same—it’s sort of a pay-me-now or pay-me-later scenario with so much of what we do with and around our airplanes. For that reason, I’ve always got my antenna up for better ways of doing what needs to eventually be done.
One of those items on the list is the care and feeding of my light twin’s de-icing boots. When the airplane was completely rebuilt several years ago, I replaced the bootwork all around with brand-new rubber, since age alone (the existing set had been on the airframe for 15-plus years) is enough to deteriorate them markedly. Direct sunlight, heat, exposure to rain/snow/hail and long periods of inactivity will all conspire to make the life of a set of deicer boots a distinctly finite experience.
To get more out of an airplane’s deicing equipment, the formula is simple: hangar the airplane when it’s not flying, cycle the boots periodically when you are, and give those rubber leading edges some ongoing maintenance and care.
What got my attention was a press release from Oxford Aviation that announced a new aircraft boot sealant. To quote the company’s paperwork, “Tri-Guard is a specially formulated silicone-free three-in-one treatment that rejuvenates and conditions with a high gloss finish, offers protection from degradation caused by ozone and UV rays, enhances flexibility and durability of the boot, as well as aiding in the actual ice shedding process. It eliminates the application time and costs associated with the traditional multi-step products available….Tri-Guard is a revolutionary new product for the aircraft owner/operator that offers high quality care, wear and ice protection of the boot in one pilot friendly product.”
I ordered a bottle and gave it a try. True to its word, all I needed to do was simply rub this liquid onto the boot surface—there was no need, according to the instructions, to strip the old stuff off the boot first as was recommended with the previous boot products that I’ve used.
The bottle of Tri-Guard says that it “rejuvenates, conditions, shines, protects and helps shed ice.” While only the long-term will tell for certain if it truly rejuvenates, conditions and protects, it certainly does go on easily and shine up nicely.
After next winter I might be able to let you know how Tri-Guard sheds ice, although it’s been my experience in the past that the pilots who have a complete set of working deicing boots at their fingertips will hardly ever pick up any inflight ice—that experience is somehow saved for the bootless crowd. So I might be able to tell you more about Tri-Guard’s performance out on the front lines, or I might not.
But something else that I can tell you about Oxford Aviation right now is about another product that they put out under their “The Proper Aircraft” banner—an airplane appearance kit. Wrapped in a black satchel the size of a laptop computer were all the items an owner needs to maintain the exterior condition of their aircraft.
Included in the nylon bag were 16 ounces each of carnauba wax, surface wash, windshield gel and power clean gel, plus a window cloth, applicator pad and synthetic chamois. The only things I saw that were missing were water, a hose and some muscle to put it all together.
Oxford Aviation has a long-established reputation for top-grade exterior and interior aircraft refinishing. In line with that knowledge and experience, their line of “The Proper Aircraft” products come with a rather comprehensive instruction sheet on how to best utilize each and every one of their offerings. You can see their catalog at www.theproperaircraft.com, or call them at 800-530-8404.
Just like all these caretaker tasks and issues, you can either pay for some of it right now or you can pay for what will probably turn out to be lots more a little while later.
Stop Bugging Me
Are the smashed bugs on our vehicles Mother Nature’s way of telling us to stay at home? Possibly, but since we usually opt to ignore that subtle message, we are left with the end result of trying to remove these little critters off the leading edges of our airplanes, automobiles and what-nots.
Why a high pressure hose won’t pry bug residue off is, to me, one of those mysteries of nature akin to the expanding universe theory and black holes, and I was recently bemoaning the condition of all my moving apparatus when a friend suggested that I try something that I had previously heard of but had never focused on.
RejeX is an advanced polymer coating that seals painted and unpainted metal, glass, plexiglass and gel coat surfaces against various stains that include exhaust gases, oil, grease, tar and bugs. Produced by Corrosion Technologies (www.corrosionx.com; 800-638-7361 – it’s the same company that makes the “CorrosionX” lubricating and penetrating sprays), RejeX is touted as an application that “forms a slick, long-lasting, glass-like barrier that prevents damage from exposure to exhaust, particulates, chemicals and the elements.”
Since my scorecard against bugs has so far looked like the a Little League team playing the New York Yankees, I decided to give it a try. I picked my worst and most offensive case first—our biggest horse trailer, which has a stainless steel wrapped nose that has, as the summer progressed, become more bug-wrapped than stainless wrapped.
After getting the trailer clean (about a hundred thousand gallons of water and five million foot-pounds of effort), I took a bottle of RejeX and, per the instructions, smeared it on and wiped it off. As the instructions said specifically, “…let it dry completely, wipe off with a clean cloth and allow to cure for 12 hours after wiping off.”
Two days later I took the trailer out on a bug-infested ride. A few hours after that I came back to the ranch. My pickup truck was pretty well encrusted but, amazingly, the nose of the trailer remained predominately bug-free! What few bug carcasses had clung to that stainless steel nose section were quickly washed away with a moderate stream of water.
The next day, I ran to the hangar and put a coating of RejeX on the airplane. That was followed by a thorough scrubbing and RejeX application to the Ford pickup. When I finish this column, I’m going outside to wash my car and RejeX it, also. I was thinking of putting RejeX on the noses of our horses, but they seem to have their own teeth-and-tail methods of bug control so I let that go – but I will use it on all the moving stock that we own that regularly collect bug impacts. RejeX is good stuff.
Jepp to the Rescue
I had fought the good fight but finally admitted defeat when my Windows 98-based computer crashed for the final time—it did a metaphorical spin-in from 35,000 which made any thought of repair distinctly moot.
Kicking and screaming, I was dragged into Windows XP and, of course, a whole new bunch of hardware in order to have the necessary storage space and operating speed (how our own John Ruley deals with this mind-numbing software stuff day in and day out is beyond me; personally, I’d rather deal with airplane and trailer bugs than the bugs in the computer. Does anyone know if an application of RejeX will work on Windows XP?).
So, with the new hardware up and running, I was faced with the prospect of getting my two Jeppesen products—the FliteStar flight planning program and the Skybound GPS update program—back into action.
Jeppesen has an excellent Customer Service department, and in short order they talked me through all the codewords I needed to get the FliteStar program into the new desktop and the new portable (I had bought two new machines so that I could put Windows 98 behind me forevermore).
The Skybound program required a little more handholding since, in our recent move, I somehow managed to make the Skybound program disk disappear from the face of the planet. Customer Service sent me a new one immediately, so I could get the program installed.
During my discussions with them I decided that Jeppesen’s newer USB technology was now a must-have (my Skybound equipment was in the PCMCIA interface, which meant that it only worked on a laptop and not a desktop computer).
The USB Skybound hardware arrived soon after I ordered it, and, just like the instruction sheet predicted, the proper Windows XP screens popped up on schedule and I was now able to do my GPS updating from my desk machine—a more convenient, more powerful way of updating my airplane’s data chips when I’m at home. The older PCMCIA Skybound gear works just fine in the laptop, for when I’m on the road.
So, that’s all the little stuff – which somehow seems to fill up more of my life these days than any big things. I’m not complaining, mind you, because, as my dentist will remind me twice a year, if I ignore any of this, then it’ll eventually just go away. Far, far, far, far away.
Editor-at-Large Thomas Block has flown nearly 30,000 hours since his first hour of dual in 1959. In addition to his 36-year career as a US Airways pilot, he has been an aviation magazine writer since 1969, a best-selling novelist, and the owner of more than a dozen personal airplanes.
