Death of GA, there goeth KVNY

Van Nuys is the quintessential GA airport. If you've seen the movie 16R you know this. It's simply one of the great and venerable general aviation airports around. With the loss of Pentastar, and then Hoovers, it's now in a sad state. I just did what should have been a typical mission there... sadly, the aforementioned FBO's are no more, and in it's place is the KLAS style fbo... Signature.

For my quick turn of a passenger pickup, I was charged a $62 ramp fee and a $5 handling charge. I don't know what they handled, other than my credit card. So for my pickup and dropoff and all of 20 mins on their ramp, I paid $134. I could have had the $62 fee waived, if I bought 50 gallons of avgas at $7.40 per gallon. Quick mental math of that vs the $4.68 I pay at home told me I was better off paying the ramp fee. I used to pay a $30 ramp fee, waived with 25 gallons at Hoovers. Pentastar was no ramp fee at all... no overnight parking fee with gas. What a change. Then I had the gall to ask what it would cost me to park for the night... $78. W T F. It's clear that KVNY only caters to the Gulfstream guys now, and that's a damn shame... grrr.

Relay schmelay

So it wasn't the $1000 dynamic relay, at least as far as my drooping gear door is concerned.  The worst part of airplane ownership is chasing these types of gremlins with your mechanic.  Grr.   Also I've noticed my inboard ailerons look like they are rigged with a downward deflection, and I seem to have lost 5-7 kts off my top end cruise speed.  I thought some of that might be due to the VG's, but now I want to make sure I get my rigging right before I blame the VGs.  I'm cruising about 178-180 where I used to get between 183-185 on the same fuel flow of 22-23 gph running 30-50 degrees LOP.

This is in level flight, notice the left aileron is dropped down slightly low.

Taken moments after with no attitude change, the right one is also defected low.

And my left gear door still drooping.  I'm not okay with this!  :)

Dynamic relay

My first flight after annual was a trip to Vegas.  Upon return when putting the plane away, I noticed the left gear door was hanging open a little bit.

That doesn't look right... so back to the shop.  It turns out the dynamic relay is bad, or so I'm told.  They replaced the dynamic relay ($1000) and now it looks like I'm missing a washer of some kind, so we're waiting on that.  So meanwhile I'm AOG during Christmas when I actually have some flying missions to complete.  Oh well.  I still do have access to the NRI Flying Club planes so looks like tomorrow's flight will be in a 182.