Aug. 26 — Whoever wins the Win-A-Twin will discover that the price of avgas has gone down. Way down. Two recent contributors to the sweepstakes project have donated a $5,000 fuel credit to our/your Twin Comanche's roster of upgrades.

One of the participants is Ed Grisham, owner and president of Carolina Air Center of Hilton Head, at South Carolina's Hilton Head Island Airport (HXD). Grisham kicked in with $3,000 worth of avgas, then MBNA — the bank that issues the AOPA FBO Rebate Credit Card — followed up with another $2,000, which will be delivered to the winner of the airplane in the form of a $5,000 Visa gift card.

Depending on where you gas up, it can cost as much as $420 to top off N204WT's six fuel tanks, which hold a total of 120 gallons. Hopefully, avgas will come down in price (a top-off at AOPA's home base costs $397), and your fuel dollars will take you farther.

Even so, the Twin Comanche is known for its miserly fuel burn, with typical consumption levels running around 8 gph per engine at 75-percent power settings. With the Win-A-Twin's GAMIjectors — very precisely tuned fuel injection nozzles that meter fuel evenly to each cylinder — and its JP Instruments EDM-760, which can be used to detect peak EGTs, fuel burns can be as low as 7 gph. This is the kind of fuel economy that gives a topped-off Twin Comanche its five-hour-with-reserves endurances. So $5,000 worth of fuel will keep the winner flying for a long, long time.

More maintenance
I recently flew the Win-A-Twin to Fessler Aviation, a shop that specializes in Twin Comanches and is located at the Live Oak (Florida) Airport (24J). Don't know where Live Oak is? It's in extreme northern Florida, between Tallahassee and Lake City.

There, Jim Fessler and his crew will round out the Win-A-Twin's restoration by addressing several squawks. Here's are the highlights of the squawk sheet:

• Repair or replace alternate air door linkages to the engines. The alternate air doors in this model Twin Comanche must be opened manually, via push-pull cables on the instrument subpanel. Our cables are bound up or broken and must be workable in time for colder temperatures. If the air filters become iced over, opening the alternate air doors will keep the engines running.
• Repair right propeller control cable. It's binding, too, and this makes it difficult to adjust the right prop's rpm.
• Repair/reweld nosewheel assembly. Like virtually all Twin Comanches, somewhere along the line someone took the nosewheel past its tow limits and bent the nosewheel collars. Normally, the collars prevent the nosewheel from traveling any farther. However, use a tug, become distracted, and it's easy for unknowing linemen to take the nosewheel to the limits and then bend the collars' "ears." Ours are bent, though Jim Fessler said he's "seen much, much worse."
• Repair or replace the fuel sending units. We're all taught to take light general aviation's rather primitive fuel gauges with a grain of salt and trust our fuel calculations to the clock, the fuel-flow gauges, and the groundspeed. Same thing with the Win-A-Twin, which has gauges that show "Full" indications for the longest time, then drop only to the halfway point when near empty. We'll do our best to make the ships' gauges as accurate as possible. This means opening up the wings' upper access panels and taking a good look at the sending units. Just remember: Even if they're "fixed," you the pilot are still responsible for keeping track of your fuel burn!

Next stop: ICS at MKC
After Fessler Aviation, I'll be taking the Win-A-Twin to the International Comanche Society convention in Kansas City, Missouri. Plans are for the airplane to arrive on September 15 or 16, then stay through to September 19, which is the last day of the convention.

Please come by to see the airplane and talk Twin Comanche. I'll be around most of the time (bathroom breaks are in my contract), so we can trade stories, spin yarns, and prepare your custom-designed, monogrammed key fob, so that it's finished in time for delivery of your Win-A-Twin. — Thomas A. Horne