June 16th

I started my day around 01:00, getting called out for work.  It was a French customer, who'd left a callback number that went to a message in French.  I had no idea what that said, so I mailed a bunch of people there and pointed out that we needed a direct number.  An hour later, I gave up and went back to bed.  He replied with the same phone number around 06:30, so I got up and reiterated my need for a direct number, which I finally got, only to see that it was a problem with them not managing their servers, and not something that we should be doing for them.  Triffic.  I'd given him my direct number, so I hung around the house expecting the promised call back.  They didn't call back.

June 15th

I was on call, so I got up and cleared out the overnight stuff, then headed to the airport to cook breakfast for the LRAA display day.  When everything was put away, I went over to the hangar and got the plane out, then flew down to Columbia to meet Chris and Steve (passenger) for lunch - there was a fly-in there that we'd been invited to by Kim and Victoria, a couple we met up at Auburn a few months ago.  They had a temporary tower there (interestingly there was no NOTAM that I could find), and they told me to call overhead at 2000'.  The runway's at 2100', so I assumed they meant 4100', so called that when I was above.  The controller told me to fly North and to expect a right downwind join for 17.  When I was about 2.5 miles North, he said I could head for downwind, but that seemed odd as I was upwind of the airport, so I suggested I just do a straight in approach, rather than tie up the runway for that long (they'd been racing cars up and down the runway when I flew overhead).  I got him to agree, so I just turned in and flew to the threshold - he wanted me to take the first turn off to the right, on the grass, and I could see that a fair way down the runway, so I flew low until near the turn off, with the controller getting more upset that I hadn't landed - I landed and stopped right by the turn off, then followed the marshall to park just 2 spots up from Chris.  I got out and sorted everything out, and Chris and Steve arrived having watched me land.  We wandered about a bit looking at the stalls, then ordered a pizza and went to see Kim and Victoria at their hangar while we ate.  Chris had to get home for his wife's birthday, so we headed out just after 14:00.  We had to wait for the car races to finish, then crossed the runway to the taxiway, then had to wait for the car races again before we took off, pretty close together.  The controller asked us to do a low pass, so we came back around and did that before heading North West towards home - they dropped off towards Cameron Park, and I headed back to Lincoln - it seemed to have been a long day, but it was less than 3 hours flying.

June 14th

Having worked Sunday, I had today off.  Obviously I had a conference call first thing, as I found out too late to cancel it, but after that I pottered around the house doing things and stuff, then headed to the airport to take the plane out for a while.

June 11th

Vic drove the van to work, and I got the windows tinted in the Bolt.  Oooh... first mod :o)

June 9th

I was working covering Australia in the afternoon, so by the time I'd got myself all sorted out, it was too late to go and fly.  Oh well.

June 8th

I pottered over to the airport to cook lunch before Dan's ADS-B presentation, then talked about GPS displays with people and "helped" Tim and Darren with their throttle cable replacement.  Chris had been talking about flying up to Redding, about 100 miles away, to look at a plane, but there was a 25-35mph headwind, so I figured we wouldn't go because of that - it didn't occur to me that it was because the guy couldn't fly in that much wind :o)

We ended up meeting at Auburn for their "Soaring Saturday" thing, and as the only people to fly in, we ended up in the display with the old biplanes and Jim's Quickie Q200.  The wind wasn't an issue taking the gyroplane out, but it was a pain taxying crosswind with it trying to blow the rotor over - this was with the rotor stopped.  I crabbed the whole damn way to Auburn, where the wind was a lot lower.  Coming home, I was crabbed the whole damn way back to Lincoln, and when I turned downwind I saw my ground speed as 108mph, where my airspeed was 70mph.  After landing, I sat on the edge of the runway and let the rotor spin down before taxying crosswind - it's not like there was anybody about that I was getting in the way for.

June 6th

I took the car in to get the dashboard worked on.  I'd arranged to have a loaner car so I could get home and do some work, and they gave me a (white) 2018 Volt.  It's not as nice to drive as the Bolt, as it seems a lot more claustrophobic, and the regenerative braking... doesn't, really.  It's also worrying to see it say "38 miles range" when you get into it.  I got it home, put it on charge, then took it back at the end of the day without using any gas :o)  It was nice bringing the Bolt home again, but I'm not convinced that the problem's fixed, but whatever, it's over.