April 22nd

Jen came over to watch Game of Thrones - she and I were working last night, so we rescheduled :o)

April 21st

I met Chris at the airport and got the plane out - his plane's off to Fresno with the other owner, so he drove his Miata over.  We flew up to Auburn to see if the grill was open, and despite the "Open" sign in the window, it wasn't.  I had a guy run up behind us when we were on finals, and he got a bit huffy at having to go around because we were still on the runway when he wanted to land.  He shouldn't have turned base leg so soon after us, really... we'd extended slightly to allow a Mooney to land in front of us.

We flew back above the canyon (not right down into it) so Chris could (hopefully) take some pictures, then headed back.  Due to the Northerly wind, we lined up to land on 33, then got off the runway to allow a guy to take off on 15, despite the other plane waiting to take off on 33.  It was one of those days.

We went to Subway for lunch, and Ken joined us, then I went home to cover the Australian timezone.

April 20th

I  started the day cooking breakfast at the LRAA display day at Lincoln.  It was bloody windy, so there weren't a lot of people out, so I got nagged into getting the gyro out - I pulled it out and put the car in the hangar and put it on charge as I was going to be a couple of hours.  I had originally planned to go flying afterwards, but it was gusting around 30mph, and while the gyro would have been fine with that, I decided to just go home.  I was on call anyway, so I could clear out some stuff in the queue.

We went to pick up some things and stuff, and plugged the car in at a free charging point near Chipotle - it's the first time we've left it charging outside the garage, so it was nice to see that the car thought it would be fully charged (at 6 or 7 Kw/h) pretty quickly.  I even debated changing the charge limit to 100% to suck up even more free power (we charge to 90% as we don't need maximum range, and that allows the regenerative braking to work as soon as Vic leaves the house - I think she's forgotten what the other pedal's for).

In the evening, we watched "Glass".

April 14th

I went out to the airport and took the plane out - there's a wildflower bloom up by Oroville, so I flew up to see it.  It's an interesting flight, and there were a lot of people in cars looking at the flowers, so I didn't get too close.  I flew back along the other side of Beale Air Force Base, so I've now flow all the way around it in one day.  I took the GoPro, and the battery ran out just after I'd got back, and was in the hangar, so that's almost 2 hours - not too bad at all.

I went home and tinkered with the DRZ - the throttle cable's come out of it's holder, so it's been holding the cable a little bit too taut, and that's why it's been ticking over at 5,000rpm.  I'll have to take the tank off (again) to fix this, so I'll do it when I'm feeling stronger.

In the evening Jen came over and we watched the final series premiere of Game of Thrones.

April 13th

I went to the airport, where we got everything set up for the "Airport Fun Day".  I pulled the gyroplane out and parked it in the line-up, then cooked hot dogs.  So many hot dogs.  Occasionally I got to go and tell people it's not acceptable for their children to climb on the aircraft, and talk about the gyroplane.

After everything was packed away, I took the plane out for an hour or so, then headed home, where we watched "Welcome To Marwen".

April 10th

I tinkered about with the DRZ again, basically just installing the quiet insert into the exhaust, as California's supposedly going to be cracking down on loud exhausts.  I don't know if it'll make a difference, but the DRZ was quieter than a Harley with the noisy insert.

April 8th

I went out and ran the DRZ, and it was running incredibly fast.  I can't really see why, and I don't want to take the bodywork off, so I'll leave it for the moment.