August 11th

I started the day taking the gyro out in the smoke - I was hoping to fly before it got really bad, but the visibility was awful.  I did a few manoeuvres, then headed over to the river to see if things were better there.  They weren't, but I could smell the burning from the fires.  After a vertical descent, I found an inversion layer at ~750', when I got cold - that's not helping with the smoke.  There was  another guy out there, so we circled around each other at a respectful distance, and then I headed back to Lincoln.  The wind had got up to almost 10mph down the runway, so I managed to land at 13mph groundspeed :o)

I cooked lunch for ~30 people - Scott sold the last lunch I was cooking for myself on 3 occasions, so I ended up with a piece of bacon and a cookie - I couldn't be bothered to get another frozen burger out and start cooking again.

I went home, where we had an early dinner and watched "Rampage" and a series of 80s pop-culture moments mashed into a movie - "Ready Player One" :o)

August 5th

As the wind got up overnight and blew a lot of the smoke and ash away, I got up on the roof and washed the solar panels while waiting for Russ and Deeps to arrive.  Once they got here, we loaded Mum and Dad's luggage in their car, and headed to the airport so I could take Russ out in the gyro.  As it was pretty busy, I did a big circle and rejoined the circuit to let others get out, and when we landed, Russ said he hadn't minded the circuit level stuff, so we went out and did another circuit. 

Shortly after we got back, they headed back to Los Angeles with Mum and Dad.  I decided to go out and do some circuits while waiting for Chris to get over from Cameron Park, as he had a guy coming to look at his Sportcopter gyroplane.  Chris arrived as I taxied up, so I did one long circuit, then parked the gyro so I could help fix the rotor speed sensor and strobe while waiting.  The guy finally arrived and looked at the Sportcopter for a long time, but it looks like he's bargain hunting rather than seriously looking.

When he left, I left Chris getting loaded up to fly his Ercoupe back to Cameron Park in the resurgent smoke and headed home, where we watched some TV and had an early night.

August 4th

I started the day at the airport cooking breakfast for 20 of my closest friends.  I then took Mum up in the gyro again, so Dad could video the takeoff.  The smoke in the air is worse than ever, so we just did a big circle and came and rejoined the circuit and landed.

As Dad's hurt his back and didn't want to try and get in the gyro, we went home and waited for Russ and Deeps to arrive so we could meet them for dinner.

August 2nd

We went to the casino to eat at the buffet until we felt uncomfortably full.

August 1st

It's a new month, so here are the stats:

Power generated

Power billed

July 31st

We went to the last Downtown Roseville Tuesday night thing, where we looked at the old cars and waited a long time for hot dogs.

July 30th

After work, Dad and I replaced a bunch of sprinkler heads, just to see if we can cover more of the dead earth that's the back garden.  The sky is still gray from the Carr fire.