August 1st

Here are the stats...

Power billed

Power generated

July 31st

I went out to the airport and took the plane out for a couple of video things I wanted to shoot.  I did an orbit over Randy's, but nobody came out and waved at me.  Vic and Tilly waved at me at home, so I did another orbit there, and then I did an orbit for spacing from somebody doing a low pass at Lincoln - I'm used to people doing that in T-6s and the like, not in a bloody 172.

When I got back, I had a long chat with with Ernie about his newly built RV-14 while the oil drained out for its second oil change.

Chris rang, to see what I was doing, so we agreed to meet up at Wings for lunch.  Just after I pushed the plane out of the hangar again, it started to rain, so I pushed it back in and closed the hangar, so it stopped.  Still, I drove up instead.  There were a couple of short showers, but I figure I don't need to fly in the rain, so why would I?

When I got home, I threw together a couple of videos...

A fly past of the Roseville Train Yard

The area burnt in yesterday's fire at Lincoln Airport.

July 30th

I went to the airport to meet Shane, only to watch a big pall of smoke in that direction most of the way there.  There was a grass fire on the other side of the runway, so we watched Cal Fire's trucks show up and beat that down while dumbasses carried on flying circuits, through the smoke at the 15 end of the runway.  Sheesh.  Eventually somebody announced the airport closed, and we collected Shane's windscreens and headed to Home Depot to buy an 8'x4' sheet of Lexan (tm).

When we got home, we left the van in the driveway and went and got lunch, then came back and argued about the best way to deal with cutting new windscreens out.  Eventually we cut the sheet in half (because you can get both screens out of a 4'x4' sheet) and decided to get the nerds at Shane's work to do it with one of their fancy cutting machines.  Only it was a nightmare getting even a 4'x4' sheet into Shane's car, so we loaded the now 2 sheets into the van and dropped them off at Shane's ready to be worked on.

We took a walk around the campus as I've never been there, then I dropped him home and went home myself.

July 24th

I went and picked Shane up, as he was vehicularly deficient, then picked Vic up and we went to the airport to fly up to Auburn to meet PJ for brunch.  It was a bit smoky due to the Yosemite fire :o(

After lunch, Shane flew straight back to Lincoln, and Vic and I did our monthly lake fly past... it's starting to go down.

Shane and I changed his windscreen, then we headed out.  We dropped Vic at home, then I ran Shane home, getting back with ~20 miles of range left.

July 23rd

We charged the car to 100% and drove down to Manteca to have Dave's kids cook us pizza in their new oven.  Got home with >100 miles remaining :o)

July 18th

I took the day off so I could go to the dentist.

After the usual tooth scraping, I went to the airport and tinkered with the plane for a while - mostly doing smaller things I haven't had time to get around to.

July 17th

It was going to be a hot day, so we went and met the family Shane and Randy for breakfast at a place Shane and Liza have been going to once a week for years.

Afterwards, we just pottered around the house doing nothing, but I went and met Randy and Shane at Lincoln so we could go for an evening flight - there's still a guy with a Magni based at Auburn we haven't met yet, so we thought he might be flying and we could see him.

We wandered around the dead airport, just chatting, when a couple of guys with a Cessna (I think) 206 at the fuel island called out to us.  They were almost out of fuel, and the credit card reader was down so they couldn't get any more to get back to Reno.  I pointed out Lincoln should have gas, and was only 13 miles away.  We came up with a plan - I'd fly back to Lincoln, and call them and say whether they could get gas there.  If not, we'd call PJ and see if Cameron Park had gas - that's about 14 miles away.  In the meantime, Shane and Randy found a guy with gas in his plane who'd drain some out so they could comfortable get to Lincoln legally (they had about 10 gallons, but in a plane that burns 18 gallons an hour, they'd be landing with less than 30 minutes.)

So, I flew back to Lincoln, taxied over to the pump and watched another plane from Auburn start pumping gas, then called back up to Auburn to say "all good, come on down."

Randy and Shane had left shortly after I did, so we put the planes away and did our paperwork while waiting for the 206 to arrive, then drove over to the fuel island with water and juice boxes and chatted to the guys as they filled up.