September 28th

The high point of the day was going to the Tesla dealer to look at the Model S.  I'm still waiting for the Model 3 though.

September 27th

We were all tired, so we pretty much spent the day throwing the ball for Tilly.

September 26th

I met Mum and Dad for coffee / hot chocolate at around lunchtime, and dumped their stuff in the van, then drove them back to Roseville after work.  There was rain on the way, and an accident, so it took a lot longer than I was hoping.  Tilly was happy to see the van back again.

September 24th

After work, we went to South San Francisco and went shooting.  It was cool, especially as a couple of the guys have never shot before, and they did really well.

September 23rd

I got up in the dark and drove to San Francisco for some DNS training.  Yay.

September 21st

I managed to wash the solar panels.  Of course, the sky is still full of smoke, so they'll be dirty again in a few minutes...

September 20th

Ever have one of those weekends when you don't want to do anything?  Yeah, i'm having one of those.

September 17th

After work, I scurried over to the airport to cook burgers at the EAA chapter meeting.  We ended up using the van as a wind break again - lucky I'd taken it, eh?  The meeting was busier than normal, which is a good sign :o)

September 14th

After doing my Warcraft daily tasks, we watched the excellent MotoGP race from San Marino.

*Spoilers*
I think Rossi would have won even if Marquez had stayed on.

We went out and cut a few large limbs from the shrubs in the garden, and got the green waste bin pretty close to full.

In the late afternoon, I went to the airfield and took the plane out for an hour and 20 minutes, just pottering about looking at things :o)  I was almost all the way home when I remembered that I didn't put the gas cap back on after filling the tank.  Bugger.  I grabbed the DRZ and went back and fixed that.

September 13th

Vic was at a guinea pig event in the Bay Area, so after playing Warcraft, I did a few tasks around the house, then went out to run some errands on the way to the airfield.  I was dropping off some oil to be recycled, and a dead motorcycle battery, and they gave me a $5 merchandise card (usually there's a $10 core charge on a battery).  I wasn't expecting that, so I'll put that aside for the next Jeep oil change :o)

At the airfield, I tinkered with the plane a bit, then did some circuits.  It started out a little windy, but that dropped to zero while I was out.  I ended up doing just over an hour and a half - usually my back's aching by then, but no problems today :o)

September 11th

After my bicycle ride, I was getting in to the shower only to find some sort of insect stinger hanging out of my chest.  It's on the right side, so stinging me was a waste of time, as I won't have felt it, but I will in the next few days, I'm sure.  There's quite the lump formed under the sting, so I expect a few days of taking antihistamines at bedtime :o(

September 7th

After playing Warcraft in the morning, I went over to the airfield in the afternoon and switched the carbs out.  It was a little more complicated than I'd originally thought, so it took longer.  I still managed to do several circuits of test flying without anything falling off or any sort of forced landing, which is a nice change of pace :o)

September 6th

I wasted the morning playing Warcraft, then spent some time tinkering with the EAA website - I've created a form in Wordpress to do Young Eagles pre-registrations.  I recently set up a Faceberk page, too, so I kept an eye on that.

I had an enlightening (for him) conversation with the sales guy at the local Chevrolet dealer, where I explained to him that the 2015 Spark EV has a smaller battery (and a different manufacturer) and different gearing than the 2014.  I always find it funny when I know more about the product they're trying to sell me than they do :o)

We were wandering around the Galleria when Vince called to say the carbs were ready, so we stopped in and picked those up on the way home.

September 3rd

I spoke to Vince, and the new spare carbs are older than we thought, and are jetted as single carbs.  Duh, they'd have run like crap in that case.  Aaanyway, they're quite worn, too, so we've decided to just break down and order the parts.  The good news is that he ran a compression test, and dry, the engine hit ~110psi.  With a little oil in the pistons, it hit ~135psi, so there doesn't seem to be any sign of damage in the engine.  I'll be very watchful of it for a few flights though, once the carbs are all fixed up :o)

September 2nd

I spoke to Vince about my engine woes, and he thinks the problem could be the carbs - Danny's had a problem where the pin through the floats has ovalled, and it's caused the floats to stick down, to the point where they flood and gas pisses out of the carbs.  He thinks the reverse could be true here, with the floats sticking up, so the "I've run out of fuel" feeling could be me running out of fuel, rather than a partial seizure.  He's going to fly over to Lincoln and pick up my new spare carbs to see about cleaning them out for use.

September 1st

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

Power billed

Power generated

Today was Labor Day, when Americans celebrate the advances in working conditions fought for by the union movement by going shopping.

We went into the garden, and Vic hacked a load of shrubbery, and I cut the grass.  I then cleaned up some cooling shrouds for the spare 503 engine (they'd arrived covered in burnt oil, which annoyed me) and moved some parts from one fan cooling tower (the one that will fit my engine) to the other (that won't fit my engine).  It's a long story.

I ended up going to Lincoln and working on balancing the prop a little, then talking to Ron for a while about his new plane, then took my plane up to see how the prop was behaving.  I had what felt like a partial seizure on my first take off, so I turned back, put the thing away and headed home.  FML.

August 31st

Kathy invited us to see "The November Man", so we went and watched that.  On the way home, I picked up some parts, and then after watching the excellent MotoGP race, I went to the airfield and installed a static air line up into one of the wing spars - the air speed indicator seems to overread sometimes, and this fixed that problem.  I took the plane out for an hour to test it, and it was a really nice evening to fly.

August 30th

I pottered around the house, playing Warcraft and watching the MotoGP qualifying.  I changed the oil in the Jeep, then in the early evening went to Lincoln and took the Flightstar out for an hour or so.  It was quite windy up, and on takeoff I was seeing around 55mph air speed, but 27mph ground speed.  I also noticed that I was crabbed about 30 degrees following teh road back to the airfield, but I did hit 75mph ground speed on the downwind leg :o)