August 2nd

I tinkered around the house with various things and stuff, and in the afternoon went over to the airfield and installed a new primer plunger - the old one was leaking when it's being used.  It was a lot less traumatic than I'd expected, and I've taken the old one home to see what the problem is (I bet it's an o-ring that's been dissolved over time by the ethanol in the gas).  If it's easy to fix, that'd be great, but I bought a spare regardless.  Anyway, after that I went out for a flight, and was pretty much kept to a small area by the smoke from the various fires in the area.  I played around with various turns (30 degree, 45 degree, 60 degree, climbing, descending), stalls (I still can't get a good clean break - it just mushes along while losing ~800' a minute) and flying as slowly as I can - just above stall.  When I got back to the airport, I'd been out for an hour and 45 minutes, so I did an extra circuit to make it an even 2 hours when I parked it.  A guy in a pickup came over for a chat - Weston.  He's just bought a Quicksilver ultralight, and is getting ready to fly it in from Woodland.  I told him about the EAA, so here's hoping I see him again :o)