December 30th

There was a meeting at the airfield about the new Village 5 development that they're aiming to put in south of the runway.  Obviously the developers did absolutely no research, as it appears that they were unaware that the published instrument approach puts planes at ~500' over the ground that they're talking about building on.  It seems that the FAA waits for people to build stuff too high, then tells them to take it down rather than getting involved in the planning process.  Great.

I went to lunch with Ken and Jack, and discovered that Danny had crashed the Eurofox I few a couple of weeks ago.  Luckily he's unhurt.  Later, while standing around talking, Danny arrived to get help unloading the wreckage into his hangar, so we helped unload the wreckage into his hangar.

December 29th

We had the day off work, so I took Caroline next door up in the Flightstar to see her new house being built.  Hopefully she didn't totally hate it, even though it was chilly.

December 25th

Jen arrived at the house with cookies for us, on her way to her folks.

I went to the airfield and took the plane out.  On a whim, I flew up to Auburn because I haven't landed there, and there was nobody about.  My approach wasn't great, as there's a hill by the 25 threshold, but hey, any landing you can walk away from, right?  Actually my landing was fine.  It was cold at 2500', so I headed back to Lincoln and put the plane away, then went home to cook dinner.

While eating, we watched "The Incredible Hulk", and it was better than "The Incredible Hulk", but probably not as good as "The Incredible Hulk".

December 24th

Another day with less than great weather, so I wasted it doing stuff at home.

December 23rd

Vic was going to get her hair done, so I washed the van (did you know it's white?), did some work, then headed to the airport and took the plane out for a bit.

December 22nd

I had the day off from work, so obviously the weather wasn't great.  I pretty much just wasted the day at home.

December 17th

I went and bought a tool cart that's on sale at Harbor Freight, then went over to the airport to build it.  I'd pretty much just taken it out of the box when Danny showed up, and we chatted for a while, then went out in his Eurofox.  I did pretty much all of the flying, and it's a lot different from the Flightstar, not least for being about twice as fast - we were over by Cameron Park and Danny suggested we could go and land at Placerville - I said it was going to be dark in about 45 minutes, so I didn't think we had time.  We were back at Lincoln for a hard, but not quite bone crushing landing about 15 minutes later.  Danny reckons he burns about 4 gallons an hour at 120mph, so that's more economical than most cars :o)  We put the plane away, and he dropped me back at my hangar to finish building my tool cart.  I've even started loading it up with stuff that I don't want draped all over the floor any more :o)

December 16th

It was really windy here, so much that the wind howling around the house really upset Tilly.  I couldn't fly, so I pretty much stayed in and kept her company.

In the evening, I watched "Death Race".  It was dumb, but noisy.

December 13th

We went to the EAA Xmas party.  I bid up a few things on the silent auction, and ended up winning a gyroplane flight (I gave this to Danny, as it'd be odd to win something that I'd solicited), and a tandem parachute jump (that Vic said she'd take if I won it) :o)

December 11th

My electric toothbrush has been getting slower and slower, so I decided to try and change the battery.  I got everything apart, and started putting it back together, only to (probably) burn something out on the little motherboard.  Meh.  I threw it away and ordered a new one.

I updated the EAA website with the latest newsletter, and finished up getting my old old Nexus reset to donate for an auction item.  My new old Nexus is now set up for the plane, and my Galaxy Tab is my every day fondleslab.

I had to go to the airport to sort out some tickets for Ken for the Xmas party, but they weren't bloody there :o(  I had thought about maybe flying, but there was just too much to organise before I could get the plane out, so I gave up and went home again.

December 9th

I started the day cooking breakfast for a bunch of people at the EAA hangar, and then went to move the van so Bob could get his Archer out.  I then got tangled up with Chris' new gyro - they've fixed a bunch of bent and broken mounts on it, but the engine sounds like there's something wrong with it.  Apparently it had just been rebuilt, so the thinking was that the problem is the gearbox, and that my spare E box would solve that.  Well, we took his gearbox apart, and there's metal in the oil, but it looks OK.  And the engine still doesn't turn over properly, even without it there.  So, that's buggered then.  I took the Flightstar out for a couple of circuits, then went home.

December 8th

Today was my Saturday, but I still got to work, as everybody was out this afternoon, and I'm on call for the weekend.  I did manage to get out and fly for a bit, which was nice :o)

December 6th

I sloped out of work for "lunch" to go to the EAA board meeting - my last :o)

December 3rd

We met Jen for lunch, and then I started work, covering APAC.

December 2nd

I started the day at the airfield cooking breakfast for a bunch of EAA members.  Then Bob and I rearranged the hangar so his Archer is at the front of his side, then I got to move it slightly again so I could get the Flightstar out to do a couple of circuits.

When I got home, the new remote had showed up, so I spent a little time getting that set up.

December 1st

A new month, so here are the solar stats:

Power billed

Power generated

Today was my Saturday, but I still had to sign on to work for a little bit.  Yay.

I got my replacement smoke alarm from Nest, only it was a thermostat.  Bugger.  I called Nest, and they suggested somebody could call me back in the next 3 days, but I insisted until they said they'd ship me a new replacement today.  Yay.

I managed to get out to the airfield and take the plane out for a bit, then changed the spark plugs - I've found that the local Autozone stocks the solid tipped BR8ES plugs, which makes life easier.