February 25th

I played with my Lego set in the morning, shooting a couple of timelapses, here and here.

In the afternoon, I went to the airport and took Cherish up for a longer flight.  Jack was lurking around when we got back, so we ended up going to get something to eat on the way home.

February 24th

I went to the airport and cooked lunch before the presentation, which was a lot better than the last time the guy gave it - he was talking about a crash he had, totally unprepared, in the winter in Idaho.  Last time I got the impression "shit happens", rather than this time when he actually seems to have realised that he made a series of bad decisions that lead to the crash, and last time he thanked his god rather than the 150+ people who risked their lives to save him and his family.

I had intended to fly the gyroplane with Ken, but he's had some insurance weirdness (he's suddenly been told he's not covered for commercial use), so that went out the window.  With Cherish (airport bunny)'s help I changed the grips on the joystick, then we went for a couple of pretty bumpy circuits.  Luckily my landings were OK :o)

In the evening Vic and I watched "A Monster Calls".

February 21st

I went to the EAA membership meeting and had dinner in the main restaurant with Jack (rather than the limited menu with everyone else in the very cold conference room).

February 20th

We watched "The Foreigner".  The DVD was really scratched, so it kept barfing, but we don't think we missed too much.

February 19th

Today was Presidents Day, when Americans remember the famous old presidents by going shopping.

It was too windy to fly, so I mostly tinkered with stuff around the house.  In the evening, we watched "Geostorm".

February 18th

I started the day looking at the speedo cable on the van and it looks like I just needed to pull the outer down again, and give it more slack at the bottom.  Now I need to drive it and see if the problem's solved.  Again.

It was too windy to fly, so I didn't.

February 17th

I started the day making some updates to the EAA web site.  The newsletters always take me a while to copy the PDFs into HTML pages.

I tinkered around with the speedo cable on the van again.  Basically, it looks like the inner is too short, and I'm not sure why that's suddenly become (more of) an issue.  After playing about with it for a while, I gave up and cut about 3/8" off the end of the outer, and plugged it in again.  When I went for a drive, it worked better than it ever has (it used to jiggle, which it no longer does), but a hard turn has seen it stop working, so I think it's either broken loose at the bottom, or the cable itself has snapped where I nicked it with the Dremel.  Oh well...

I went to the airfield and took a lesson with Ken in the gyro.  The air work was fine, but my landings still need a bit more practice, as I'm rounding out slowly like you would in a plane.  Something we noticed is that he's always telling me to use more left rudder on landing, and I can never see what he's on about - well, I naturally slump to the right when I sit down, usually to take the weight of my arm off my shoulder to stop that aching so much.  I can't do this in my plane, as it has a 4 point harness, but I can slump in the gyro, so that's what I'm doing.  I need to practice not doing that, methinks :o)

After standing around chatting with various people, I took the Flightstar up for a bit (to finish this page in my logbook, if nothing else), then went home and watched "The Hitman's Bodyguard", where Ryan Reynolds basically plays Deadpool without a suit.

February 15th

I couldn't sleep, so I got up and found that the last form for my taxes had come in, so I got those finished and filed the Federal taxes online (I refuse to pay $20 to file California online too, so I print those).  $626 owed... oops.

I've modified Tilly's old adventure lead (made out of 12' of proper climbing rope) so I can use it as a slip lead, and that seems to work OK.  Crisis averted.

February 14th

We walked Tilly up to Starbucks so she could have a puppacino.  It's been a while since we were there, but she remembered the way and towed me for the last bit.  She also chewed her lead up a bit, so methinks that needs replacing now.

When we got home, we watched "Snatched".

February 11th

It was still too windy to fly, so I tinkered around with stuff at home.

February 10th

Vic headed off to see her mother for the weekend, leaving me to look after the minimals.

I went to the airport and cooked about 25 burgers before a talk from an airline pilot about flying 737s to 787s.  It was too damn windy to fly, so I went home again afterwards.  Meh, I was on call anyway, so I had work to do.

February 9th

I jacked the van up again and checked that turning the wheel makes the speedo cable inner turn.  Speedo problem?

February 6th

We went and met Jen for dinner, for a change.

February 5th

I pumped the Van up in the air and took off the driver's side front wheel, and it looks like the speedo cable is properly attached to the front dust cap, so I have more poking around to do until I figure out what the problem is there.

February 4th

I started the day going over to the airfield and taking a lesson with Ken in the gyroplane.  It's sounding like I'm making progress, so here's hoping it won't be long until I can take the test and add them to my license :o)

I went home and tinkered around the house for a bit (it looks like I've managed to break the speedo on the Van, for example), then went back to the airfield and took the Flightstar out for a while.  I was just done putting everything away when Vic showed up, so we stopped off for dinner on the way home.

February 3rd

It's the first Saturday of the month, so I started the day cooking breakfast for a bunch of people at the airport.  After that, I went and helped Todd tinkering with his powered parachute, then took the Flightstar out for a flight around.  It was a bit bumpy, probably because I was up earlier than usual.

At home, I've noticed that the sensor array on the weather station has had a few spots where it's stopped transmitting, for example:

I finally realised that the old one was sitting on the patio table, and even without batteries, it's been transmitting a panic signal when the solar panel is in the sun.  I brought that back inside the house, and it seems OK now - I left everything outside when I was working on it because of the amount of time it took it to cool down to ambient temperature (not that it matters now that the daytime temperatures are getting into the high 60s).  Here's hoping I get my little gold star back from Weather Underground :o)

February 1st

A new month, so here are the solar stats:

Power billed

Power generated

January 31st

I got up at about 02:30 and put the camera setup on top of the patio cover, got it all aligned then set it off.  Something I hadn't realised was the camera reset everything I'd set up when it turned off, so it didn't do what I wanted (auto focus off, size, 16:9 etc).

Anyways, here's the timelapse I generated.

January 30th

I decided to run a timelapse of the lunar eclipse, so I spent some time setting up the camera.  It was going to take hours, so a battery was out of the question, so I set everything up using the AC adapter on my Sony NEX, and used the time lapse controller to run it.  I got everything taped to the tripod, and covered it with a hacked up plastic bag so the dew didn't form on it too badly, then went to bed.