December 29th

We got up early and flew to Auburn for breakfast, then back to Lincoln.  We'd talked about going further afield, but both of us had other stuff to do, so we went home.

I was on call, so I check work a few times, and checked the brakes on the van - they don't seem to be dragging or anything, so I used my longassed tube to tighten the bolts up, and called it done :o)

December 28th

The correct brake pads had come in for the van, so I installed them.  Interestingly the passenger side pads were a lot more worn than the driver's side.  I'm guessing there was a sticky piston, and I'm hoping that me pressing them back in will have fixed that, but I'll check the wear in a few weeks.

December 25th

Happy winter solstice festival of your choosing.

Still the cloudbase was low, until the wind was gusting 26mph, then it cleared out.  Oh well.

We watched "Tomb Raider".

December 24th

I was off, but the cloudbase never went up far enough to fly :o(

December 23rd

The cloud was still too low to fly, but I went to the airport and helped Randy repitch his new prop - he was only getting 4800rpm static and a test flight showed him just above 5000rpm on climbout.  We took out about a degree of pitch, and it's hitting just over 5000rpm static, so we're expecting that to be around 5300rpm on climbout.

I stood around and chatted to John in our hangar for a while, then headed home.

December 22nd

The cloudbase was too low to fly, so I started in on changing the brake pads on the van.  I got it jacked up on one side, but couldn't shift the caliper bolts, so I ended up with it on stands and used the jack to loosen the bolts.  I got the pistons pressed back in and the caliper off,  then found that I'd ordered the wrong brake pads - I thought I had the South African brakes, but it seems I have the Audi brakes.  Bugger.  I got to put everything back together having achieved nothing.

December 16th

The forecast was for rain, so I gave up on flying and ran some errands.  When it started actually raining, I was in the garage putting the DRZ back together.  I fired it up and let it warm up for a little bit, then turned it off and called that done.

December 15th

I'd been talking to Mike Duncan at Sunshine Flyers up in Auburn, and he'd told me they were having an open house thingy for Xmas, so Chris and I met at Auburn and attended.  We spent a lot of time talking to people about the gyros, and while he was flying their helicopter instructor, I ended up being interviewed for some local TV station - I didn't get their name :o(

I flew back and did a couple of circuits, then helped John, Frank and Frankie a bit with bolting the tail on to his RV6 - they're starting to look at painting the parts, and I have little arms so can get in the various little access panels to hold nuts and bolts and stuff.

December 12th

We went to the EAA Xmas dinner, and a good time was had by all.  I kept being dragged out to talk to people about the gyroplane (which is why I call it a "hello-copter").

December 9th

The radiator has been leaking for a while on the Jeep, and as I didn't do it that long ago, I chased up the manufacturer and they sent me a new one.  That arrived in the week, so we changed that over.  It only took a few hours, but like I said to Vic, I don't want to get good at this.  I'm hoping this is the last time we ever have to do it.

In the evening I played my stupid Wordscapes game on my tablet - they have a tournament thing over the weekends, and I was running in 2nd place, but about 25% behind the leader.  He didn't seem to be playing, as he had such a large lead, so I thought I'd try and catch up - he started playing about an hour before the tournament ended, but by then I was in the zone and catching up well.  I took the lead with 4 minutes to go and ended up winning.  Yay, 4,000 coins rather than 2,000.  They're not actually worth anything, but you can use them to buy hints in the game.  I think I probably ruined his weekend :o)

December 8th

Randy called me in the morning to say he'd soloed his gyroplane, and it went just fine :o)

I went over to the airport, dropped a gas can full of fuel by the gyro, then went to cook lunch for the EAA presentation - the last time we barbecue this year :o)

Chris came over from Cameron Park and had lunch, and when everything was packed up, we went for a little flight - over the Feather River, along the Bear Creek to Camp Far West Lake - we toddled along the river heading towards Auburn for a little bit, then headed back - me to Lincoln and Chris to Cameron Park.

December 5th

I took the cover off the oil filter on the DRZ, to find the O ring looking decidedly the worse for wear.  I replaced that, cleaned everything and put it back together then started the engine again.  It doesn't look like it's leaking anywhere, but there's a lot of oil to clean off from the various leaks and so on.  I think this might be the end of the problems with the DRZ - now I just need to clean and degrease everything and put it all back together.  Finally.

December 4th

I put in an extra (just under a) litre of oil into the DRZ, and started it up.  There was a lot of oil leaking out of the oil filter cover, so I turned it off again, and now I'll wait for the oil to drain down again.

December 3rd

I buttoned up the engine on the DRZ and put in a liter of (stupidly expensive) oil.  I'll leave it overnight to see if there's any obvious leaks.

December 2nd

We went to the airport early and flew to Auburn in the cold.  Randy and Ken in Randy's gyroplane, Bruce and Sally in their Cardinal (I taxied past them without recognising it, because of the new paint job - that's going to take some getting used to) and Scott in his RV-8.  Chris flew his gyro over from Placerville, and Jack drove up.  We all sat around and had breakfast, then flew back to Lincoln.  Chris was going up with Scott in the RV, and I took some pictures of Bruce and his grandson for a newspaper article about him and his 100th Young Eagles flight :o)

December 1st

A new month, so here are the solar stats:

Power billed

Power generated

I started the day cooking breakfast for about 25 of my closest friends at the airport.  It was a miserable day, driving over, but it brightened up quite quickly.  It was still pretty windy though, so I ended up standing around chatting a lot.  Randy and Ken did the gearbox lash check on my plane, and it's fine.

I met a new guy, Mike, who was passing through looking for Ken - he's just been to Italy to build a Magni M-16 (it took a week - they started on Monday and flew it on Friday) and he's just waiting for it to get here in a crate so he can start the paperwork process.

I went home and drained the oil out of the DRZ.  I say oil - it was mostly gas, and there was far too much of it.  I think there might be a leak in there, too, as it's been dripping out for a while, but I don't want to think about having to take the engine apart to fix that just yet.