July 30th

We watched "Lady in the Water".  It's odd.

July 29th

Jen came over so I could install an SSD in her laptop.  It took the 10 minutes I said it'd take, so we all went out for pizza to celebrate me not breaking anything else.

July 27th

I went to the airport early, thinking I could do some touch and goes before going to meet Chris and Randy for breakfast in Auburn.  I got in one, then a couple of guys joined the pattern.  I slowed down to let a twin get in front of me, and he then proceeded to do a bomber pattern, meaning I was getting further and further from the airport waiting for him to turn base.  I figured I'd leave the pattern and rejoin, and was on a 45 degree join for downwind when somebody announced they were changing the runway from 15 to 33.  Fine, I'll do an overhead join for 33 then.  Somebody else started bitterly complaining that we should be using 15, so I figured I'd just go and tootle around and head to Auburn via Folsom Lake rather than get caught up in all this nonsense.

After breakfast, we all headed back to Lincoln so we could help Chris sort out his replacement ADSB-in device, then we cleaned and re-oiled his air filter, as it was dry.  He headed out, and I headed home.

In the evening we watched "Hellboy".  It was OK, but it was no "Hellboy".

July 24th

I flew from Lincoln to Cameron Park to have a lesson with Don - in the way there a twin was crossing in front of me, but suddenly turned towards me, causing me to divert so as to not hit him.

Anyway, I flew with Don in the Sportstar from Cameron Park to Mather and did some circuits there to get my controlled airspace endorsement sorted out, then flew back to Lincoln.  Yay!

July 21st

The day started with us getting into the roof to look at the air conditioning motor - apparently it's leaking oil, and I wanted to get a part number from it so I can order a replacement.  Sadly the part number is under a metal strap, and it doesn't matter what we did, we couldn't get it.  We put everything back together and figure we'll wait until it cools down so I can get it out completely and take a look at it.

I then got up on the roof and washed the solar panels for the first time in ages.

July 20th

I started the day at the airport cooking breakfast for 20 or so people at the LRAA display day.

After that was all packed away, I took the plane out for a flight around, then headed home and watched "Shazam!".

July 17th

After work I took the car over to the airport and cooked for the EAA membership meeting.

July 15th

We dug up a sprinkler that was leaking - when I fixed one last time, it's caused the joint to blow on this one.  It'll be interesting to see what fails next.

July 14th

We were all going to meet up at Auburn for breakfast, and Chris was bringing his daughter.  As Vic had decided to ride up on her motorcycle, I offered to collect Chris' wife from Cameron Park if she wanted to join us, and she took me up on the offer.  I landed downwind, because the guy before me landed downwind, but everything was OK, it just wasn't a great landing.  We all loaded up and flew to Auburn, where we landed downwind because people were landing downwind.  Again, not a great landing.

After breakfast, I flew Jackie back to Cameron Park, and landed upwind.  Thankfully it was a much better landing :o)

July 13th

We got up early and headed to the airport to meet Ken and Jamie, wait for Chris then head out to the Colusa fly-in.  It was a fairly uneventful flight over, but there was a lot of activity with people arriving once we were near - a group of Piper Cubs all landed at once, and I head "finals, number 7" at one point.  Luckily everybody was down by the time we got there, and I pulled off a great landing in front of the crowd :o)


We had breakfast (pilots don't have to pay :o)), then Chris won a case of oil he can't use and some rice in the raffle.  Luckily we ran in to Bruce and Scott, and Bruce offered to take it back to Lincoln for us.

After looking at the planes for a while, it was obvious that people were starting to head out.  We flew back to Lincoln, and Chris to Cameron Park.  After I put the plane away, we chatted to Dan who'd flown over in his RV-10, but turned back when he saw how busy it was :o)

July 7th

I went to the airport nice and early to fly up to Auburn to meet Chris and Rob for breakfast.  Randy was supposed to join us, but found that his front tyre was showing the cords, and the spare he'd bought was the wrong size.  Doy.

After breakfast, we flew back to Lincoln and stood about chatting with Dan about John's RV-6A that he's helping build.

July 6th

I got up early and went to the airport to cook breakfast at the EAA hangar - we ran out of eggs, there were that many people there, so that was nice.

Afterwards I sat in on the board meeting as I was already there, then went home and updated a few things on the web site.

July 5th

I got up early and headed to the airport, where I flew to Georgetown to meet Chris.  It's the first time I've been there, and there wasn't anybody about, so I landed on 17, as the wind sock seemed to favour that.  The runway drops off into a ravine, and I found it a little disconcerting to come in and land there, as everything just looks odd.  Chris arrived while I was spinning down the rotors, and I told him there was pretty much no wind, so he landed on 35.  We took off on 35, while a guy not on the radio looked like he was downwind for 17, but he turned away.  I was shooting video, so I thought about running low off the end of the runway, but figured I'd have to worry about hitting Chris, so I just did a normal takeoff.  We circled round over the airport, then headed towards Tahoe, dropping down in to a couple of canyons.

Despite a whole discussion about being warm enough, Chris decided he should have worn a jacket by the time we were at about 5,000', so he landed on a fire trail to stop and get his jacket on.  I just flew around him in circles until he took off again, and we headed back towards Tahoe, flying over a couple of lakes and ridges before getting there.  By the time we got there, I was a little concerned about gas, as I was between 1/2 and 3/4 of a tank, and we were expecting a 15mph headwind on the way back, so we flew for a short way along the coast of the lake before heading back.  At least I've now had the gyroplane over 10,000' (previous record for me was ~4,500').  Of course, we didn't have a bad headwind on the way home, and going downhill meant I got to Auburn with just under 1/2 a tank.

We had brunch while waiting for Randy to show up from Lincoln, then waited for a paint match guy to show up and scan Randy's white and Chris' 2 different red paints, then we split off and went home - I went straight back to Lincoln, Chris went back to Cameron Park and Randy took his daughter on a short sight seeing trip on the way home.  Just under 3 hours, on about 13 gallons of gas isn't too bad - I usually fly a lot slower than Chris, so I usually burn less gas than that.

July 4th

Today was Independence Day, when the Americans celebrate treason by going shopping,  barbecuing getting drunk and setting off fireworks.

As the neighbours (and Sun City, we think) started their fireworks stuff last night, and Tilly hates fireworks, we were pretty beat all day.  Luckily I was covering work, so I checked in a couple of times while pottering about the house.

We spent the evening throwing the ball for Tilly to distract her from the noises outside, which went on past the 22:00 cut off that I guess I'd imagined.

July 1st

A new month, so here are the solar stats:

Power billed

Power generated