December 29th

Vic started cooking a brisket.  It took like 6 hours.

I'd left Vic's battery on charge overnight, but I thought it was dead.  A quick test confirmed that - it had a resting voltage of 11.5v, just the running lights took that to 10.5v, and trying to start it took that to 5v.  New battery needed, we just need to decide if it's worth paying 5x as much to get a LiFePo4 - it's not like she's bothered about the weight.

We zipped over to the airport in the van, and I'm saying the anti-roll bar means the thing corners flatter.  I don't know if that's true, or I want it to be true, but whatever.

We went over so I could try the throttle that Dave printed out for me - it fits just fine, I think I have a few tweaks to make before it'd work for me.  While I was there I buffed out the paint I'd added to one of the rotors, and made concerned noises about David's cylinder with low compression.

In the evening, we watched "Serenity", seeing as we'd finished the "Firefly" series.

December 28th

We went and met Chris for lunch in Auburn.  We drove, he flew the RV.  We had intended to ride the motorcycles, but Vic's battery has died, so that wasn't to be.

December 25th

We had a quiet day watching episodes of "Firefly".  Jen came over and entertained Tilly for a while.  She brought me cookies.

December 24th

I had the day off, but most of the country didn't, so I got to check stuff at work from time to time to make sure nothing was going horrifically wrong.

In between checking things, I went out into the garage and finally got around to installing the new anti-roll bar and heavy duty end links on the van.  I bought these as part of my Black Friday van shopping extravaganza.  Now I just need to go and test drive it :o)

December 22nd

It was raining, and Chris suggested lunch, so we drove over and met him in Roseville.

December 21st

I went to the airport to tinker with Randy's wiring again.

There was a barbecue going on in Ken's hangar, and Mark (who I flew up to Auburn a while back) showed up in his mint MGB.

Mark took me for a little ride in the thing - it sounds great, especially as I'd driven there in the almost silent Bolt :o)

After lunch, we peered at Randy's wiring - we removed the inline filter we'd installed at the weekend, as it's not helping.  Ken reckons it's the audio plug causing it, and suggested using a mono plug instead.  Testing it shows this works, but I still don't get why it being powered up causes the noises.  Whatever, Randy's ordered a new plug.

My DHL package arrived, and luckily Vic was there to receive it.

December 20th

Again, I was hoping that the DHL package was going to be delivered, as it arrived in San Francisco in the morning.

It wasn't.

December 19th

I was staying in to receive a package (that DHL said was in Los Angeles, but then said it was in Heathrow, then said it was in East Midlands, then said it was in Heathrow) that didn't arrive, so once I had figured out it wasn't arriving, I went out and hacked parts off shrubs to fill the green waste bin.

I've had a problem with the noise coming out of the home theatre PC, so I decided to look at that.  The TOSLINK cable was lighting up red, which made me think the problem could be the (16 year old) receiver, but after pulling everything apart (and getting the old LCD TV from Vic's office so I could get into the receiver setup), it turned out that the PC had decided to use different (not installed) speakers.  I fixed that in Windows, and everything's fine now.  Yay.

December 18th

I met Randy at the airfield and we installed some magnets on the power and audio lines for his GPS.  It's helped, but hasn't fixed the background noise problem.  He found that if he wiggles the audio lead, it changes the behaviour, so we're looking at replacing that next.

December 17th

I went to the airfield and Ken and I replaced the rod end bearings on the plane, then put the rotor head back on, and reinstalled the rotor.  We also replaced the engine mounts, then I ran the rotor up to 150rrpm a couple of times to see if it'd fly off.  It didn't.

December 16th

I've taken the week off work to do some stuff on the plane.

Today Ken and I pulled the rotor off, and replaced all the bearings in the rotor head.  It went a lot faster than I thought - I was expecting this to take all week.

December 15th

I went to the airport and heckled Ken and Chris installing a transponder and multifunction display in Chris' RV-6A.

In the evening we went to dinner with Jen.

December 14th

I went to the airfield and helped Randy tinker with the audio line for his new GPS - it's picking up interference.  Still, after a lot of work, we've at least discovered that if you unplug the audio line, everything goes quiet.  Before we'd thought it needed the power unplugged from the GPS, which has a small emergency battery.

In between playing with that, I helped set up for the EAA meeting, and Mark cooked steak, then presented on building his RV-10 and Carbon Cub.

December 11th

We went to the EAA Xmas party and managed to win a big basket o' stuff in the raffle.

December 8th

We went and met Chris and Randy for lunch, then I went to the airport with Randy to tidy up his ADSB install with a bracket I'd made and some Velcro (tm).

In the evening, we watched "Hobbs and Shaw".

I've been uploading data from a Raspberry Pi to Flightaware to a month now, and it's nice to see I'm ~11,000th in the list of people uploading.

December 7th

I started the day at the airport cooking breakfast for an astounding number of people considering the weather.

After that, I made a start on installing the turbo inlet tube on the plane, then went home so we could take Tilly to see Santa.

In the evening, I installed a new LiFePo4 battery in the van.  I used to have 4 UB12220 wheelchair batteries that are rated at 22Ah each, so 88Ah, of which about half is usable before you start damaging the plates.  They weigh about 15lbs each.  The new battery is 50Ah, of which pretty much all of it is usable, and it weighs about 19lbs.  Progress :o)

December 3rd

Randy received his iFly 740 GPS, so we met at the airport and installed it in his plane.  It took a couple of goes to get everything to his liking and squared up, but it works, and connects to the EchoUAT that we installed a few months ago for ADS-B in just fine.  Now we just need the weather to brighten up so he can go out and test fly it :o)

December 1st

A new month, so here's the stats:

Power billed

Power generated

Randy's decided to get an iFly 740 to replace his Garmin Aera 660 and GDL-39 (what's that?  I told him to do this months ago?  You're right!), so we went out to the airport in the pissing rain to strip the old Garmin stuff from his plane.  We got everything stripped out, then went and met Chris for lunch, as he's buying the old bits for his RV-6A.

In the evening, Vic and I watched "Yesterday".

November 30th

It was a cold, wet and windy day, so we just stayed in and played with Tilly.