Dad had complained about not being able to swing the camera around in the Insta360 videos, so I created a quick one around the dam on the Far West Lake reservoir. it's about 1 minute 22 seconds long, and some 1.8Gb in size, so it took about an hour to upload to the YouTub. Where they immediately went to work over compressing the whole thing.
We met the flying gang for lunch at In 'N Out.
As Xmas is on Saturday, we got the Friday off. Yay, 3 day weekend.
I met Shane at the airport so we could look at this parking brake thing he's been playing with. The wind was gusting to 21 knots almost straight across the runway (220, the runway's 150 degrees) and we didn't have to fly, so we didn't.
At home, we watched "No Time To Die."
I went and got the COVID booster shot. I'm still not magnetic, but I'm hoping my balls don't swell up.
Vic's new PC arrived - it's a pre-built HP system with an RTX 3060Ti, and after a few hours copying data from her old Alienware Alpha, we had it playing Warcraft with everything turned up to 11 at 60fps (the fastest speed the monitor can display).
I went and met Shane and Liza at the airport so we could drill a couple of holes and put his throttle unit back together. We also checked my wiring of his old headset, and that worked, so we put that into his Team Wendy helmet.
It was pretty crappy, but the AWOS was saying 1700', so we took off to go for a little flight. Our little flight ended up being even smaller than we'd hoped before heading back, but I did get to grab a short section of video of my flying alongside him before we headed back.
I was on call, so I got to keep the queue at work cleared out.
It was foggy today, so we drove up to Auburn to meet Chris for breakfast. He was late, but flying back from Tahoe, so we didn't give him too much grief.
After clearing out some stuff at work, I went to the airport to help Shane tinker with the parking brake on his gyro. After trying for ages to drill a hole in a bracket, I said "it's almost like this is stainless steel." Shane pointed out that stainless isn't magnetic, and sure enough when we tested it with a magnet, it was stainless. He's gone to Home Depot on the way home to get some cobalt tipped drills.
I tested my new Lightspeed headset, and it seems to work. It'll be nice to fly with it when the fog lifts.
Shane has been fiddling with helmets as well, and managed to completely screw up a headset trying to get it apart to install, so this evening I sat and rewired it. I thought I'd done a pretty good job until I went to put some heat shrink over the joins (that were already heat shrinked) and realised that the heat shrink I'd put over the wires was too small to get over the new bundle because it all had heat shrink on it. Still, I guess that's what electrical tape is for :o)
It was an exciting day.
First of all, I'd bought a refurbished Lightspeed headset, but it had arrived with all the refurbished parts just missing. A brand new refurbishing set arrived today, and I installed that. Just need to test it now.
Then my Sky Cowboy helmet showed up, so I spent a little time installing the David Clark headset into it. They don't have instructions, so we took a bunch of pictures while doing it.
Vic had her surgery check up today, and it sounds like she'll probably pull through.
I screwed around with the Insta360 footage from the weekend and created another YouTub video.
After we'd caught up on some TV, I sat and played with the video from the Insta360 that I shot on Saturday.
It's raining, so we picked Shane up in the car and met Chris, Bill and PJ for lunch.
In the evening, we watched "Black Widow."
I've now got an Insta360 camera, so I took the plane out for a little spin to test it.
Shane was out at the same time and aiming to fly over his house, so I lent him the old GoPro 7.
Chris got dropped back at Lincoln, so we had lunch before he headed back to Cameron Park.
The camera's worked well, now I just need to play with the footage.
I went and picked up the carb balancer from Ken, then met Randy at the airport and helped him finish up the annual on Chris' gyro.
Vic was feeling a lot better after a night's sleep, so we even went out and got lunch and brought it home - she wanted to get out of the house for a bit, but she's not allowed to drive for a while. Probably the drugs she's on, we think.
In the afternoon I went to the airport to help Randy finish up the annual on Chris's gyro, but we still need to do the carb sync - his wife called to remind him of an appointment he'd forgotten, so I sent him home and cleared up before going home too. The plan is to finish up tomorrow.
Vic's operation was today, so we were up in the dark to get her to the hospital at 05:30. After the initial check in talk, I was sent home.
About 09:30, while I was in the shower, they left a message to say she was out of surgery and in the recovery room, so I headed over to the hospital to pick her up - they'd said it would be about an hour in the recovery room until she could go home. I waited in the parking lot until about 10:45 and called them to see how she was doing, and they said she'd probably be out at around 11:30, so I drove around for a bit, then went back and sat playing games on my phone.
At about 12:20, they called to say to pick her up at 12:45, so I waited a while then drove over to the pick up area. There they called to say she wasn't doing great, so they'd call me when she was.
I had a little old lady with a walker come and ask me if I was a Lyft driver, which I wasn't, but I told her they're supposed to have that stupid pink moustache. I'd probably have run her home if I'd known when exactly Vic was going to be discharged.
I got a text from Vic to say she was coming down around 13:30, so I stopped playing games on my phone and watched the door until she arrived around 13:45.
She was feeling nauseous when going around corners, so we drove home very carefully, and she went to bed. She was very sore.
The vet had called her phone, rather than mine, and wanted to talk. I called them, and it seems Tilly has an elevated alkaline phosphatase (ALP) level - normal is between 5 and 160, and she's at 300 and something, indicating possibly liver cancer. We had a long chat about quality vs quantity, and I figured we don't want to risk putting a 14 year old dog under anaesthetic to do an ultrasound when the treatment for liver cancer wouldn't be great. As it seems her ALP level was around 250 in January 2020, I'm not particularly worried about cancer getting her before just dumb old age does. We'll just keep an eye out for abdominal discomfort and jaundice which would suggest liver problems that we should look into.
We took Tilly to the vet for her annual inspection, and he was very happy with her condition "for a 14 year old dog," which is comforting.
I've taken the week off, and today was supposed to be Tilly's annual inspection, but the vet cancelled it on Friday night, after the office was closed. I then got 2 different reminders about appointments, one for 08:40 (the original appointment) and one for 10:00, so I was thinking that maybe they'd just moved us to a different appointment, so I called them as soon as they'd opened, and ended up making a new appointment for Tuesday.
There was a screwup about the space in the hangar, so I ended up meeting Todd at the hangar to sort stuff out. As the cloud base was about 100', I ended up driving up to Auburn to meet Chris for brunch.
When I got home, we took Tilly to get her picture with Santa. She was not impressed.
I started the day at the airport for the EAA pancake breakfast. It was a little foggy.
Chris showed up with Tim, and we spent a few hours getting his gyroplane ready for its annual inspection - hopefully next week. I also got the rest of my 100 hour service done and out of the way.
At the weekend we'd discovered that Chris's annual inspection was due on his gyroplane at the end of the month, so he flew it to Lincoln and dumped it in our hangar before it got dark. I went and picked him up and took him to Granite Bay so we could meet his wife for dinner, and she could take him home when we were done :o)
I flew up to Auburn to meet Chris, Kim, Vic and Bill for brunch.
After lunch, I meandered about a bit because I was trying to get to 1300 hours to change the oil, and because there was some dipstick who kept seeming to fly at me, then I was concerned that I couldn't see him in the pattern, and that was because he was flying a right hand pattern, rather than a left hand pattern like everybody else.
I changed the oil and did a couple of other quick maintenance tasks, but I'll need to go back one evening to complete the service as there was some stuff I didn't want to do - changing the spark plugs while the engine is warm is a bad idea, for example.
We went and met Bill, William and Jody at a glass blower's in Auburn on one of their open days, so we could watch the ladies casually playing with molten glass at over 2000F.
Today was Thanksgiving, where I pulled the short straw and watched the queue at work until the Australians arrived.
When I was off work, I went to the airport and peeled my squeaky brakes apart and cleaned as much as I could get to without replacing "O" rings, and put them all back together. Shane was there, taking his sister-in-law for a ride, and when I was done I took Liza out while I tested my brakes to see if they were fixed.
While not fixed, they're a lot better, so they'll do until I can get enough parts to tear them completely to pieces yet again.
In the evening, we ate lasagna and watched "Fast and Furious 9", which is just so silly it's silly.
I spent a little time cobbling together and uploading a couple of videos...
Sunday's North Fork run in its entirety for Liza :o)
I started the day going to get gas for the plane, and the pump was just dribbling gas out. I wasn't particularly in a hurry, so I propped the nozzle in the gas can and sat down to wait. The attendant came over and asked that we all stop trying to pump gas, as they'd overfilled the tanks and needed to clear the vapour lock. Eventually that was all cleared, and I got to fill up and head to the airport.
We dinked around getting everything ready and so on, then I flew Lisa so Shane could fly his daughter, and Randy flew by himself up to Auburn for brunch.
On the way home we flew the North Fork of the American River canyon. Well, Randy and I did - Shane flew above the rim and watched, as he's still a noob.
I got to test my new David Clark headset, and it works well enough that I managed to forget to switch it on for the flight back, and it was still fine. This is the new passenger headset - I'm still thinking I'll look at getting myself a Lightspeed on Black Friday.
I picked Randy up on the way to the airport for the EAA pancake breakfast. Shane's new ASI was in the hangar, so I took that out of the box and tested it - it seemed to work, so we installed that into the panel and put everything back together, then went and had breakfast.
We'd aimed to meet Chris and PJ at the Colusa Harvest fly-in, but the cloud was at about 300' over Lincoln, so Randy got a ride home while we tinkered with the planes.
The cloud stayed low until about 11:30, at which point we sent Shane out to test his panel while Randy came back and we preflighted the planes. I had a flat tyre. Again. Luckily I had a spare inner tube, so I fitted that, then we flew to Auburn to meet Chris and PJ.
After drinking soda and chatting for a while, Randy and I flew home.
Randy and Liza went for a longer flight, and it's nice to see that the ADS-B (that I installed and configured) is working :o)
I attended the EAA Zoom meeting about the Titan missile silos in Lincoln that most people aren't aware of :o)
I met Shane at the airfield and we got his windscreen bolted on again. It was too foggy to fly to Auburn to meet Chris, but we decided Shane could do a low hop down the runway to test the panel. He didn't fly as far as I'd thought he was going to, and it was because the new digital airspeed indicator wasn't working. We put the plane away and drove to Auburn with Randy to meet Chris and PJ for lunch.
After lunch, we went back to Lincoln and played with the airspeed indicator. Digging in to the setup, we found that a pressure change on the static port was registering, but nothing for the pitot port, so it's broken. Unfortunately we couldn't find the barb to mount the old airspeed indicator, so Shane's going to talk to the manufacturer of the new one, or get a new barb for the old one, hopefully before next weekend.
It was too foggy to fly to Oroville for their pancake breakfast, and I was on call anyway, so I stayed in and worked.
I did get out to the airfield and helped Shane get his gyro out and tested the new panel. We were missing a couple of screws for the windscreen though, so we agreed to try again tomorrow.
I went to the airport and did the ADS-B configuration for Shane's gyroplane. While I was there, I changed the (55W) halogen H3 bulb in my landing light for an LED one that pulls a lot less power. It was... fiddly, but I'm happy with the results for now.
 |
| Halogen |
 |
| LED |
I went to an EAA online presentation about two of the old autogiros they have in the museum in Oshkosh, eg Miss Champion.
I went to the airport early to catch the sunrise on the GoPro, then went to the EAA meeting. The speaker, Paul Dye, is an ex-NASA administrator, and we'd been hoping he was going to fly in in his SubSonex, but the weather forecast made getting home again look doubtful.
Randy wanted to go out and fly, but it started raining, screwing up that plan.
We did a tiny amount of work on Shane's panel, basically we need to figure out the wiring for the new warning lights, and then I went home and changed the rollers on the big garage door. It wasn't horrifically difficult, so I'll get the motorcycles out at some point and do that door too.
I bashed up the timelapse from the morning's flight, and put it on YouTub:
I went out to the airport early and helped Ken and Shane with Shane's new panel. I got everything in place for the ADS-B doohickey, and we got the old panel out and stripped before going to lunch.
After doing some stuff around the house, I went to the airport and found I needed to change the inner tube in the wheel I'd just replaced the tyre on :o( After changing that, I went for a little potter around over Folsom Lake.
"They" came and tested the ducting for the new AC / heater (it's part of the permit process), and said everything looks great.
I went through the video I shot on Saturday, that included Shane's first flight with us, as put the bits with him in them on a video.
As it wasn't raining, I could get up on the roof and replace the batteries in the weather station, so that's registering correctly now (the wind was OK before, not sure about the rain, but the temperature was way off).
A new month, so here are the solar stats:
 |
| Power billed |
 |
| Power generated |
We were just headed out to take Tilly to the park when the garage door didn't close properly. Vic took Tilly in the van, and I thought I'd fixed the door, then I walked to the park and helped tire Tilly out.
When we got home, the door opened and closed OK, so I figured it was fine. I was just heading out to the airport in the Bolt when it decided to get even worse, so it was all skewed and jammed. We fought with it for a bit, then pulled the van out too and got it to the point where it would close properly and I figured I'd get a professional in - the last thing I want to do is screw it up completely.
We went and got a hot chocolate and briefly wandered around the farmer's market just as it was closing down, then went home. I called a professional about the door, and they said they could be there in two hours. Result!
Eli arrived, and we ended up tightening up the spring, but he thinks we really need to look at replacing the door(s), as the hinges and rollers are wearing out. He did give me some tips about replacing stuff, because I think he realises that I'm the sort of dumbass who'll do it myself :o)
Randy and I met Shane at the airport, and we flew up to Auburn for breakfast.
After lunch, we flew back.
I met Shane at the airport to look at problems with his radio, but it seemed just fine :o(
Shane passed his flight test today :o)
After work, I went and picked up a headset at the airport... my passenger one seems to be playing up.
Shane's doing his practical test for his pilot's license, so Dayton's in town. A bunch of us went out to dinner to wish him well :o)
I had a day off, so I took the van and got it smogged. It's always a fraught experience, as there were a lot of problems smogging it when I first had the new engine in there, but (touch wood) it's actually been fine since the newer ECU went in.
The weather station's been having some fun - due to all the rain, the little solar panel wasn't able to charge the batteries for the external sensors, and it stopped working. It's sort of working now, other than the temperature reading -40F, but I'll replace the batteries. Rather than the unobtainium rechargeable alkaline batteries, they recommend lithium non rechargeables now, so I'll get some of those before climbing up on the roof. If the sensor itself is bad, I still have the new sensor array that came with the replacement station that I can use if necessary.
I was on call again, but we managed to get out and join Chris, Shane, Bill and family for lunch. Other than that, it rained all. Bloody, Day. Still, I guess we need the rain...
I went to the airport hoping to be able to fly, but it ended up raining. And I got paged for work - I was having a lot of trouble hearing the guy on the phone, so I went home and had trouble hearing him on a WebEx. Still, fixed the problem even though it was nothing to do with us.
In the evening, we watched "Doon."
I was aiming to attend an FAA Zoom session on operations at Reid-Hillview, but for some reason it wouldn't let me in, so I spent 15 minutes waiting and retrying before giving up entirely :o(
I went to the EAA membership meeting via Zoom. Chris was at Placerville doing his gyroplane talk, but I didn't feel like driving all the way out there just to heckle him.
The AC install guys came to install a control wire for the Nest thermostat - I'd asked about it when they were doing the original install, but was told not to worry my pretty little head about it. So now the Nest can control the fan at both speeds, rather than just the one.
In the evening, I went and showed the space in the hangar to a guy who's going to be building an RV-7 (and possibly a Mini-max too). He seemed interested, so hopefully that's over and done with for the moment.
We had a new heater / AC unit installed. Tilly was quite interested at first, so I put up her gate to keep her out of the way so she didn't get stepped on, but she soon went to sleep in the sunny spot by the back door.
Randy and I went and flew around Beale Air Force base. Don't worry, we didn't cut through their airspace, the tracker just lost us for part of the journey :o)
In the evening, we all trooped over to Bill's for an "end of the summer barbecue," and just before we set out to drive home, it started (lightly) raining :o)
I got to the airport early for the EAA pancake breakfast, then I went for a little flight.
After I got back, I did a little tinkering with the plane, including rotating one of the tyres so it'll wear the _other_ edge.
When I got home, I found that it's the anniversary of joining the Dog Aging Project, so I had a pile of questionnaires to do about the last year with Tilly.
We went to Randy's so Vic could try on the Sky Cowboy helmet. Not an overwhelming success, but maybe we'll see what it's like to fly with it.
I went to the airport and took a meandering flight to Auburn to meet Chris and PJ for breakfast.
I was playing with the horizon levelling feature on the GoPro 10, so that's why I flew a couple of orbits before heading for the hills.
Shane flew past Auburn as we were getting ready to leave, but I missed it because I was inside Wings at the time. Chris and PJ saw him though, and I heard him leaving when I came out. He's not signed off to land there yet :o)
I fleetingly saw Jarron on the way back, but he apparently didn't see me. At first I thought it was Shane, but I didn't see his on the fish finder (he has a transponder, even though he doesn't have ADS-B yet,) so I figured Jarron was out. When I got back to Lincoln and Shane was there, but Jarron wasn't, it was Jarron I'd seen.
We started really early at the airport, flying to Placerville for their Young Eagles event. I'd decided that if we were going to be flying East that early, we'd take off a little earlier still and see the sun come up from the air.
Rather than base at the EAA hangar, they were based by the fuel island - Randy missed this completely and started taxying for the West hangars, so I had to call him on the radio to come back.
It was pretty busy for us gyro pilots - I don't know about everybody else. There were supposedly 33 kids, and 10 pilots. 2 of us were gyros (Chris was busy in the early morning). I flew 5, and Randy flew 4, so I feel that we more than pulled our weight again :o) Shane and Lisa drove over with gas cans and step ladders, and helped out loading kids and answering questions - I like it when I don't have to talk to people :o)
I think I was pretty precise in my flights :o)
Chris showed up pretty much as everything was done, and we gathered everybody together and headed down the hill to the taqueria there for lunch - everybody had eaten the EAA out of everything at the barbecue.
After lunch, Randy and I headed home. We were getting buffeted by the wind coming over the hills, so rather than go over the headlands by Folsom lake, I suggested we run the South fork of the American River to the lake, then head back from there. There was a band of smoke over Rocklin that made my eyes sting, but luckily that was done with by the time we got to Lincoln.
The "support" people at GoPro asked me to try shooting without the image stabilisation turned on, so one of my flights, I did just that. As expected, it's unwatchable.
I figured the next thing they're going to ask for is the "standard" stabilisation, rather than "high" (which is how it comes out of the box), so I shot that on the way home.
I also shot the sunrise (with the trusty old GoPro 7), so I threw that into a video too while I was at it...
After work, I went to the airport and installed a new push to talk switch on the plane. Of course, I did it wrong, and had to cut the wires and re-solder them, but it all seems to work now.
I even managed to get back home just in time for the EAA IMC/VMC meeting :o)
We celebrated Russ' birthday by watching "The Tomorrow War." I was most disappointed to see that in 2051 we'll still be flying Blackhawks instead of the replacement, and F-22s rather than the replacement.
I went to the airport and flew up to Auburn with Randy. There were a bunch of us there - Bill also flew, but Jody, William, Shane and Lisa arrived in cars and Chris and Tim rode up on motorcycles.
After lunch we flew back. The smoke sucks again, so it didn't seem worth screwing around somewhere else. My push to talk switch is playing up again, so I need to bring out a soldering iron and put a new one in.
I got a reply from GoPro about the camera... they suggest turning off the stabilisation. I think that's going to make the footage unusable, but hey, I'll try it, even though the whole reason I bought the thing was for better stabilisation. Chris has offered to lend me his 8 (or is it a 9?) to try, and I'll probably take him up on that, especially if I can test it soon to make a point to GoPro that there's a problem here.
I started the day at the airport - it was the EAA first Saturday breakfast, where I hung out and chatted with people. Randy arrived, and Chris and Time flew in too.
After breakfast, and a chat with Shane about his upcoming flight test, Randy and I went for a little flight so I could test my GoPro - GoPro suggested a factory reset, but that's changed nothing as expected.
At home, I clipped a short video to put on the YouTub that I can point the GoPro support people at.
I'd been intending to fly to Vacaville with Jarron to swap the Air Command for the Bandit, but that didn't look like it was going to happen, so I took Tilly to the park. She pottered around, said "hi" to some other dogs, and I brought her home after she'd tripped for the 4th time, meaning she was getting over tired.
I went to the airport and played with the new and old GoPro - sadly, the old Hero 7 is better, even at 4K, which makes me think I'm missing something, or there's something wrong with my Hero 10.
I think I'll have to talk to GoPro, so I've saved a video to YouTub to show what I'm seeing.
We got going early, and flew to Alta Sierra, a private airstrip, to see a house that's for sale there. We're not that serious about buying, but figured that it was worth checking out.
There were a couple of things that would kill us wanting to live there (hangar door height, internet speeds, power cuts, runway only lands / takes off one way), so after seeing it, we made the neighbours' day by taking off and heading to Auburn to meet Randy, Bill and family and Shane.
After lunch, we headed back to Lincoln.
When we got home, I looked at the video from my shiny new GoPro 10 from the landing at Alta Sierra (where I'd forgotten to turn it off, so we only had the one video) and was disappointed - it seems to stutter tracking left to right with the Hypersmooth stuff turned on.
Todd was showing a bunch of people around the airport, and asked me to talk to them about the gyroplanes, so I went and did that :o)
I'd been thinking I'd have a quiet day, so I started out taking Tilly to the park. We walked around while she yelled at the kids to get off her lawn, and stole a ball from a black Labrador.
Chris' planned trip to Santa Barbara didn't happen, so he suggested lunch at Auburn. Fine, I'll see you there :o)
I took a meandering route there as I had time to kill. Bill also came and met us there. Shame Wings was closed :o(
We decided to head to Oroville, as the golf course is always open. Bill and Chris were in their RVs, so I was bringing up the rear. I had thought about dropping the gyro at Lincoln, but figured it would be quicker to just fly it to Oroville.
It was very gusty and blustery, so I headed down to the flat land before going North, rather than have the crap beaten out of me the whole way there. Chris ordered for me, and I arrived just as lunch was brought out :o)
Today was the Cops and Rodders show at Cameron Park, so I picked Randy up early and we flew over there, getting there just before 08:00.
It was funny, we flew straight in on finals, and there was a Cessna behind us - he suggested we all pull off at the mid runway turn out and then we could back track to the North exit.
Randy and I landed right on the displaced threshold and pulled off at the North exit :o)
We spent the day looking at classic cars and planes, and answering questions about the gyroplanes.
At the end of the day, we did a quick fly past and headed home.
