March 29th

I took the bodywork off the DRZ, then pulled the fuel tank and seated the carb as well as I can.  I also replaced the disintegrating air filter, and ran it up - everything seems fine now :o)

March 28th

Randy and I flew up to Auburn to meet Bill and Chris for brunch.

We flew the canyon on the way home.

We then went home and watched the Snyder cut of Justice League.  4 hours!

March 27th

I pottered around the house in the morning, then drove the van to the airport to go for a little flight.

There was a fire (looked like a farmer burning stubble, but surely not, that's illegal) North of the airport which was ruining the visibility up there - I flew North of that just to see how bad it was.  Here's hoping it's not the start of things to come :o(

March 25th

I attended a webinar with Luca Magni about the factory - he went through the history of Magni, and talked a little about the new M-26, which'll supposedly be available this year :o)

March 23rd

I went and replaced the pilot jet on the DRZ, and it runs OK now.  It looks like the carb isn't quite seated on the boot from the airbox though, so I'll have to take the tank and bodywork off at some point to sort that out.  Ans I've decided that the foam air filter could really do with replacing too, so I've ordered one of those.

March 22nd

I went and looked at the DRZ carb parts, and everything looks fine, so I wiped it all off and put it back together.  It still doesn't run right, and it still smells like a pilot jet problem to me.  I think I have parts of a carb rebuild kit around here somewhere, so I'm going to look for that and see if I can get this fixed.  It's running fine on choke and above about 4,000rpm.

March 21st

Randy and I braved the wind to fly up to Auburn for brunch.

Having spent the morning watching people not do so great in the gusts, we decided to go pretty much straight back to Lincoln - having to remember part way there that we were going to be landing on 33, so didn't need to do a 45 degree join to downwind :o)

When he dropped me home, Randy came and played with the guinea pigs for a while - I don't introduce people to them because I'm allergic to them, and their hay.

Tilly ended up falling asleep on the floor in the guinea pig room because nobody was paying attention to her.  Well, other than me, but she can ignore me any time.

I'd talked about doing an edited video, rather than just a start to finish video, so I threw together this:

Henry's coming next month, so I'll probably shoot more video, plus talk to him about editing :o)

I took the float bowl off the carb on the DRZ, and got the jets out - they looked fine, but I've left them soaking in carb cleaner to try and fix what looks like a pilot jet blockage problem.

March 20th

Randy picked me up and we went to the airport.  It was pretty busy there, as it was the display day, but we headed over to Colusa for their Spring fly-in - we were too low to show up on ADS-B out in the boonies.

It was interesting, as they were using 13 when we approached, Randy landed on 13, then some guy without a radio landed on 31, then I made a slow approach so I could get him off the runway and land on 13, then Ray in his RV-6A landed after me on 13.  Oh well, all's well that ends well.

After lunch and walking around a bit, we flew back.  I had to fly around one of the fire helicopters tootling along the Feather River :o)  When we landed, we found out that Bill had won the nicest aircraft prize, so his $50 hamburger turned out to be free.  One of my brakes is squeaking again, so we pulled that apart and found that the tyre was starting to bulge - replaced that, and put everything back together, then I replaced the front tyre as it's starting to look a bit low, and they last forever anyway.

At home I pulled the van out and cleaned everything up so I can see any new leaks.  It all looked OK when I put it away, so we'll see how it holds up.

March 17th

I went to the EAA membership meeting to hear about John building his RV-6A.  Apparently it's partly my fault for telling him the partially completed kit was for sale in the first place.

March 16th

I went and bled the worst of the air out of the powered steering system on the van (by turning the wheels side to side with the engine off, then with the engine running), and it seems like it's not leaking, but time will tell...

March 15th

I got under the van and replaced the little bit of hose on the powered steering return line, then cleared up some of the mess on the floor underneath.  I was too damned tired to do anything else at this point, so I called it a night.

March 14th

Having got up an hour early (do I prefer the extra hour of usable daylight?  Yes, but why don't we have it all year round?), I went and tried a couple of local auto parts stores for 7/16" hose, and struck out, so I headed over to the airport to meet Bill and show him the space in the hangar.  We put his RV-6 in there, and it fits just fine, so he'll haggle with Todd about the cost :o)

We flew up to Auburn under a cloud layer (me in the Magni, Bill in the RV) and met Chris (in his Magni) for lunch.

I flew over the house on the way home, but there's a cold front coming in, so I didn't stay out particularly long - it was starting to get bumpy.

In the evening, Jen came over to visit Tilly.  She'd been in Rocklin earlier, and O'Reilly's web site said the store there had 7/16" hose, so she brought me 1' to play with :o)

March 13th

Checking the van, the powered steering lines are leaking :o(

Randy picked me up and we flew to Oroville for their display day.  As usual, we were too low to show up most of the time :o)

We flew back, then went home so I could get back to work :o(

In the evening, we watched "Shadow in the Cloud", which can best be described as a complete train wreck.

March 11th

The new serpentine belt tensioner pulley for the van showed up, so after work I installed that.  I also put on a short length of 1/2" hose to get the powered steering system working again.  It looks like everything's OK, but I need to clean it all up so I can see any new leakage.  The powered steering works, at least, and the engine is back to being nice and quiet.

March 10th

Bus Depot is out of stock of the power steering hoses until the end of the month, so it's just as well I didn't cut the old ones out, really.  I'm going to see if 1/2" hose will work on the few inches I need it for, then maybe look at doing the whole hoses when they're available.

March 9th

I called around to try and find some 7/16" powered steering hose, but nobody has any.  I think I'll look at replacing the whole damn thing if Bus Depot has them in stock.  At least then I won't have to think about this ever again.

March 8th

I had the day off (a "wellness day".  Whatever, I'll take it), so I went and ran some errands on my way to the airport.  Randy was flying with Mary, and we'd talked about flying in the afternoon, but the wind was pretty strong, and there was a lot of cumulus cloud about, so we knew it was going to be bumpy.  After lunch, we headed home.

I pulled the powered steering hose I think is leaking off the van, and found that the 3/8" hose I have won't fit.  They didn't have any 1/2" hose, but I think I need 7/16, looking at the old hose.  I'll see what I can find.

March 7th

I got to the airport early to work on replacing my push-to-talk switch on the plane.  It's been playing up, and I have spares, so I figured I'd just swap it out.  Well, one of the wires I'd soldered to the old switch was looking like it was close to breaking, so that was probably the problem rather than the switch, but then I found that there was a nick in the coating on the wires where it comes out of the stick, so I figured I should cut the wires there and extend them.  So it took me a bit longer than I'd anticipated.  We were supposed to be flying to Placerville to pick up a friend of Randy's, so I told him to head out, and I'd be about 15 minutes behind him.  The plan was that I'd meet them in the air as they left Placerville, so I wasn't going to land or anything.  I flew over there, listening on their frequency, but didn't hear anything from them at all.  I slowed down and loitered to the West for a little bit so as to not get in the way of the guy there doing circuits, but still heard nothing from Chris or Randy, so I figured I'd missed them and they were in front of me.  I headed to Auburn, which was where we were supposed to be having lunch, flying so I could see into the South Fork canyon in case I saw them, but I didn't.  There were a couple of planes leaving Auburn, so I was being quite chatty on the radio so nobody hit me, and when I was 3.5 miles out, Chris called to say he was 10 miles to the South.  I landed and chatted to Tony while I waited for them to get there, then we went and waited for the very busy restaurant.

I'd originally planned on flying back to Placerville with Randy (Chris went straight home) but it was getting later than I'd anticipated, so I ran the North Fork canyon then headed back to Lincoln.

When I got home, Tilly had been to the dog park, so was hobbling around, but it seems the van was making an awful squealing noise.  I started it up and peered at things, to find the alternator tensioner pulley seemed to have moved - I took it off and it looks like the bearings had seized, so it had heated up to the point where the lip that stops it moving had melted enough to come off.  This meant the pulley was rubbing against the tensioner arm.  At least, I'm hoping that's the extent of the problems, and I'll replace the pulley and see if that fixes it.

In the evening, we watched "Greenland".

March 6th

It was supposed to be raining today.  A lot.  So the display day we were aiming to go to at Sutter was cancelled earlier in the week.  But it was bright sunshine and dry, so we flew to Oroville for lunch - I believe it's the first time we've been there since New Year's Day :o)

Chris flew his RV-6A, and so he could fly through the (permanent) Temporary Flight Restriction over Beale Air Force Base (it's so the Reaper drones can launch and land from >18,000' without worrying about hitting people flying over their class C airspace), was talking to NorCal approach - he said they were telling people about the two unidentified aircraft at 1300' flying under the Beale shelf - that was us :o)

As often happens, we didn't get picked up on the way home until we were pretty much over Camp Far West Lake reservoir.  There were parachutes in the air, which is why I did a few orbits on the way in - to let them land.

Vic took Tilly to the dog park while I was out.  A 10 month old Labrador puppy wouldn't stop banging Tilly around trying to play, so they came home pretty quickly :o(

In the evening, we watched "Monster Hunter".

March 4th

The new neutral safety switch came in for the van, and after checking to make sure it was in the right place, got installed no problem.  Back to 2 working vehicles... now I just need the time to get the carb rebuilt on the DRZ.

March 3rd

I attended the IMC club meeting at our EAA chapter.  I'm only doing this when I have nothing else to do, as I don't think I get an awful lot out of them.

March 1st

I know, everybody wants to see the solar stats.

Power billed

Power generated