April 28th

I'm trying a new monitor - a 32" 4K one, rather than the 2x25" 1920x1080 that I usually use.  I'm undecided as to whether I like it as yet :o(

April 26th

Vic's going to be taking my current monitors for her work at home setup, so I get to buy new monitors.  I've been torn between a larger 4K monitor and 2 smaller QHD/FHD ones.  We (again) took the TV from the bedroom and put it on my desk, and it's obvious that if the new monitor is much bigger, I'll need a curved screen :o(

April 25th

I started the day playing with DaVinci Resolve, and it seems pretty straightforward, even if the free version is a little crippled.  I want to try some other software before deciding for good.

Randy came over - we had been intending to watch a movie, but decided to do that next weekend as he had some family stuff going on in the afternoon.  So, we went and met Chris for lunch in Roseville.

April 24th

The forecast wasn't great, but Randy and I tried to get to Auburn for lunch.  There were a few spots of rain at Lincoln, but it was raining pretty hard as we approached Auburn.  The interesting thing is that the chirping from the rotors goes silent in the rain - it's stupid, but I kept looking up to see if the rotor was still there :o)

Once we'd got back to Lincoln, we drove to lunch at Karen's, then headed home.  Randy's had a problem with his truck, so we looked at it - the code reader indicates a problem with the cam position sensor, and when he went and bought a new one, it's the same part as the crank position sensor.  He's replaced that before, so figured he just needed to do that again, and replaced the perfectly good crank position sensor.  Strangely enough, this didn't fix his problem, so we looked at it.  The cam position sensor has to be at one end of the engine or the other, and there was something that looked promising on the front of the engine.  We took that out, but it wasn't the cam position sensor, so we put it back.  I couldn't see any wiring between the engine and the firewall, so I went home and looked on the Google for inspiration.  It was indeed on the firewall end of the engine, and I started playing with the DaVinci Resolve video editing software and left him to sort it out.

I'm looking at new video software because mine isn't great - it's 10 years old, for a start, and Henry's videos look a lot better with pretty much the same camera.

Randy called and said he was having problems getting the old cam position sensor out, so I told him to get a new one (obviously he'd thrown out the good one he took out) while I headed over.  I couldn't reach the back of the engine, so we had to improvise a step, but I managed to get it out, and the new one in.  The truck now starts just fine :o)

When I got in, Vic was watching "Shooter", so I sort of watched the rest of that.

April 21st

I went and got my 5G tracking chip installed in my arm.  I must say, I'm impressed with technological progress - Tilly's dumb RFID chip is about the size of a grain of rice, and this 5G chip was so small I couldn't even see it in the syringe, and it has a battery and transmitting antennae and everything.

Half way there.

In the evening I attended the EAA Zoom meeting.

April 19th

Tonight was Henry's last night, so we went to the airport and barbecued the last of the hot dogs from last week.

April 18th

Everybody had decided to fly to Half Moon Bay, and do a lap of the San Francisco Bay, but I decided that four hours was going to be too much flying for my hand and arm sprain.

I got some other stuff done about the house while occasionally checking their progress in Flightaware.  I was surprised to see them heading from Gnoss Field to Half Moon Bay, as the weather was reported as Instrument Flight Rules.  So I wasn't surprised to see them turn back.

We went and met Randy and Henry in the evening for frozen yoghurt and heard about their long flying day.

April 17th

Randy picked me up and we  went and bought gas.  A lot of gas.  25 gallons for Randy, 15 gallons for me and 18 gallons for Henry.  We've flown a lot this week.  At the airport, we helped Bill tinker with some new LED lights, then headed to Auburn to meet Chris and Chris for breakfast.

Chris, Randy, Chris, Henry, me

After lunch, we flew home  again.  We had talked about running the canyon, but it was gusty, so we probably wouldn't have had much fun.

April 16th

We flew over to Cameron Park to meet Chris for a late lunch.  I did a lap of his house on the way, as it's not far from the airport.

On the way back, we went and flew low over Don's practice area, then Randy and Henry headed towards Placerville to fly down the South Fork canyon, and I headed back to Lincoln as my hand was hurting - I didn't want to push it too much harder.  I landed about 10 minutes before them, so I'd just put my plane away when I heard them fly overhead.

April 15th

Henry wanted to fly around the Sutter Buttes, so we flew around the Sutter Buttes :o)

April 14th

I picked Randy up on the way to the airport, and we flew with Henry to Oroville for lunch.  On the way home, we flew over Table Mountain, despite the SIGMETs that had popped up for turbulence in that area.

We didn't show up well on ADS-B for most of the day :o(

In the evening, Chris flew over in his RV-6A, and we barbecued at the hangar.

April 13th

It was a little gustier than Henry was comfortable with, so I met him at the airport and we just did lunch.  Randy's around tomorrow, so we'll start the proper flying then, I reckon.

April 12th

I've taken the week off to do some flying with Henry, so I went to the airport.  He'd already had a flight out to Folsom Lake, so we chatted and looked at planes and stuff, then went and got some lunch.  Afterwards, we took the planes out for a short, bumpy flight.  Hey, it was the early afternoon - I'm sure people in fixed wings weren't having any fun at all :o)

April 11th

I went to the airport and helped Henry, one of Randy's friends who's travelling the country, unload his gyro from his trailer and install the rotor with the winch attached to the side of the trailer.  While he headed out to lunch with his brother in law, and I went for a quick flight.

In the evening, we watched "Godzilla vs. Kong", an animated movie with a few people thrown in.

April 10th

I picked Randy up and we flew to Oroville for their display day.  Bill was opening the hangar when we left, and he beat us there in his RV-6 by about 30 minutes :o)

The wind had picked up by the time we headed home, so we ended up landing on 33, when we'd taken off on 15.  As I approached Lincoln, Steve asked if I'd mind him going past me in the T-6, and I said go for it.  He flew over me, about 100' above me, making me jump and wish I'd had the GoPro running.  Talking to him later, he hadn't seen me at all - I said it was cool, but maybe let's not do that again :o)

Once down, we tinkered with Randy's pre-rotator and control rods - we couldn't figure out the slight drag he's noticed a couple of times, but we did adjust things a little, so maybe that'll go away.

April 9th

I went to the airport, did a thorough preflight, then took the plane out for a test flight.  I did 5 circuits, then went and flew over the house before landing and putting it away again.

It also caught me playing with slow flight for a few minutes...

April 8th

I went to the airport and finished up the 200 hour service on the plane - just cleaning and greasing things, mostly.  While I was there I took a look at Randy's plane, he's had a few incidences of resistance in moving the cyclic, so we're going to take a proper look at it on Saturday - nothing jumped out at me though.

April 7th

After walking Tilly, I settled down and joined the last bit of Auburn's Zoom meeting to hear about the planned longer runway and extra hangars, then joined the Lincoln IMC Club meeting to hear about how the ILS works.

April 4th

I flew to Oroville to meet Chris and Tim for breakfast, and we wandered over to the hangars to talk to Merle, who's tinkering with a Onex.  I also got to chat to Peewee, who's something with the EAA chapter there - they're hoping to get the city to charge cost for their avgas on their display day next Saturday.  I don't care, but that'll cheer up a bunch of guys at Lincoln who usually head up there.

As usual, I was too low for the ADS-B stuff to show up.

When I got back, I started in on the 1200 hour service for the plane.  I've done all the engine work, now I just have some greasing to do on the pre-rotator and rotor head and I'm set for another 100  hours :o)

April 3rd

We got up early and headed over to Sutter for their display day.  We'd agreed to meet Chris there, and were running early, so I went and flew up the Feather River, rather than go straight there.

We flew back along the river, then along Bear Creek and over Camp Far West Lake before heading home.  We were pretty low over the river at the beginning (~750') so we didn't show up on the ADS-B tracking.

We tucked the plane away, then went home and got ready for Tony's wedding, back at the airport.  Having given our condolences to the bride, headed home.

April 1st

A new month, so here are the stats:

Power billed

Power generated