September 26th

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.

September 25th

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.

September 22nd

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)

September 19th

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)

After lunch, I flew back - the other side of Beale so hopefully it wasn't as bumpy.  It was still pretty bumpy.

Shane was at the hangar, getting ready for a lesson, so after I'd put my plane away, I went through a bunch of stuff with him.  When Ken arrived, and Shane left for a flight, I headed home.

So much for a quiet day :o)

September 18th

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.

September 15th

I went to the EAA membership Zoom meeting about Chris, Randy and Henry's Bay tour in April.

September 13th

Tilly had an exciting night.  As usual, she got me up so she could go out and pee some time around midnight, only to find a skunk in the garden.  She shouted at it, and it sprayed at her, but luckily she wasn't close enough that it hit her.  Still, the garden smelled of skunk all night and into the morning.

Something's been digging under the back fence and in the lawn, so maybe that's solved that mystery.

September 12th

I started the day at the airport, changing the air filter on the plane - I've bought a spare :o).  I was meeting Chris at Auburn, but wanted to fly over Vic and Laura at the farmer's market in Roseville first, so I headed out early.  Having done my flypast, I thought  I'd go and find Chris leaving Cameron Park, but as I got close to a very smoky Folsom Lake, I could see a Chinook pulling water out of the lake and dumping it on the peninsula that runs towards the dam, and a UH-1 flying above it.  I decided to bail out and leave them to it, so I headed to Auburn then, getting there about 5 minutes before Vic, and 20 minutes or so before Chris :o)

When we were done at Wings, I flew roughly towards Jimmy's house as he's been on about a fly-past, then headed back to Lincoln.  There was a guy ahead of me heading in who turned away because it was "too busy"... the two of us heading in, one guy doing circuits and two guys leaving.  That's not even close to busy at Lincoln at the weekend :o)

I cleaned my old air filter and left it to dry thoroughly, then went home and did some updates to the EAA web site.

I also threw together some footage of Folsom Lake going dry...

September 11th

I found that the Elk Grove Zero dealer has an FXE in stock, and a used 7.2 integrated FXS, oh, and an FX, but I'm not really that interested in that.  So, we drove down there - the FXS is nice, but the used one had been dropped and tweaked the plastics, which was a shame.  Not really a fan of the FXE compared to the FXS, but it does look to have a nicer dashboard.

Oh, they're an Indian dealer, too, and had an FTR Rally which looked interesting, but isn't what I'm thinking about at the moment.

On the way home, we stopped in at the aquarium place for Vic, then headed home via lunch.

I went out to the airport and just pottered around locally - I saw the jets at the local radio control field, and the low, low Camp Far West Lake Reservoir.

September 10th

Luckily it rained a little overnight... not enough to put out the fires or anything, but enough to cool the house a little.

I managed to find somebody to come out and look at the air conditioner, and of course everything looked fine and worked as it should.

Our current thinking is that the seals in the 25 year old compressor could be coming apart and jamming stuff internally.  The compressor's going to cost more than the system's worth to replace (not helped by using the obsolete R-22 refrigerant) and I can't do it myself - there are a lot of rules about that.  I'm going to start looking at getting a new unit installed, as this one's had as much work as I can do to it, and it's obviously past its prime.

September 9th

This morning, I realised that the air conditioner was just recirculating air, rather than cooling it.

In fact, the temperature never went down after running the house fan first thing in the morning. 

It was also using less power than usual... usually it's ~4.5Kw just for the AC when it's running.

Something's afoot.  I checked everything I could, and it seemed to be working, so I could only assume it's something I couldn't check, like the compressor, or the refrigerant.

September 6th

It was Labo(u)r Day, when Americans remember the advances brought about by the unions by going shopping.

Tilly's leg is obviously feeling much better today.  After feeding her, I started the day proper at the airport, flying a friend of Vic's in the gyro over Folsom Puddle.

When I saw Chris heading to meet us at Lincoln, we followed him back.  Jarron landed right behind us, and was followed by the CHP's air unit, as he busted the TFR for the Bridge fire up in Auburn :o(

Once we were all ready, Chris, Randy and I flew up to Oroville for lunch - as usual we were too low to show up most of the way, but Chris (who uses 1090 rather than UAT) showed up.

After lunch, we flew back, talking to ATC to go straight over Beale Air Force Base.  I'd hoped to get footage on the GoPro, but after the Folsom flight, the battery died well before we got to the "flying along the taxiway" bit :o(  Hopefully Chris got some footage on his GoPro.

When I got home, Vic was out, and Tilly was sleeping.  I woke Tilly up, and we went to find Vic in the park by the school, playing with her hang glider.  After several runs, we put it away and pulled it home on her gardening cart.

September 5th

We started the day by taking Tilly to the dog park.  She trotted around, laid in the paddly pool, then twisted her wrist when her sudden stop caused a husky type thing to jump over her.  We took her home at that point.

I went and met Chris for brunch, where he "forgot" his wallet :o)

After brunch, I headed over to the hangar and cleaned the rotors on the plane, then took it out for a little bimble about.  I always like the noise of a clean rotor.

While I was out, the Bridge fire kicked off in Auburn - I watched the smoke start to rise :o(

After I'd got home, Chris texted to see if I was at the hangar, as he'd fixed his plane and wanted somewhere to go - I pointed out the fire at Auburn, and he flew within a couple of miles of it to see what was going on.

September 4th

I started the day clearing out the queue at work, as I was on call.  Then I headed out to the airport, for the EAA pancake breakfast.  I'd been thinking about going somewhere else, but Placerville is closed for the fire fighting planes to be based there, and I was told that Sutter had cancelled their lunch, so I just sat around and chatted.

Kristina and I were talking, and I told her she was still on my list to fly in the gyro - she'd asked to go up ages ago, when I was rebuilding the rotor, but we've not been able to sync up.  As the smoke's been crappy, she didn't have any students, so we decided to take the gyro up for a potter around.  I took off and got out of the pattern, then handed it over to her to fly, so I was unlikely to do anything to cause me a problem if I need her to do a biennial flight review some time :o)

When we got back to the Lincoln area, she gave the plane back to me and I flew overhead and landed.

She headed off, and I bothered Bill in the hangar for a while, as he's installing new LED lights in the RV-6 before heading home to catch up on work.

September 1st

A new month, so here are the stats:

Power billed

Power generated

In the evening I attended the online EAA IMC / VMC club meeting.