October 30th

Randy and I met Shane at the airport, and we flew up to Auburn for breakfast.

After lunch, we flew back.

After chatting at the airport for a while we all headed home.

In the evening, Vic and I watched "Free Guy."

October 28th

I met Shane at the airport to look at problems with his radio, but it seemed just fine :o(

October 27th

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.

October 26th

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)

October 25th

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.

October 24th

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...

October 23rd

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."

October 21st

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(

October 20th

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.

October 19th

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.

October 18th

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.

October 17th

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)

October 16th

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.

October 12th

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.

October 10th

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.

Shane and I went through his maintenance logs, then talked for several hours about his upcoming flight review.  Jarron landed and put his gyro away during this, and just as we were leaving, Randy showed up for an after work flight.

October 9th

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...

 

October 6th

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)

October 4th

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.

October 3rd

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.

October 2nd

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.

October 1st

A new month, so here are the stats:

Power billed

Power generated

In the evening, we watched "Cruella."