November 28th

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.

November 27th

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.

November 26th

The day after Thanksgiving is a holiday, because everybody would take it off anyway.  I ordered a new toothbrush in the Black Friday sales, then picked Randy up on the way to the airport, where we met Shane and flew to Oroville for lunch.

The plan was to go and see Feather Falls on the way home, but I started to not feel so great, so Randy and I headed back to Lincoln.  I'd thought we were about 20 minutes round trip from the falls, but Shane ended up about 6 minutes behind us.

November 25th

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.

November 22nd

I spent a little time cobbling together and uploading a couple of videos...

A sample of the horizon levelling of the GoPro 10

Sunday's North Fork run in its entirety for Liza :o)

November 21st

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.

November 20th

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)

November 19th

Jen came over after work to fuss Tilly, and eventually the bipeds went and got pizza.

November 17th

I attended the EAA Zoom meeting about the Titan missile silos in Lincoln that most people aren't aware of :o)

November 14th

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.

November 13th

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.

November 10th

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'll say it's not perfect, but at least now I can fly around with it on without the fuel pressure going down :o)

November 9th

I went to an EAA online presentation about two of the old autogiros they have in the museum in Oshkosh, eg Miss Champion.

November 7th

After changing the clocks in the house, we went to the airport and flew up to Auburn to meet Chris, Tim, Bill and William for brunch.

After brunch, we flew pretty much straight back, as a) it was cold and b) a mono headset causes issues on a stereo intercom.

When we got home, I replaced the rollers on the motorcycle garage door :o)

November 6th

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:

November 5th

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.

November 3rd

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.

November 2nd

"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).

November 1st

A new month, so here are the solar stats:

Power billed

Power generated

I've taken a week off work to do things and stuff, so obviously it rained today.  Not much, but enough to stop me doing any of the things I'd intended to do :o(

October 31st

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)