March 27th

I picked Randy up on the way to the airport and we flew up to Auburn to meet Shane (who'd driven.)

We wanted to talk about a YouTub video interview done by a local (ish - he's based at Nevada County) about a recent gyroplane accident.

Basically, listening to Dan's description of what happened, it seems pretty obvious that he doesn't understand how to fly a gyroplane.  Little things like saying he was pulling the stick back, when it should have already been back, and reaching rotation speed when there's no such thing in the Pilot's Operating Handbook for a gyroplane suggest he had a blade sailing incident.

Anyways, we, and a bunch of other people, are concerned that there are a couple of popular YouTubers saying gyros will magically crash on you for no reason at all.  Shane's contacted Dayton Dabbs, who's close to the accident site, and is a) far better prepared to explain what happened and b) far more photogenic than any of us.  So the plan (agreed by everybody involved) is that Juan will interview Dayton, and possibly meet us to fly in a gyroplane - I'm hoping he'll bring his son Pete after this :o)

After brunch, we flew home again.

March 26th

We went to the airport and met Shane and Liza, then took the planes out.  The plan had been to fly over the Far West Lake reservoir and video it, but the camera was playing up.  Shane and Liza carried on per the plan, but we puttered around until Vic got the camera working, so we could do the video of the lake.

After putting the planes away, we went and got lunch at Karen's, where we ran into Ken and Gary.

March 24th

I'd been asked to bring the plane to a show-and-tell event for a school's transportation class, up in Grass Valley, so I flew up there (and I mean "up" - it's at >3,000').

There were a bunch of planes there, from Gary's Cardinal to a Nanchang.

After answering the same few questions (No, it's not a helicopter.  Yes, it has wings, they're up there.  The engine doesn't need a cover, as it's not fast enough to worry about it.  Yes, it's very safe) over and over, I flew back  :o)

March 21st

We watched "Eternals."  Meh.

March 20th

Randy and I went to the airport and flew to Auburn, to meet Bill, Jody, William, PJ, Chris and John for breakfast.

The wind was quite gusty... John termed it "sporty," so we pretty much went straight home.

March 19th

I started the day at the airport.  The forecast was for rain, so we weren't expecting to fly, but it was an EAA breakfast.  There were a few scattered showers, so after everything was tidied away, I headed home to waste the day playing Warcraft.

March 16th

I went to the EAA 1541 Zoom meeting with Mark talking about building his Cozy.

March 15th

Randy called to say he'd been to the airport and put everything back together.  He flew with no errors being logged :o)

March 13th

I started the day an hour late, thanks to the clock change.  Having met Randy, Shane and Liza at the airport, we flew to Auburn in the gusty wind.

The flight back was just as adventurous... there were very few aircraft flying :o)

Back at Lincoln, I fiddled with my squeaking brake a little, Shane tidied away some loose wires from our ADS-B install and Randy dinked around with his malfunctioning fuel pressure sensor.

Now, right from the start I've said it's an electrical issue, but he was thinking he was going to replace it.

To humour me, he pulled the panel and we sprayed some contact cleaner in the EIS connector (there are 3 connections between the sensor and the display - supposedly he'd checked the other 2.)

Now a test runup had the cylinder head temperatures being high - unplugging them didn't change anything, so it wasn't the cylinder head temperatures.

We unplugged the EIS again and blew on the connector, and that seemed to have fixed that.  The fuel pressure sensor was still playing up, so we spent a long time disconnecting it - most of that cutting zip ties to see where the wiring went.

We couldn't get a couple of the crimped on connectors disconnected, which ended up with the crimps being pulled off the wires, and I sat down to pull the crimps apart to see what was going on.

What looks like the main power connector for the sensor (that I was told had been "fixed" when we'd stopped at Colusa last weekend) was almost blue, it was so corroded, so it was decided that we'd replace the crimps and reconnect it to see if that was the problem.

That took a while, and once it was done, Randy took the plane out for a test flight.  The cylinder head temperature warning went off again, but the fuel pressure was fine.

We left the EIS unplugged so the contact cleaner should totally dry out, but I'm hopeful that the problem was electrical, like I said at the beginning of this adventure.

March 12th

Everybody was out doing other things, so I went and filed our taxes, then headed to the airport to potter around for a while.

When I got home, I finally got around to updating the home theatre system to Matrix.  Seems to work.

March 9th

I've ordered and now received a new air filter for the van, so I went through the struggle to get that installed.

I'm thinking I'll probably replace the oxygen sensor, too, as I swear it's using more gas than it used to.  The last smog test looked fine though.

March 6th

I went and met Randy, Shane and Liza at the airport, and we headed out for Colusa.  The plan had been for Shane to practice a landing there before the big fly-in later in the month, so he didn't have to worry about doing a go-around in front of a load of people, but we turned back as Randy's fuel pressure warning went off.  He cycled the pumps, and it looked fine again, so we carried on, but stopped to take a look at the wiring.  We found a loose connector, then carried on our merry way to Willows, where we met Bill, Chris, Tim and PJ, and met an Autogyro MTO pilot called Steve from Petaluma.

After lunch, we headed back to Lincoln, making pretty good time with a tail wind.

When we got back, Jarron was out in his Air Command, and we heard him coming back on the handheld radio I've just recently left in the hangar :o)  We all went out and watched him land, then chatted while I went over my left carb that seemed to be leaking when I looked at it at Willows.  Everything looks fine, so I changed the choke gasket as it looked like that might be the problem, and it pressure tested OK.  Hopefully that's fixed.

March 5th

I started the day picking Randy up on the way to the airport, where we had breakfast and peered at the sky.  It was pretty cloudy, and even raining from time to time, so we gave up on flying and went home.  Obviously it brightened up later, but by then I was playing Warcraft.

March 4th

The weather's been a bit off, so I spent some time finishing up our taxes.  Now I just need to figure out how to pay the bill :o(

March 3rd

As the weather's changing, I just played Warcraft today.  Randy's back from Disney, so we did go and put gas in the planes for (hopefully) flying this weekend.

In the evening, I went to the EAA Zoom meeting.

March 2nd

Continuing my streak of actually achieving things in my week off, I took the van in for its annual (well, it's been over 2 years) going over at Stephan's Auto Haus.  While Travis was complaining about the state of the air filter (I blamed all the smoke last year), I got to look over Wunder Bread, Stephan's 24 hours of Lemons racer.  I'm thinking it's got a bit more than $500 in it, but it's quite the piece of equipment.

March 1st

A new month.  Here are the stats:

Power billed

Power generated

I went to the airport and got the annual on my plane all finished up, then took Gary on the test flight to make sure everything worked :o)

February 28th

I've taken the week off to get some stuff done, and spent the day at the airport making a good start on the annual inspection for the plane.  Randy says it'll be good to go tomorrow, so I'll be set until the end of March next year (I'm trying to move the annual towards the summer so there's less chance of it being miserably cold when I'm trying to get stuff done.)

February 27th

Dave and Sam came to see Tilly, and brought me some Lift as all good guests should.

February 26th

I'm on call this weekend, so after clearing out the queue, I went and flew to Auburn to meet Bill, John and Chris for lunch.

When I got back to Lincoln, I got in Bill's way as he finished up changing his oil - he'll be flying to Florida in the next couple of months, and doesn't want to have to change it en route.