I'm on call this weekend, so didn't get much done today, but I did throw together a short video from yesterday's flight to Nut Tree.
I went and met Shane, Henry, Randy, PJ and Ken (who flew in from Reno to see Henry) for lunch. Didn't get around to flying, as I was pretty tired.
Randy came and picked me up, and we met Henry, Shane and Liza at the airport. We had originally intended to fly to Lampson, but as we'd had the crap beaten out of us on our last couple of cross country flights, we decided to try Nut Tree, with a divert to Sutter if it was too turbulent.
It wasn't turbulent, so we got to Nut Tree, and met Steve, another MTO pilot, from Petaluma.
 |
| Henry, me, Randy, Shane and Liza, Steve |
After lunch, it was decided to stop at Woodland on the way back, and Steve said he'd fly there with us.
When we were setting up to leave, us to Lincoln, Steve to Petaluma, Steve's pre-rotator broke - it's a mechanical linkage on the Autogyros, and the link pin had failed. We explained to him that he could manually pre-rotate, and Randy span the rotor up, to about 20rpm, and left him to run down the runway. One of the issues with the Autogyro is that it has a pneumatic, push button pre-rotator, and it seems Steve doesn't understand how pre-rotation works, as he slammed the cyclic back and the propeller hit the rotor. We were amazed that the design would allow that to happen. Oh well... we found space in a hangar for him (George, a Magni pilot allowed him in,) and Randy flew him back to Nut Tree to get picked up to go home. Shane, Liza and I flew back to Lincoln and waited for Henry and Randy to get back.
The weather forecast for today was crappy, so we'd declared it a maintenance day and decided against flying. Obviously it was a nice day, but I did get to go to the optician's and do the 50 hour service on my plane. We also installed an old digital altimeter I have in Randy's plane, mostly so he can see the vertical speed indicator :o)
I went out to the airport, and Randy, Henry and I flew one of Randy's cow-orkers up to Auburn for lunch.
We flew back down the North Fork, then sat in the hangar and chatted for a while.
I picked Shane up and headed to the airport, where we met Randy and Henry and flew to Willows. It was a bit of a cluster... Randy had been playing with the balance screw on his rotor, and left it so unbalanced that he turned back to adjust it again, leaving us to press on as we were supposed to be meeting a guy out of Petaluma at 13:00. And he bailed out while we were in the air, apparently. So after being battered by turbulence for over an hour, we got there and waited for Randy to arrive.
After lunch, we flew back via the valley to the West that's where they're going to be building the Sites Reservoir.
I've taken the week off while Henry's here so we can do some flying. So obviously I started the day at the Chevrolet dealer dropping the Bolt off ("is the check engine light on?" - "it doesn't have an engine") so they can look at the battery - I reckon they'll end up replacing it per the recall.
Randy picked me up when I got home again, and we went to the airport, where he, Shane, Henry and I flew to Oroville for lunch.
We had talked about going via Feather Falls on the way home, but the wind was a bit rowdy, so we shelved that idea. I've bought a suction mount for the Insta360, so I slapped that on the side of the plane for the flight up, and when everything seemed OK, I screwed the camera to it for the way back. It's pretty damn stable, and I'm giving Henry the footage to integrate with his footage from his 9 (!) cameras.
Chris, Henry and Randy were heading to Half Moon Bay, and I didn't feel like getting out that early, so I pottered around the house and went out to the airport later. I did a short flight, then changed the left hand tyre as the old one has some flat spots on it.
I was just finishing up as Randy and Henry got back - they'd only got to Petaluma and tooled around there for a while. Chris had got to Half Moon Bay (despite the fog) but he was in an RV-12 that he's going to be helping sell.
I'd offered to pick Shane up due to his scheduling conflicts with their one family car and 3 people wanting it, but my day started with the car throwing an error and saying it wanted a service. The battery cooling system is working hard, so I think there's been some sort of event there. So I took the van instead.
Half way back to the airport, I got paged, so we pulled into a parking lot and I spoke to a customer for a while, before agreeing to call them back when we got to the airport.
I called them back and it was obvious I wasn't flying to lunch with everybody, so they all left and I sat on conference calls most of the morning and into the afternoon. Luckily I got off the call shortly after everybody got back, and could help Shane finish up his servicing before his annual.
I ran Shane home, then went home and finished up my day of work :o(
Shane's first annual inspection on his plane is due at the end of the month, and he's been getting a little twitchy about it, so we agreed to meet at the airport and make a start on it.
When I got there (early,) Henry was unloading his plane. I know he likes to take his sweet time on everything, so I got Bill's RV-6 out and ran it up for 15 minutes to exercise the engine and get the oil up to temperature. He's moved to Florida, and is aiming to be back in a couple more weeks to pick it up, and I'd said I'd try and run the engine every few weeks or so.
I helped Henry get his rotor back in, then Shane and I started on his service at the same time as getting everything back in the hangar. We mostly got the pre-rotator all apart and serviced, but I'd say we're about half way done.
One of us almost got sprayed in the face by a skunk last night.
In the evening, I attended the online EAA meeting.
We met Shane and Liza at the airport, then did our monthly flight over Far West Lake Reservoir on the way up to Nevada County airport - Shane and Liza haven't been there.
After standing around admiring the empty airport for a while, we flew home again.
PJ was meeting friends at Lincoln, so we chatted for a while, then went and had lunch.
It was raining, and Easter weekend, so everything was cancelled. Shane and I met at at the airport and put our planes back together, then went and got lunch.
I went to the online EAA gyroplane event, where they talked about aircraft in the museum from Bensens to Norman Surplus' MTO.
It was a little gratifying to have a few of my answers to questions posed to the (non gyro pilot) presenters read out verbatim :o)
It was even windier than yesterday, so we gave up on flying to Davis. Shane, Liza and I met for breakfast, then did a tiny amount of maintenance before heading home.
In the evening, Vic and I watched "The King's Man."
There was a wind advisory as it was gusting over 30mph through the valley, so Shane, Randy and I shelved our plan to fly to Modesto and just went and saw Chris' new hangar and had lunch.
I went to the EAA VMC meeting via Zoom. I'm wondering if we'll get back to doing those in the hangar in the near future.
I met Bill and his friend Gordon at the airport, and we proceeded to lever Gordon into the plane, as he can't get into Bill's RV-6A. We went and flew over Camp Far West Lake reservoir so Gordon could take pictures of Bill flying, then headed up to Auburn to meet Chris, Tim, Randy, Kim, Victoria and John for lunch.
We looked at some of the 800+ pictures on Gordon's camera, and some look really good - I'm looking forward to seeing the better ones when he's finished processing them.
We flew straight back, as it seems they were running late for a family meeting :o)
I started the day at the airport for the EAA breakfast. I took the car, and Vic called to say the van wasn't starting in the Togo's parking lot, so she'd got a ride home. It sounded like a low battery, because it's been sitting in the garage for over a week, then only drove 2 miles. When I went for a flight, I flew over it to make sure the solar panel on the roof was clear of too many shadows, and when we went to pick it up, it started just fine.
 |
| Power billed |
 |
| Power generated |
