Today was Memorial Day, when Americans remember their war dead by going shopping.
I was stuck watching stuff at work, so I couldn't do anything silly until about lunchtime, so I worked on a video of us arriving at Georgetown.
In the evening, we watched "Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore."
Randy and I flew to Auburn to meet the Georgetown campers for breakfast.
After breakfast, we flew to Cameron Park to look at one of the carbs on the RV-12 that Chris is trying to sell - it's been leaking. On the way, we picked up Paul, a Magni pilot from Petaluma who was flying to Tahoe, when he called to say he was going to be passing Cameron Park. We met at Cameron Park and chatted for a while before he continued.
After a lot of work replacing gaskets and floats and bending parts, we realised that the float bowl wasn't fitting properly. We're not sure why, but a little filing and an application of a mallet managed to get it all back together so it stopped leaking.
I flew back in the fairly unpleasant headwind from the North - Randy had left earlier to get to some family dinner thing.
Today was the Georgetown "Divide for the kids" fly-in, so we met Randy at the airport and flew up there.
A bunch of the guys from Cameron Park were there, as they're spending the night, but I didn't sleep well last year, plus with Vic in the plane didn't have space for camping gear.
Afterwards, we flew back. It was a little bumpy under the clouds, but not terrible.
I met Randy at the airport and flew to Auburn to meet Chris and PJ for breakfast.
After breakfast we flew back - I started to follow Randy to the South, remembered we were landing on 33 and corrected for an overhead join. He'd been just doing what he always does by setting up for 15, and sorted himself out for 33.
We reinstalled Shane's instrument panel, then found one of my fuel pumps wasn't working, so replaced that with a spare. Now I need to get a new spare :o)
We went to the airport and had breakfast, then worked on replacing a broken terminal block on the plane. That too (a lot) longer than I'd expected, and I also helped Shane with his plane - there's some odd stuff going on with the EIS.
Vic and I went for our monthly flight around Camp Far West Lake, then helped Shane pull his dashboard to spray contact cleaner in the EIS before going home again.
I went to pick up my new glasses, to find I couldn't see at all well through the left eye. We went through the "test your eyes" process again and found that the prescription was correct, leading me to think that they'd left the old lens in that eye, but what do I know, I'm not an optician.
I met Shane and Liza at the airport and we flew up to Auburn to meet Chris, Tim and PJ for brunch.
We flew pretty much straight back, as the wind and thermals were quite bumpy.
During Shane's annual, I'd found that the oil pressure alarm on his engine information system wasn't set up, so we went to set that up, only to find that pretty much nothing was set to alarm. Having set most stuff up, we found the exhaust gas temperature sensor on one cylinder was reporting all over the place, suggesting a wiring issue - the engine can't heat and cool that quickly.
I'm resting my back before I go back to work on Monday, so I just pottered around the house.
I was just starting to settle in and play Warcraft all day when Randy mailed me and Shane to say he could do the annual inspection on Shane's plane. So I went to the airport and got that all done and out of the way for another year.
When I got home, Vic was back from the Bay Area, and Tilly was happy that everybody's back where she thinks they should be.
My back's getting better, but I still didn't get anything useful done. Sometimes it's good to just laze around.
We were supposed to be going to Los Gatos for Vic's mother's birthday, but I didn't sleep well and my back's still giving me a lot of trouble, so Vic's left me and Tilly at home. I mostly watched TV and slept.
I've taken the week off to get some stuff done, so started out by hurting my back figuring out how to get the rear seats down in the rental car. Yay me.
I met Bruce at the airport to talk about the EAA - he's looking at trying to be an advisor to the board to try and get them back on track. I had some feedback :o)
I started the day going to the airport for the "Brunch with Bud" event, but got sidetracked by Shane and his friend Dave wanting to go to Karen's for lunch, then Tony wanting to go to lunch at Karen's now. So we went to Karen's now.
After lunch, I went for a short flight - Marty had been up and said it was pretty bumpy, and it was still bumpy.
We went and picked up a rental car while the Bolt is in getting its battery replaced. The choice ended up being a Spark or a Charger, keeping the electric theme (though both are internal combustion engines.) We took the Spark because it's cheaper (even though GM are paying for it) and it's easier to live with - the Charger is a looot bigger.
After an email conversation with a couple of the EAA board members about an IT issue, one sent me (and the whole board) an email reply that another board member later called "condescending." I thought "I don't need to stay here and be condescended to. I can go anywhere and be condescended to." So I've suggested it might be better if they do their own IT and web support.
It's been brewing for a while, as I've been getting criticism for not posting updates they haven't told me about and so on, but after almost 10 years, I'm glad to be shot of it all.
I wish the webmaster well.
Henry's going home this week, so we had a barbecue at the airport to see him off.
Randy's installed his new prop, so he went for a trial flight to see how that works. It seems to be over-pitched, but he says it's a lot quieter. It sounded the same from the ground, in my opinion. We still plan to gather data comparing it to the stock Magni prop, as until then it's just "I can run faster in my new sneakers."
I went to the airport and flew up to Auburn to meet Randy and Henry, who'd gone out early to try and miss the worst of the bumpy weather.
It was pretty windy, so we all just came straight back.
