July 30th

Randy, Shane and I met at the airport to start balancing Shane's rotors... they were a ways out, and it seems to be far enough that it wasn't as easy as we'd hoped.  Anyway, by lunchtime we thought we had figured out what we need to do next.

It was getting hot, and we're all old and tired so we headed home after lunch.

July 29th

I'd set the printer making a shroud thingy for the speedo on Vic's motorcycle, as she's said it's hard to see in the sun.  The designer said he printed it without supports, but it was starting to droop, so I cancelled that.  I did, however, get to show Vic how it would look and asked whether she'd prefer the gloss black of PETG or the slightly flat black of the carbon fibre infused PETG.  Flat black won out, so I I left that printing with the support structure - it almost doubled the print time.

I went out to the airport to try the brake unit I'd printed, and despite it all fitting together, there's not enough extra braking to disengage it easily - the brake steps need to be a lot smaller, methinks.  So, I spent a while putting the old unit back on, then went out for a flight as it seemed really quiet.

July 26th

I printed a new part of the brake unit, cleaned it up (the carbon fibre filament is really messy) and pressed the bearings in.  All looks fine, so I put it together, and now I'll probably wait for the weekend to go and try installing it again.

July 25th

I dinked around with another print for the throttle unit for the plane, then managed to drive a bearing in at a slight angle, ruining the print _and_ the bearing in one go.  Oh well, at least I can print another part tomorrow.

July 24th

I'd taken the day off to go to the dentist, but I started the day by replacing the fuel hose on the van.  There used to be several bits of different sized hose, but now there's one piece from the fuel filter all the way to the fuel injectors :o)

After the dentist, I went to the airport to look at the throttle unit I've printed.  There are a couple of things I want to change, so I put the original setup back on it and headed home.

July 23rd

Randy and I flew up to Wings for breakfast.

We flew down Bear Creek to Far West Lake Reservoir on the way home.

We spent most of the afternoon staying out of the sun.

July 22nd

It was bloody hot.

We went and met Shane for breakfast, then headed home to stay out of the heat.

I did spend a little time tinkering with a throttle unit I'd printed for the plane.  I'm not convinced that it'll be strong enough, so I have... some ideas.

I also took the carb on the DRZ apart and cleaned all the jets out - the main jet was completely plugged.  I let it soak in carb cleaner for a couple of hours then hit it with some compressed air before putting it all back together again.  And it looks like the van has a gas leak :o(

July 16th

Randy and I had arranged to meet Chris and PJ at Auburn for breakfast, so we flew up there before it got too hot.

Chris couldn't make it due to an oil pressure problem on his RV-6A, and he's aiming to leave for Oshkosh on Tuesday :o(

We landed on 07, which is pretty rare, so I shot video of it.  When I got home I found I'd had the camera in timelapse mode, so I made the best of it...

We'd talked about a little flight on the way home, but it was too hot, so we just went back to Lincoln.

I shot the landing, again in timelapse.

We went home and I got to clear out some work stuff.

July 15th

We had talked about Colusa or Woodland for one of their fly-ins today, but it was forecast to hit 108F and I was on call, so, uh, nah... 

Having had success with Randy's rotor, we went to the airport early and started working on mine.

The first circuit didn't get any data, so we went back out for the first set.  It was miles out.

First span balance

We figured we'd need a lot of span and chord, so we wound in 1.5 turns and added 4 rounds of electrical tape.  The next flight was so bad that I almost just landed as soon as we took off, but decided to tough it out just to get some data.  Well, it had shaken so much that the sensor was moved off the reflector point.  I figured one of the changes was wrong, so I took the tape off and we tried again.  It was still shaking all over the place, so I figured we'd gone the wrong way on the span.

Second span balance

Not so - we'd gone too far.  Interestingly it was closer than it had been, so we took out 0.5 turns and tried again.

Third span balance

It was better, but we also noticed that it had tracked towards the centre, rather than just down.  Another 0.5 turns out.

Fourth span balance

It was almost central, and moving closer to the vertical axis.  Another 0.25 turn.

Fifth span balance

The odd thing here is that it had moved down, but not right.  Another 0.125 turn.

Final span balance

Again, 0.1 is considered good, and we're under 0.05 :o)

We went to lunch with Shane, and Vic joined us, then went home to celebrate by printing little plastic knobs to hold bolts into helmet visors.

July 13th

Randy and I went back out to the airport and weighed out enough 0.25g weights to jam into his rotor.  We went out for a test flight and needed a little more tape on the rotor.  After that flight went well, we went back to the hangar to put more weight in.  We were aiming for the 0.1 ring, but the couple of changes I suggested got us under 0.05 in the next test flight :o)

Final chord balance

July 12th

Randy and I went to the airport and looked at his gyro rotor balance again.  We started off working with the span balance, and that showed my 90 degree out theory was correct.

First span balance

Second span balance

Using tape, we went on and tweaked the chord until it looked close.  We went home, and I left Randy to find lead weights to replace the 4.65g of electrical tape.

First chord balance

July 11th

I went and met Randy at the airport so we could try and balance our rotors.  We spent hours working on his gyro and the results were all conflicting, so we don't actually know what we've done - we set everything back to how it was and went home, defeated.

One of the things I realised was that if you rotate the diagram by 90 degrees, it would look like the main problem is the span.  We'll try that next time we're out there.

June 10th

We'd taken a couple of days off to take Tilly down to see her grandmother, but having to be on call yesterday screwed that up.  Still, time off is time off...

I started the day finalising some of the setup of the media centre PC, then after lunch started tinkering with other things.

I decided to see if the new pilot jet on the DRZ has fixed the carburetion problems.  It started and idled OK, so I got kitted up and took it for a quick ride.  It stumbles badly at ~4,000rpm, so the main jet is blocked.  I'm tempted to just go and but a new jet kit and replace all the jets that I replaced ages ago when I went to the James Dean kit.

I went out to the airport and epoxied a couple of chips in the trailing edge on the rotor, having discovered that JB Weld apparently doesn't stick to parchment paper :o)

July 9th

I was on call (covering Raph, who's hurt his back) so I got up early and cleared everything out.

I went and met Randy at the airport and we flew to Auburn to meet Chris for breakfast.

Chris flew back to Lincoln to pick up some oxygen, then headed out.

In the evening, we watched "John Wick: Chapter 4."

July 8th

We got up early and headed to the airport to meet Shane and Liza, then fly to Willows to meet Chris and PJ for breakfast.

 Afterwards, we all headed home.

July 7th

We've had a few problems playing DVDs recently, so I decided to upgrade the media centre PC from Kodi Matrix to Nexus.  That went OK, but then it wouldn't talk to NextPVR, which is what we use to watch (and record) over the air TV.  I was running version 4.2.4, and needed at least 5.2, so I figured I'd upgrade that.  Nope... I had to uninstall 4 first, so I figured I'd go to 6.1, the latest stable release.

That dumped the entire configuration, so I then got to go through and redo all of the setup of the tuner cards, channels and so on.  This was a pain, but it all seems to be working now.  I was too tired to bother trying the DVDs we'd been having trouble with.

Oh, and we've lost all the timer rules, so it's not recording anything at the moment.  We're in the summer repeats season, so that's not an issue, but we'll have to remember to set these up again when new TV starts up again.

July 4th

Tilly and I didn't sleep well because of the fireworks display at Sun City last night :o(

Today is Independence Day, when Americans celebrate their country's birthday by getting drunk, eating hotdogs and playing with explosives.  And shopping.  What could possibly go wrong?

I was on call, so I couldn't go out, so I calibrated the 3D printer.

July 3rd

I ordered some carbon fibre impregnated plastic for the 3D printer, so I could print a stronger throttle unit for the plane, and that needs a hardened steel nozzle, so I ordered one of those too.  Well, it arrived and I spent ages trying to get it all calibrated in the printer.  No deal.  It looks like the nozzle doesn't really fit the printer, despite being advertised for the printer :o(  So I put the old nozzle back in and decided to leave the calibration for another day.

We also received a 2 monitor mount for Vic's office, so spent a bunch of time getting that all installed and ready to go.

July 2nd

It was another really hot day, so other than meeting Shane for lunch, we just hid inside away from the heat.

July 1st

A new month, so here are the stats:

We went to the airport early and flew to Oroville for their fly-in.  It's usually on July 4th, and I bet they wished they'd done that this year as it was stupidly hot.  Hence going early...

Several of the guys who'd said they were going didn't because of the heat, but it was fairly well attended.  We left pretty early and flew back down the river for a change in scenery.

I spent the rest of the day at home hiding from the heat :o)