October 12th

One of the guinea pigs has been at the vet with an internal "mass", and she passed away this morning :o(

October 11th

Jen and I had been planning to fly up to Auburn to met Chris for breakfast, but the early cloudbase at Lincoln was 700'.  Then it was 900'.  Then it was clear of cloud, so we headed over to the airport and flew up.

Vic drove up and met us.  The wind's coming from the North, so there was a lot of mechanical turbulence on the way back.  Well, a lot for the gyro - I'm sure somebody in a fixed wing would have hardly noticed the amount bouncing we saw, I'm just used to a much flatter flight :o)

After lunch, Jen dropped me home, and I spent some time playing with a Raspberry Pi project I've been trying to get working.

October 10th

Well, autumn's arrived with a bang.

The smoke's mostly cleared, so we'd talked about flying.  Chris and Randy wanted to do lunch, but I was out at the airport earlier than that.  I tinkered about for a bit, then flew towards Chris to catch him shortly after he took off and followed him back to Lincoln.

We decided to go to Oroville, as we haven't been able to get there for a few months due to the smoke.  This is actually Chris' track, as our UAT transmitters don't do as well in the hills as his 1090 :o)

We landed on 13, but immediately wanted to turn off on to 20 to taxi to the golf club - can't do that in a Cessna :o)

Randy landed first, then I put my wheels right on the white line (you're not supposed to land on the yellow arrowed bit) and easily slowed down before turning right.

After lunch we ran in to a really enthusiastic trike flyer, who'd driven over from the other side of the airport to look at the gyros.  He hung around to watch us take off - we decided to leave from 20 as there was a twin lining up to use it, and headed towards home.  There's a new(?) fire to the West of Beale that's started to cloud up the air again :o(

We'd agreed to call Beale Air Force base and try to do a low pass along the runway, but they didn't answer.  Nor Cal approach did, and they cleared us to fly through, so we did, at around 800'.  There were 2 U2s, some KC-135s and a bunch of Global Hawk drones.  Those things are huge, as you can see on Google Maps.  This is partly Chris' track, as Randy and I had our transponders turned off to avoid too much noise for Nor Cal.

Chris broke off as we approached Lincoln, and Randy and I put the planes away.

Chris has posted the pictures he took to a Google photos share.

The van has a slow puncture on one tyre, but I don't think they'll fix it as the tyres are so damned old.  I'd been planning on getting new tyres some time soon, so I guess that time's now :o(

October 4th

 I'd agreed to meet Randy at the airport for a potter around in the smoke, but was at a loose end, so I went over there early and took the plane out for a few circuits first.

The circuit was pretty busy, so I didn't do much.  When Randy arrived, we went for a flight up to Camp Far West Lake as it's really empty at the moment.

After we'd tidied everything away, we went and had a late lunch before heading home.

October 3rd

We got up and went to the airport, then flew to Auburn with Randy to meet Chris and Tim for brunch.

Tony, Mark and Mark ended up joining us there in their STOL aircraft, as their plans had fallen through.

Everybody flew back to Lincoln after we were done, Chris flew in formation with me, so I'm hoping Tim got some nice pictures with his phone.

Randy was due for his 50 hour service, so he started in on that, and Chris was amazed to hear that you need to check the torque of the prop bolts every 25 hours, so we did that, then cleaned his filthy air filter as Randy was doing his, then tightened up his rotor brake cable slightly, as his brake doesn't do much.  Once everything was finished, Chris and Tim headed back to Cameron Park and Randy dropped me home (Vic took the car when it looked like we were going to be a few hours.)

Later, we went to REI so Vic could look at their selection of electric bikes.

October 2nd

We got up earlyish and took the car in to the dealer for a recall on a fuse - supposedly it can trip and the car is dead.  The scheduler said it would take 4 hours, but the check in guy said it should take an hour.  I figured replacing the fuse would take 2 minutes, it's just getting to it.  Sure enough, I'd just sat down with a cup of Dr Pepper and a croissant when they said it was going to be about 10 more minutes.

When I got home, Vic suggested I take Tilly to the park.  Sure, why not?

She spent a lot of time playing in the mud, and when she was lying in the dirty paddling pool more than anything, I hosed her off and took her home.

I went to the airport, and took the plane out for a quick flight - can't see much, so I didn't stay out long.

October 1st

A new month, so here are the power stats:

Power billed

Power generated

The moon was red, due to all the crappy smoke in the air :o(