Friday, April 25, 2014

April 21st

I called the support guys for the inverter on my solar system, that seems to be having the occasional problem where it drops to 0.  They're guessing that the problem is that the grid power goes "out of sync" somehow - I pointed out that I have the voltages, and they're not changing, so they're blaming phase frequencies and things and stuff, which sounds a lot like "it's complicated, don't worry your pretty little head about it".  Oh well, we'll see if it happens again - I've only caught it doing this twice.

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

April 20th

After discovering that the Chilipepper appliance isn't working properly, I went over to the airfield and took the plane out for a while, looking for a dog that the SPCA has lost (I didn't see it).

April 19th

After playing Warcraft for a while, I put together the Chilipepper appliance for the bathroom with a new gearbox, and spent a while reinstalling it.  It seemed to work, so I then went to the airfield for the Safety Team presentation.  The presentation was about dissimilar aircraft operations, so we heard from powered parachute to corporate jet pilots.

After that, I got myself all sorted out and took the plane out.  There was a Jet Prop and 2 RVs in the run up area, so I waited for them to leave, then did my run up checks.  I then waited for somebody to land, and pulled out of the way to let the parachute jump plane go.  I was waiting for the Jet Prop to land, and watching the RVs doing an overhead break when the Jet Prop ran off the runway.  I taxied over there, but they were out of the plane when I got there.  It looks like the front gear came out, but didn't rotate to be pointing the right way, as there was a big black stripe on the runway from it.  When the gear hit a lump of dirt, it broke, and the prop seems to have kept the nose from too much damage.  We spent a while trying to figure out what to do with the plane, and ended up leaving it there.  I had been thinking I was going to drive them up to Auburn (where they came from), but Byron offered to fly them back up (as it's a lot quicker).  After all that, I didn't feel like flying any more :o)

Friday, April 18, 2014

April 17th

Once it had warmed up, I went over to the airfield to work on the plane - sadly with all the ideas I'd had about fitting stuff, it didn't work out how I'd intended, but I've fitted the LED navigation lights (I had thought about adding 2 strobes, but there isn't any space for them at the end of the wing).  I figured out how to mount them, made the bracketry up for the left wing, then tried to push my spare cable inner wire down the tube, to pull the electrical wire.  It kept hitting mounts inside the tube, and I was trying to figure out how I could run the wire inside the wing instead.  That wasn't going to work, so I worked on straightening my cable, with a little bend at the end, and that eventually went in.  I pulled the wire through without any problems, and soldered everything up at the wing end.  I cut the zip ties for the side cover, and got the switched 12V power line for the strobes sorted out, and soldered the resistor to the end of the (3V) strobe line.  Testing it, it worked just fine, so I moved on to the right wing.  I got the bracketry sorted for the end all sorted out, pushed the cable down (first time!) but then had the electrical wire catch several times and come unhooked.  I eventually got that sorted out, and soldered everything up, but I was having trouble getting the earth connection for both wires in the connector, so I soldered them together, making it that bit easier.  Everything works, so I put everything back together and headed home.



April 16th

Still off work, so I spent the morning playing Warcraft while I waited for it to warm up a bit.

I noticed that there was a problem (again) with the solar power:

I spent a bit of time talking to the installers, and they're going to talk to the inverter manufacturer to see if this is anything they've seen before.

I tinkered around in the garage, and made up some brackets for the plane, but I need to get some tiny screws.

In the evening I rode over to Lincoln for Corl's talk on ADS-B / NexGen, which was quite interesting.  Doesn't look like I'll need to do anything for where I fly, which is just as well as I don't think I have the power to run transponders, WAAS GPS and the transmitter system :o)

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

April 15th

I've taken a few days off to kill off some holiday, as I'm no longer accruing any :o(

I started out looking at the camera (that had been taking pictures of the eclipse), and the bloody thing stopped taking pictures after about 2 hours.  All I got of the eclipse was this.  Bah, at least there are 3 more eclipses in the next 18 months.

Jim came over with his friend Michael, who has a brachial plexus injury, too.  He's wanting to look at getting back onto a motorcycle, so he looked at the DRZ at length.  He has a mountain bike with linked hydraulic brakes, so I'm interested to see how that works :o)

April 14th

After work, we watched the MotoGP race.  WTF?  At least <anybody but Pedrosa> won :o)

I set up the camera to take pictures of the eclipse, then went to bed.

April 13th

We spent the morning doing things and stuff waiting to watch the MotoGP race from Austin.  Well, after the race was over, we could watch the highlights and the interviews after the race, but not the race itself :o(

We went down to Elk Grove to meet John and Jim, where we sat in a bar and talked for 6 hours.  Tilly's dinner was... late :o)

Sunday, April 13, 2014

April 12th

After the obligatory Warcraft session, we took the Bolt over to the Yamaha dealer - there's a little bit of rust on the exhaust system, and I'm pretty sure that shouldn't happen after getting wet once.  They said they'd refer it to Yamaha, but I'm pretty sure it'll get replaced.

We pulled some stuff out of the storage space / attic in the garage, and put a couple of doors up there.  I then broke down a bunch of old boxes, and ran them to the recycling drop off.

I slogged through and cut the grass, but I'm still feeling a bit chesty from my cold, so I didn't feel the need to brave the gusty wind and go flying.

The Yamaha dealer called in the afternoon to say they'd be ordering the exhaust on Monday :o)

April 11th

We went out to dinner with John.

April 10th

John's in town, so he came over and... did some laundry :o)

April 9th

I started putting Gwen's laptop back together, but there's a broken internal connector that I'm pretty sure I won't be able to solder.  Bugger.

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

April 8th

I went to the dentist, and my teeth are still fine.  On the way home, there was a young woman broken down in traffic at a major (for Roseville) junction, and everybody was getting all pissy and forcing their way into the other lane to get around her.  I parked the DRZ behind her, and said "hey, let's move it".  While we were waiting for the lights to change, a kid came up from another car somewhere behind us and joined in, and when we had the car safely parked up over the junction, there were 2 more kids pushing my bike over to me :o)

The power plug adapter for Gwen's old laptop showed up a few days ago, so I spent a bit of time soldering it to the motherboard.  Now I just need to fix the other end of the power line - the plug is caked with burnt plastic by the look of things.

April 6th

I'm still feeling a little under the weather, so we went to IKEA to get Tilly a new cookie jar with a lid (to match my cookie jar, with a lid).  In the afternoon, I spent a few hours loading drivers and patches onto Gwen's PC, so that's good to go now.  Yay.

Sunday, April 6, 2014

April 5th

I've been bothered with the HID light on the DRZ, as it cuts out from time to time, usually at high revs.  I'm not sure if it's a voltage thing, or a vibration thing, or a just not built very well thing, so I've put the halogen bulb back in to stop me worrying about it.  It looks awfully yellow, now :o)

I took a look at Gwen's busted PC, and it looks to me like the problem's the graphics card.  I put an old one in, and it's been booting up just fine, so when I get the password to load the drivers, we'll probably call that good.

April 3rd

John's in town, so we got together for dinner, and for him to dump some more junk in the guest room for when he gets time to deal with it :o)

April 1st

It's a new month, so here's what we did with the solar panels last month:
Power billed

Power generated

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

March 31st

After work, we went over to the Yamaha dealer and picked up Vic's Bolt.  In the rain.  I followed her home in the Jeep, and despite the new bike and new tyres, there was nary a twitch :o)

March 30th

It wasn't raining for a change, so I cut the grass while I could.

I also went out for some parts for a project I have in my head for the plane - yesterday I'd been looked at like I had 2 heads when I asked for P clamps in Lowes... well, Home Depot know what I'm talking about, so I went and picked some up.  There are a few more things I need yet, so I need to spend some time fabbing stuff, methinks.

Other than that, it was just tinkering around the house.  I think I'm coming down with a cold :o(